A friend recently posted a picture of her boy, reading. He was invited by the movie “Star Wars” to read. I loved it seeing that science fiction, the story, has become of interest to students. The Challenger Center , NASA and The Planetary Society have resources to share.

I would start using the Star Wars coding. This is the link, with choices of language and maybe later a bunch of video films. It is fun to build your own game.

The Challenger Center is located in various geographical areas. The curriculum is awesome. I like to teach the curriculum pieces that feature Mars. The movie, The Martian is of interest too, to build on interest. In case you have not seen it , this is a quick synopsis.

When astronauts blast off from the planet Mars, they leave behind Mark Watney (Matt Damon), presumed dead after a fierce storm. With only a meager amount of supplies, the stranded visitor must utilize his wits and spirit to find a way to survive on the hostile planet. Meanwhile, back on Earth, members of NASA and a team of international scientists work tirelessly to bring him home, while his crew mates hatch their own plan for a daring rescue mission. It’s a story.

Build your own Moon

An online game that allows players to build their own moon and sculpt its features has won big praise in science art competition.

The game, called “Selene: A Lunar Construction GaME,” measures how and when players learn as they discover more about how the Earth’s moon formed and, by extension, the solar system. It received an honorable mention in the 2012 International Science & Engineering Visualization Challenge, the journal Science announced today (Jan. 31).

As players experiment with the game, they learn more about one of the easiest heavenly bodies they can study, Selene developers said.

Here is the game.

http://selene.cet.edu/default.aspx?page=Selene

Group Activities?

As the students explores there are these other sets of information. The Mars Survival Kit 

The kit is for lower grades, …and then there is Marsville . This was so fascinating , a principal who was not in love with hands on science, .. could not resist and joined us in exploring building Marsville. What is Marsville?

Marsville (Grades 5-6) challenges students to create a colony of habitats as they prepare for a simulated mission to Mars.  Academic content including mathematics, science, engineering, communication and the arts is incorporated into a series of individual and group activities as students work through a series of tasks to solve specific biological and social problems in order to design life support systems.

This is project based learning. You can add it as a special activity to your curriculum.I like the innovation , the problem solving and the building of habitats. I taught it as a Gifted and Talented unit, but the students decided to share it with the neighborhood. It is a fun  learning activity.

During Marsville Link-Up Day, problem-solving and critical thinking skills are emphasized during the final culminating activity where students physically create their Marsville Habitat.  The crews convene at “Mars” (hosting NJ colleges and/or schools) wearing their uniforms and packing lunches according to specific guidelines.  Teams work within their habitat to cooperatively erect their “bubble” which is made of construction plastic and duct tape and inflated by the air pressure from a floor fan.  Team members share their life systems with other team members within their habitat along with solutions to a crisis to their colony and then, complete a Celestial Questial traveling to other habitats to learn how those life systems operate.  Finally, the teams end the day completing their mission logs and receiving “Astronaut-Candidate” certificates of recognition for their efforts.

If this seems too daunting to you , and you just want to please and have an individual student learn. You can have a student construct a moon habitat.

If you never studied space science education, you can start with students here.

 

Mars City Alpha is a upper grade event that is great to do, if you have a class to do it with.

 

Ways to Integrate The Topic Of Mars In Your Classroom ( from NASA) Use a Mars Mission as a Current Event Obtain Images and Data Sets To Analyze and Interpret Use Student Questions as the Basis for Experiments and Models Learn About the Scientists and Engineers Involved in a Mission Explore Engineering/Design Issues With Mechanisms, Simulations, & Models Consider How Conditions on Mars Could Affect Processes That Students Have Studied

Use a Mars Mission as a Current Event

Typically, the information sources for current events are printed materials, television, radio, and the Web. Occasionally, teachers are able to schedule presentations by people familiar with or involved in an event, and sometimes students can conduct interviews with such people. Formats to share information include bulletin boards, oral reports, student reports, and current event notebooks. Each of these methods involves students in different ways and at different levels of intensity. Below are several ways the Pathfinder mission could be used in a current events context: The mission’s data and images will be used for decades by scientists researching Mars. Check newspapers and magazines for articles on the science resulting from their work. There is an enormous amount of information about the mission the Pathfinder Web site, everything from the people involved to the current weather conditions on Mars to the latest results based on Pathfinder data and images to the latest images themselves. The Web site will also link you to other sites related to the mission. Shows about Mars air on television or radio, and NASA’s cable and satellite channel, NASA Select, has frequent updates about its various missions. Students can take notes on a show and prepare a report based on the information presented. A bulletin board is a convenient way to organize and prominently display information. You might organize a bulletin board by topics such as:

Mars Pathfinder Life on Mars Robotics Mars Global Surveyor Water on Mars

Questions About Mars Other Space Missions Human Missions to Mars Future Missions to Mars

 

SOURCE: http://mars.nasa.gov/education/modules/webpages/integrationideas.htm

 

I have done all of these things.So can you!!

I was a Challenger Center Teacher.

My last visit was to the Manea Kea Visitor Center.