Wednesday, Thursday 27th, 2012
9:00am - 12:00pm
Space Center Houston
We received a great opportunity on Wednesday to spend the first half of our day at Space Center Houston, the interactive and 'touristy' part of Johnson Space Center. The building was amazing, and reminded me a lot of a science center. There was a lot of educational materials for everyone to explore, as well as models of space suits, the International Space Center, the solar system, and a space shuttle.
The play place also looked pretty amazing:
I won't spend too much time discussing the hour spent with the students, because we simply completed our Mission Patch and Space Glove lessons which I mentioned in the last post. During this time, we did learn that as a teacher, it is very important to be flexible with your plans and ready for everything. While we prepared our lesson for twenty 8, 9, and 10 year-olds, we ended up with about 7 four, five, or six year-olds. Luckily, this was an easier lesson to adapt, but it is important to remember that anything can go wrong.
For our professional development, we met with Elaine Lapka from NASA's Educator Resource Center (ERC). This center is run solely to provide educators all over the country with information and resources about the STEM (Science, Technology, Engineering, Mathematics) subjects. As a teacher, remember that there are free resources, such as this one, available to use in the classroom! Get out of the textbook! Use other means of providing information so that your students stay engaged.
Ms. Lapka spent much of the time going over NASA's ERC Website (http://www.nasa.gov/education/ercn). NASA's education website really is a great one to play around with, because they provide so many lesson plans for many subject areas that are easily accessible, align with standards, and are FREE!
One of the resources from the website that I found really interesting was something called NASA TV. NASA TV streams on the web for free and gives coverage of all major NASA events. In August, we have a landing on mars planned... what a great thing to watch with your class!!
One other thing Ms. Lapka mentioned was NEON - the NASA Educators Online Network. This is actually a Social Networking site designed just for teachers by NASA to keep them in the loop with changing information.
With each day, we are provided with more and more online resources that I never knew existed. It frightens me that I was about to go into teaching without knowing about these materials!! They seem endless and overwhelming, but I'm looking forward to beginning lesson planning so that I can use these resources appropriately.
For our professional development, we met with Elaine Lapka from NASA's Educator Resource Center (ERC). This center is run solely to provide educators all over the country with information and resources about the STEM (Science, Technology, Engineering, Mathematics) subjects. As a teacher, remember that there are free resources, such as this one, available to use in the classroom! Get out of the textbook! Use other means of providing information so that your students stay engaged.
Ms. Lapka spent much of the time going over NASA's ERC Website (http://www.nasa.gov/education/ercn). NASA's education website really is a great one to play around with, because they provide so many lesson plans for many subject areas that are easily accessible, align with standards, and are FREE!
One of the resources from the website that I found really interesting was something called NASA TV. NASA TV streams on the web for free and gives coverage of all major NASA events. In August, we have a landing on mars planned... what a great thing to watch with your class!!
One other thing Ms. Lapka mentioned was NEON - the NASA Educators Online Network. This is actually a Social Networking site designed just for teachers by NASA to keep them in the loop with changing information.
With each day, we are provided with more and more online resources that I never knew existed. It frightens me that I was about to go into teaching without knowing about these materials!! They seem endless and overwhelming, but I'm looking forward to beginning lesson planning so that I can use these resources appropriately.
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