Earth at Night

Teaching Theme of the Week

from Education World®

Students use maps to identify the ten cities highlighted on an image of Earth at night as seen from space.

Subjects: Math, Science, Educational Technology, Social Studies

Grade Levels: 3-5, 6-8, 9-12

Objectives
Students will:

• identify the seven continents on a map image of Earth as seen from space, and
• use map resources to identify ten selected cities on the Earth at Night map work sheet.

Keywords
map, Earth, space, night, population, countries, cities, country, city, continent, satellite

Materials Needed

• world maps from a variety of sources (textbooks, atlases, encyclopedia, online sources, and more)
• Earth at Night work sheet

Procedure
In this lesson, students use maps to identify places on a map image of the world at night taken from space. The work sheet that accompanies the lesson is intended for use in grades 3-6. Teachers of older students might print out the activity and mark ten additional locations for their students to identify.

If you have a projector attached to a classroom computer, you might introduce students to the map of Earth at Night that was taken from space. Following are several sources of that map:

• Earth at Night
• Earth City's Lights
• Earth Lights at Night
• Astronomy Picture of the Day

Have students identify the continents on the Earth at Night map. Can they pinpoint the location of their city or town? Then hand out to students the Earth at Night work sheet. Challenge students to use maps they find in their textbooks, encyclopedia, atlases, or online to identify the names of the ten large cities highlighted on the work sheet.

You might extend the lesson by looking at other maps of Earth from space. See a resource on the NASA Web site, The Blue Marble. Discuss what features of Earth those other maps show that cannot be seen in the Earth at Night map.

Assessment
Work sheet answers:

1. San Diego, CA (USA);
2. Santiago (Chile);
3. Boston, MA (USA);
4. Miami, FL (USA);
5. Madrid (Spain);
6. Paris (France);
7. Cape Town (South Africa);
8. Bangkok (Thailand);
9. Tokyo (Japan);
10. Sidney/Canberra (New South Wales, Australia).

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