By Jill Palermo and Kellyn Hardin

The Making Kepler Click lesson series helps teachers make Kepler’s Laws meaningful through hands-on modeling, data analysis, and student discourse grounded in the Five Practices Framework¹. The session at the 2025 CASE Conference highlighted these lessons and emphasized high cognitive demand tasks in which students explore phenomena before receiving formal explanations, allowing them to build understanding collaboratively. Student talk is framed as a resource for sensemaking, supporting clarification of ideas, comparison of viewpoints, and construction of evidence-based explanations. This approach aligns with NGSS ESS1.B, which requires students to understand elliptical orbits and gravitational influences, as well as performance expectations HS-ESS1-4 and HS-ESS1-6, which focus on modeling and explaining gravitational motion.

The instructional flow begins with an orbit simulation using a string and a central “sun,” helping students observe how gravity and inertia interact. Through this exploration, students naturally build vocabulary and recognize that greater distance from the Sun leads to longer orbital periods, key foundations for Kepler’s 3rd Law. Teachers then use a “Slow Reveal Graph” routine to help students interpret data showing relationships between planetary distance and orbital time. As students notice and wonder, they uncover the mathematical pattern behind Kepler’s 3rd Law while practicing data analysis aligned to HS-ESS1-4.

The presentation then introduced Kepler’s 2nd Law through a simple video showing a planet sweeping out equal areas in equal times. Students discuss orbital speed changes, discovering that planets move faster when closer to the Sun and slower when farther away, again reinforcing ESS1.B and aspects of HS-ESS1-6. Kepler’s 1st Law is taught through a hands-on ellipse construction activity using string, pins, and poster paper. Students label foci, axes, and calculate eccentricity before matching their ellipse to a planet. A gallery walk allows students to compare shapes and note how the distance between foci affects eccentricity. Students then add where a planet would move fastest and slowest on their ellipse, directly connecting their models to Kepler’s 2nd Law and gravitational reasoning.

The presentation concluded by guiding teachers to use the Five Practices, anticipating, monitoring, selecting, sequencing, and connecting student thinking, to anchor instruction in sensemaking. Ultimately, the session demonstrated how modeling, discourse, and data-rich tasks support students in meeting NGSS expectations while developing conceptual understanding of gravitational interactions and orbital motion.

1Cartier, Jennifer L. 5 Practices for Orchestrating Productive Task-Based Discussions in Science. Reston, VA : National Council of Teachers of Mathematics : NSTA Press, 2013.

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