Timeline of Events
from a teacher's perspective!
Chapter 2- BrainstormingNow comes the task of getting the information to the rest of the school- all 700+ students! Maddie was a wonderful teacher and together we taught the rest of my class all about the mission. Timing worked out perfectly because we were in the middle of our Magnetism and Electricity science unit. We learned about the Earth's magnetic field and how it protects us from plasma that flares out from the sun. Sometimes these solar storms do break through our magnetic field and disturb power grids and other electrical sources. We brainstormed and talked about the best, most ideal way to get information out to everyone. Two of my other students had recently presented a project on skateboarding using a website making site called Weebly and they recommended we use that because it would be easy to use and we could present the website to classrooms and if they wanted more information, we could give them a QR code to scan. Luckily, we've become pros with the iPads this year and we were able to do a ton of research. We gathered information, we watched and shared videos with each other, and we used social media to ask questions directly to NASA. To our surprise, they tweeted back every time within hours! We decided what was important to share and divided the work into groups. Each group was responsible for one part of the Weebly site. We put our QR code on a bookmark that had additional information about the mission. Classrooms were able to sign up on a schedule via Google Docs and the kiddos ventured out and presented their knowledge! PROUD TEACHER MOMENT!! :)
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Chapter 1- Out of this World!With the help of administration, teachers, students, and parents were asked to partner with the Lincoln IU 12 to participate in the involvement of NASA's Magnetispheric Multiscale Mission (we would eventually learn to call it the MMS Mission, partially because it was easier and partially because we had no idea what the other words meant at first). How cool to work along side of NASA! This was the first time I was able to meet one of my incoming 4th graders early, that's sort of a big deal for me! Maddie and her mom excitedly joined our team, and they were a perfect match! We all traveled to the IU (by car, not by spaceship!) for an entire day of exploring the mission. At first, it was a little overwhelming; all of this new information and a lot of "scientist" talk. The adults learned about how the mission relates to magnetism and electricity, which is perfect for 4th grade because we learn all about that! Maddie and the rest of our Central kiddos got to do the FUN stuff! Maddie built a car with a solar panel and we all went outside to watch the nail biting race to the finish line. The team of students also were challenged with the idea of how they could take what they learned about the mission and spread the excitement of the mission to other Central schools. They played around with a green screen (so did I, check out my trip to the moon) and they created an iMovie, I see some future movie stars!
Oh yeah- one of the best parts, we ate pizza for lunch! |
Chapter 3- LAUNCH PARTY!!The moment we've been waiting for....10 months of learning! At first I felt a little sad, all of our hard work and this was the grand finale (which would be completely awesome, but just like fireworks...they eventually end). BUT Troy Cline, our NASA buddy, told us it's only just the beginning! We will get to follow the space craft and see what data is collected- we will get a first hand look at the development of a solution to a world wide problem! A HUGE THANK YOU to Mrs. Lauri Brady who has worked endlessly on the collaboration of this mission and hooked us up with "Zooming In" with Troy Cline during the day of the launch. Troy was coming to us live from Kennedy Space Center. He showed us around the area and explained some of the events that were happening and some of the stations that were set up, a group of college students made a life size replica of one of the satellites, another group made a smaller model out of paper. He was also telling us about the space craft and he showed us pictures of him standing next to it. WOW! I was thinking how neat it would be to take a field trip to Cape Canaveral, but this was the next best thing! What a cool way to get the kids "out of their seats" without actually getting out of our seats. Virtual field trips RULE! We even got to talk back to Troy the whole way from York, Pennsylvania. Connections are endless these days! After that awesome experience, we had a real life NASA employee come into our classroom. Mr. B was amazing! He took everything about the MMS mission and broke it down into kid language, I even benefitted from this! He made everything "make sense" and my kids praised his comedic abilities! They still talk about how funny he was! At this point, we had about 7 hours until LAUNCH TIME! In fact, lets talk about this NASA....a launch at 10:44 is not good on a school night! We did learn that the time was strategically planned based off of the Earth's orbit. After Mr. B left, each student made a replica of one of the satellites to take home to share with their families and tell them NASA told them to stay up late :)
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Chapter 4 - 3..2..1...TAKE OFF!
Woah! The launch was crazy! Maybe it was because of the personal connection to the mission, but I felt PROUD. It was exciting to see the space craft start to fire up and take off; the space craft had multiple camera views attached, so it could be viewed from different angles. It was also exciting to see Troy Cline give an interview right before the launch knowing he was live chatting with the class hours before. He is very, very knowledge and great at his job....he truly cares about education and is a positive role model for my students. A lot of them were introduced to new careers through this process and have come up with additional inquires that we've been able to research during WIN time.
Chapter 5- The Party Isn't OverOur awesome IU 12 invited us back to participate in a post-launch event! The Mission: "Today, you will engage in the scientific process through a focus on inquiry, exploration, analysis, and reporting in a digital environment". First, we received updated information on the status of the space craft. BIG SHOUTOUT to Jared Mader and Ann Johnston who helped make this day possible and of course, Troy Cline, who also joined us! I don't think he sleeps, the man is always traveling, spreading the excitement of the mission! This time we focused more on solar storms and how we can identify them because that's truly what the mission is about. The students were given a bag of materials and they had to create a device to measure changes in Earth's magnetic field. Brainstorming power was in full affect! They used iPads to draw ideas and talk through what each material could be used for. Eventually they found out they were making magnetometers and by testing them each day to see if there is a change, we can predict if a solar storm is coming! Cool, right?! Another wonderful day and another take-away project to involve the rest of the class!
I'm still in disbelief about the entire learning process and the connections we've made and the experiences that students received that were outside of our four walls. True, genuine, real life learning. I'm very appreciative of this journey and the involvement of my kiddos - can't wait to see what happens next! |