Scientist At Work

Scientist At Work

Author(s): Annie West
(This has been adapted and changed from an original Block II collaborative lesson plan.)



Grade Level: 5th Grade



Timeframe: This lesson plan is devised to last one hour for a Monday through Friday week. The students will then have time over another week to finish their culminating presentations and present.

Lesson Description or Explanation
Science students will begin to understand that telescopes can be used to view objects that are far away by using telescopes and seeing images from telescopes via Nasa’s website images. Students will also be looking at books and images of different colored stars to begin to become aware of the life of a star. Students will explore with paint to understand how gravity works.

Indiana Curricular Standards
The Universe:
5.3.1 Explain that telescopes are used to magnify distant objects in the sky, including the moon and the planets;
5.3.6 Demonstrate that things on or near Earth are pulled toward it by Earth’s gravity;

ISTE Standards
Facilitate and Inspire Student Learning and Creativity:
d. model collaborative knowledge construction by engaging in learning with students, colleagues, and others in face-to-face and virtual environments
Design and Develop Digital-Age Learning Experiences and Assessments
d. provide students with multiple and varied formative and summative assessments aligned with content and technology standards and use resulting data to inform learning and teaching

Assessments Formative/Summative
Formative:
Students will be keeping a science log on their laptops for reflections of the stations. They will be posting their reflections from each station on the classroom forum. I will be assessing their writing for conventions, but mostly for content.
Summative:
The summative assessment will be the culminating presentation they individually create. They will have time after the week of stations to put together a presentation in any way they decide. It must incorporate a topic, research, technology and a conclusion. Each student will be graded by a point system.

Prior Knowledge
Curricular Knowledge or Skills: Each student is beginning to learn more about the universe. We had interviews with the guiding questions being:
- What is a star?
- What do you think a star looks like?
Therefore, I do know that they have some prior knowledge of stars and the universe. However, this week will scaffold their learning of gravity and telescopes/stars by use of technology and constructivist, hands-on stations.
Technology Knowledge: Each student has been assimilated to using the classroom forum, searching online, using URLs correctly and PowerPoint.

Technology
Internet Resources:
http://www.spitzer.caltech.edu/Media/mediaimages/index.shtml



http://hubblesite.org/explore_astronomy/tonights_sky/



http://hubblesite.org/gallery/



Hardware:
Computers with wireless internet access.
They will save their reflections to the hard drive of their computer before uploading it to the forum.



Software:
They will use Google Earth: Exploding Star Animation to examine constellations.
They will also use Microsoft Word 2007 to create their reflections from the stations and post them to the classroom forum.
Ichat will be available on the classroom Mac for one of the stations.
At the telescope station, a Powerpoint presentation will be looping to show examples of stars from the Spitzer Space Telescope.

Procedure
Overview: Day 1
I will first provide an overview of each station that they will have a turn to learn at over the course of a week. There will be five stations that are set up in the classroom.
Station One: Day 2
I have arranged for an undergraduate class full of students studying astronomy to be our local experts. For this station, someone will be available to answer students questions live over instant messaging. I have also requested that one of the college students discuss a little about the stars with the students over Ichat. This 15 minute interactive time, will also be a time for students to ask questions they have recorded.
Station Two: Day 3
The second station will have students view art images and read about the artist, Morris Louis. Then they can explore how to paint with gravity much like the artist. They will be using water colors and have aprons or old T-shirts on. The table will be placed over a tarp. The purpose is to see how the paint falls in various ways. Then they are able to research gravity online.
Station Three: Day 4
The third station, the students will be looking through a telescope and record what they see on their laptops. This is for their reference to write a later reflection. Students will be viewing a multimedia presentation of star images from telescopes that will be looping as well as visiting the website: http://hubblesite.org/explore_astronomy/tonights_sky/ to view the movie, Tonight’s Sky. This website also includes images from the Spitzer Space Telescope that are viewable on the multimedia presentation.
Station Four: Day 5
The fourth invitation involves the students looking at more pictures of stars through a multimedia presentation and by browsing books. They will explore the Google Earth’s – Exploding Star Animation. From what they see, they can create an observational drawing of a constellation of their choice. Or, students can pretend to have discovered their own constellation and draw that image on black construction paper with chalk. Students will name their “discovery”. Subject-related music will be incorporated into the background during the invitation process.
Culmination:
After each student has visited each station, I will provide time for them to work on a culminating presentation. It will include their topic, research and resources on that topic, technology and a conclusion.
We will have potentially two presentation days and may share some of these with the other fifth grade classes.



Differentiated Instruction
ESL


For the ESL students, the instruction will be differentiated because it incorporates many picture presentations, and allows them to create their own art. However, for some stations they will need more support. For researching, they can use such sites as Google after I have changed the format to be in Spanish. Also, for the presentation they are able to present something visual, whether that is a Powerpoint or movie. They can also partner up if necessary.

Challenge/Extend
I think because the culminating assignment is so open-ended that it can be as challenging as the student likes. However, to extend their learning, I may have them come up with the questions for the Ichat, interactive station.

Special Needs
These students will need support and can go through the stations with a partner and present with a partner or group. A lot of the stations are visual and some incorporate sound. If necessary I could have constellations made out of brail or incorporate the option to turn on captions for the movie/IChat.