Songs in the STEM Class {Solar System}

It has been quite the month here at my house. Sorry to my sweet readers for not posting for a couple of weeks. I PROMISE that I have so many ideas to share. I'm just drowning in "stuff" right now. But I wanted to share a little something I used in class the other day as we were reviewing for our Solar System Unit Test.

I absolutely LOVE teaching about the planets. It's one of my favorite units. And my students LOVE learning about the solar system too. Sometimes I go "a bit" beyond what the Tennessee State Science Standards require because I think it's just too interesting to skip over. Students have been actively engaged throughout this unit - even when it's a day of "doing math" to figure out how old they would be or how much they would weigh on another planet.

Anyway, the purpose of this post is actually to share a link to a YouTube video that includes a song about the planets. Actually, it includes 18 songs about the solar system, but my favorite one is about the planets. It's the first song, so that makes it easy to find.

I used this at the beginning of my lesson to quickly review some of the specific characteristics of each planet in our solar system. Then we played a game of Who Am I? where I gave clues about each planet and students had to guess which planet I was describing. I actually used the cards from the Who Am I? activity that I have available in my TPT store here.

I read the clues aloud and students wrote the name of the planet on their whiteboards as soon as they could identify the planet. It was a great way for me to gather formative data about which students were still struggling with identifying the planets.

How do YOU review for tests in your classroom?
Do you use songs?
If not, you really should.