OVERVIEW

3º ESO students celebrated the World Space Week by creating a poster that represents the link between… electricity on Earth and Space!

Moreover, they experimented what static electricity is and they shared knowledge with younger students. 

Keep reading to discover what is the project about!

The poster

The poster will cover all the alphabet. Each student will be focused on one letter.

The space terms have been taken from the NASA’s picture dictionary 

Each student has been assigned a letter. I created a guide in which each student appears together to the word on which he/she had to focus on. In order to make the activity easier,  the file includes the fun fact question, which is the central focus and a short explanation about the relation between the space word assigned and electricity on Earth. Moreover, some links to websites are also include to make the guide the research . I found necessary to create this guide because, on the one hand, they have to do the task in a foreign language for them, English (technology subject is included in the bilingual program) and, on the other hand, it is not easy to find the link between some of the NASA concepts and electricity unit. 

But, WHAT do students have to do? HOW? WHEN? Here are the instructions

And…why electricity? Because it is the unit we are studying during this term. That way we learn about space, about an international event and we are able to unite it with electricity on Earth

Included in this project, we also learnt that electricity is not only related to electrical devices, to wires, to volts or power. We also learnt that apart from electric current there is another type of electricity: static electricity. We learnt about this topic though Flipped Classroom and doing experiments in the workshop (see post)

Sharing science

Moreover we joined 5º EPO students in the technology workshop to learn about those topics. We divided the class into 7 groups. They performed the static electricity experiments and talk about this topic. Younger students learnt from them and 3º ESO students also learnt from the youngest! (the feedback was very interesting!). See photos on this post


Both subjects are included in the bilingual program that is the reason why English was the main language used. 

The 2018 World Space Week theme is “Space Unites The World”, focused on how space brings the world together. By means of this activity, we unite with space through electricity on Earth! In order to focus on how space brings the world together.

I found interesting to celebrate with students this event, so I tried to find a link between the unit we were studying, the official curriculum and the space. The result…PLUGGED INTO SPACE.

PROJECT GOALS and JUSTIFICATION

As said before, this project unites electricity on Earth and Space to celebrate the World Space Week. It is an interdisciplinary activity; 3º ESO students almost the whole task and then they share knowledge with younger students. By doing this activity we try to:

• emphasise the importance of STEM education in school
• motivate students to choose a STEM career in the future
• motivate students to be interested in STEM facts
• connect the official curriculum to real life and STEM
• raise awareness about the opportunities and facts that are around STEM 
• raise awareness about international events (WSW in this case) 

And, why submit to 'Diversity in STEM Competition', resources category?

Because this project is a learning resource, a lesson plan and all the material can be used by other STEM teachers. 

Moreover, it is based on a STEM topic, it has a pedagogical value and all the steps to develop the activity are described and set before starting the activity, some parts are inspired on STEM Allliance repository, it is composed of several activities that I think are attractive for students and all the activities and results, in cronological order, are collected using different methods and technology and all of them are finally join in this blog to make easier to other teachers and other interested people to find or reproduce the whole activity or a part of it. 

STEM ALLIANCE REPOSITORY

These are the STEM ALLIANCE resouces on which I was inspired on, students were motivated and also they used to developed their task. 

• DiscoverE - Cool Contents and Activities: DiscoverE, supported by Shell and IBM, offers a series of 'Cool content and activities' to engage students in engineering. 

I was inspired on the video Greetings from the International Space Station as an introduction to motivate students

• Texas Instruments – STEM behind NASA - mISSion imaginaTIon A webpage from Texas Instruments listing a variety of resources developed in collaboration with NASA to help teach through TI products. 

I used challenge 4 to know more about astronaut suits and also the video fuel for fire. That way, students realized that rockets use fuel (fuel is also a source to generate electricity) and it contributes to atmosphere pollution (space junk).  

• It’s All About Energy!  

I was inspired on part 1, It's all about electricity, ther first 2 sections Why electricity? and Generanting electricity 

POSTERS

CLICK ON THE SYMBOL THAT IS ON RIGHT CORNER AT THE TOP TO OPEN THE PADLET

ASSESSMENT

I used rubrics for assessment. Before start researching and designing the poster, the rubric was given to students.

It helps them not only to organize ideas but also to create the task according to requirements. 

Once the poster is finished, before handing it in to me, they have to check the rubric again and calculate the mark the deserve (self-assessment).

Download the rubric here

STATIC ELECTRICITY

Included in this project, we also learnt that electricity is not only related to electrical devices, to wires, to volts or power. 

We also learnt that apart from electric current there is another type of electricity: static electricity.

Activities:

1st: FLIPPED CLASSROOM. Watch a Video using Edpuzzle
I created a series of questions that students had to answer using the tool Edpuzzle. I picked a youtube video (6 Static Electricity Balloon Experiments You can do at home Easy Kid Science - STEM) and customized it in the platform. This is available here

2nd: EXPERIMENTS Students perfomed the experiments in the workshop. By doing the experiments, they had to fill in the worksheet I gave to him. 

Worksheet to download 

Some pics

Worksheets done by students

  

SHARING SCIENCE

Photos taken during the interdisciplinary activity.
 3º ESO students perform static electricity experiments to 5º EPO students (five years younger) and explain to them why things happen and what electricity is . They also talk about the posters and younger students share with them their knowlege. Believe or not,  kids astonished older students! (see feedback)  knowledge. 

FEEDBACK

EXTRA ACTIVITY

Students visit the blog, check their classmates posters, assess them and do a wordsearch to become familiar with all the words. 


Wordsearch to review all the words. This wordsearch was done using https://www.flippity.net/ and this is the template