Subjects
Grades
Grades 2-up
News Content
Atlantis astronauts put in place solar panels that provide power for the space station.
Anticipation Guide
Before reading, write International Space Station on a board or chart. Ask students to share what they know about the International Space Station (ISS). Depending on the grade you teach, students might know little or a lot. Write on the board or chart the information that students share. If your students have no prior knowledge of the space station, share that the ISS is being built in space. When finished, the space station will enable teams of astronauts to live in space for long periods of time. The ISS is an experiment that might someday lead to many people living in space.
News Words
Introduce these words from the News Word box on the students' printable page: gravity, energy, mission, storage, collect, and robotic. Ask students to identify the word in the list that means
Read the News
Click for a printable version of this week's news story Astronauts Finish Building Space Station Addition.
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More Facts to Share
You might share these additional facts with students after they have read this week's news story.
Comprehension Check
Revisit the Anticipation Guide at the top of this lesson. Ask students to add new facts they learned by reading this news story to the list of things they knew before reading it.
You might follow-up that activity by asking some of these questions:
Recalling Detail
Think About the News
Discuss the Think About the News question that appears on the students' news page.
In addition, you might ask these questions.
Follow-Up Activities
Cooperative group activity. Arrange students into pairs. Pose this task: Make a list of the skills an astronaut might need to have to do the job. Give students a few minutes to create a list. Then merge two pairs of students together to create groups of four students. Have them discuss and add to the ideas they generated in their pairs; create a new combined list of skills. Next, merge two groups of four students to form groups of eight students. Have students create a new combined list of skills. Finally, bring all students together for a class discussion about astronaut's skills.
Build a model space station. Use the scale model drawing package on the NASA Web site to "build" a model of the space station.
Make a photo timeline. Challenge students to use the images on the International Space Station Assembly Web page to create a photo timeline of the project.
Research. Copy the activity below onto a board or a sheet of chart paper. Have students use the astronaut biographies on the STS-115 Mission Web page to match each astronaut's name to his or her home state or province. (Answers: 1.d, 2.e, 3.b, 4.f, 5.a, 6.c.)
1. Brent Jett Jr. | a. Ontario (Canada) |
2. Chris Ferguson | b. Illinois |
3. Joe Tanner | c. Minnesota |
4. Dan Burbank | d. Michigan |
5. Steve MacLean | e. Pennsylvania |
6. Heidemarie Stefanyshyn-Piper | f. Connecticut |
Assessment
Use the Comprehension Check (above) as an assessment. Or have students work on their own (in their journals) or in their small groups to respond to the Think About the News questions on the news story page or in the Comprehension Check section.
Lesson Plan Source
Education WorldNational Standards
National Standards
LANGUAGE ARTS: English
GRADES K - 12
NL-ENG.K-12.2 Reading for Understanding
NL-ENG.K-12.8 Developing Research Skills
NL-ENG.K-12.12 Applying Language Skills
SCIENCE
GRADES K - 4
NS.K-4.4 Earth and Space Science
NS.K-4.5 Science and Technology
GRADES 5 - 8
NS.5-8.4 Earth and Space Science
NS.5-8.5 Science and Technology
GRADES 9 - 12
NS.9-12.4 Earth and Space Science
NS.9-12.5 Science and Technology
See recent news stories in Education World's News Story of the Week Archive.
Article by Gary Hopkins
Education World®
Copyright © 2006 Education World
09/20/2006