Students appreciate the relative sizes of the Sun, Earth, and Moon by constructing scale models. They understand the vast distances between planetary orbits by plotting these on another scale model.

Student Resources

• 2.1 Vocabulary
• 2.2 Measuring Distances Between Planet Orbits
• 2.3 Section 2 Assessment

Learn by Reading

For additional content-area reading, check out the Houghton Mifflin Science eBook: Grade 5, Unit D, pages 64–67.