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5th grade · Science · Unit 8 of 10

Spinning Earth, Moving Shadows

Earth's spin makes day and night and moves shadows across the ground.

What your child practices

Practices that Earth rotates on its axis about once every 24 hours, which causes day and night and makes the Sun appear to move across the sky, so shadows change length and direction during the day.

Arizona Academic Standards learning standard: 5.E2U1.7 · Earth's spin and movement around the Sun, and the patterns of day, night and shadows

How we explain it

Children can open this short lesson before they practice.

  1. Earth spins once about every 24 hours, giving day and night.
  2. Earth orbits the sun about once a year.
  3. The sun seems to rise in the east and set in the west. Shadows are shortest around noon.
  4. Some stars are bigger than the sun but look tiny because they are very far away.

Example: How long does Earth take to spin once? One spin gives one day and one night. Answer: about 24 hours

Spinning Earth, Moving Shadows in Arizona

In the Arizona Academic Standards, this is unit 8 of 10 in 5th grade Science, after Gravity Pulls Down and before Traits & Variation.

Gradelings describes a child's practice on this unit as Beginning, Approaching, Meeting or Exceeding (Four practice steps). That reflects practice, not a report-card mark: the teacher decides the mark.

Source: Arizona Department of Education

Sample questions

A taste of this unit. In the app, questions change every time and get easier or harder to match your child.

  1. Question 1

    How long does Earth take to spin once?

    • About 1 year
    • About 24 hours
    • About 1 month
    • About 1 hour

  2. Question 2

    Some stars are much bigger than the sun but look tiny because…

    • they are cold
    • they are very far away
    • they are planets
    • they are small

  3. Question 3

    A shadow graph over a day shows long, short, then long again. Why?

    • The sun rises, gets high, then sets
    • The object changed size
    • Clouds came
    • The ground moved

  4. Question 4

    Shadows are shortest around…

    • noon
    • sunset
    • sunrise
    • midnight

  5. Question 5

    The sun seems to rise in the…

    • west
    • south
    • north
    • east

  6. Question 6

    A shadow points north at noon. Where is the sun?

    • In the south
    • Straight overhead
    • In the north
    • Below the ground

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