Changing Length of Daylight

As the seasons change, the sun sets earlier at night and rises later in the mornings due to the Earth’s position on its axis and the season, making the days seem shorter in the winter than during other seasons.

Why do the days get “shorter” and "longer"?

• What do you notice about the two photos?
• As the seasons change, what do you notice about the time that the sun goes down?
• Why might it get darker sooner in the winter than in the summer?

Students could:

• Make a KWL chart about season changes. Fill this out before, during, and after learning and observations. 
• Record the times the sun sets and rises over a period of time (using a website like this) and make a graph as a class. 
• Choose different times of day to track the sun’s position in the sky, then compare over several days.

• PBS LearningMedia | PreK-12 Resources for New School Routines: Changing Daylight in Summer and Winter: Observe the effect of Earth’s tilt on the amount of daylight that occurs in the northern and southern hemispheres at two points in Earth’s orbit around the Sun in this video by WorldWide Telescope.
• PBS LearningMedia | Bringing the Universe to America's Classrooms: Earth and Space Science: Daylight Throughout a Year: Students make observations and analyze data to investigate how the duration of daylight changes throughout a year. They consider their own experiences in addition to evidence gathered from videos, data tables, and a line graph to describe the pattern in the changing duration of daylight from January to December.