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Science In The News

We created a Science In The News project this month. At home each student had to research at least 10 articles/videos about science in the news. I decided to use the website Newsela.com in order to find my research articles. I knew that for the week we would be focusing on Space Science, so my articles that I found revolved around Space Articles. Newsela is a great website because it is easy to use and provides many great resources for various different topics in current events. I created a glogster to display the articles that I found and the links to each. I chose each of these articles because I wanted to cover a range of topics related to astronomy and current events. In class we are learning about space science, so doing this project was a great way to learn how to help our students learn about current science events happening in the news! The glogster includes a fun space design and clipart that pertains to the topic. Here is the link to my glogster.

Each article was very interesting to learn about. I love reading about current events because they are changes and advancements that are occurring in our everyday lives and they can greatly affect our present and future! An important aspect of learning about space and the new discoveries is through research of current articles and also through watching the news. I created a glogster to display the links of the various articles I read about astronomical changes in space science. My articles discuss the different planets, different astronomers, and different events that have occurred recently. I think it would be great for students to look through articles in class and discover more information and current events through Newsela. Each student could create a glogster, just like we did!

The next class we were engaged in an inquiry lesson by Dr. Smirnova. On eclass was a Class powerpoint that included the different planets and some galaxies. Each student had to access the powerpoint and pick a planet to research. I picked Earth as my planet! Here is the link to the classes slideshow! It was interesting to learn so many details and facts about the planet we live on, Earth! I did not know that only 14% of species on Earth have been discovered and identified. My powerpoint slides included brief, but important facts about Earth. Below are pictures of my slides! 

After completing our slides in the powerpoint, we had to work in groups to create a type of wordart. The various websites we used to do this were: Worlde, Tagul, Tagcrowd, ABCya, wordart and Tagxedo. My group decided to use Tagul to create a word cloud including a list of important words from all of our articles combined. This was a great tool to use becuase it allowed us to insert all of our words and design them into any shape with any colors we wanted. A word cloud is a great to tool to use for pre-assessing students knowledge. You can ask your students if they recognize any of the words or identify any of them.

After creating out word cloud we moved onto creating a timeline of specific events complied from the articles that we chose as a group. To create this timeline we used timetoast. This was another great tool that was simple and easy to use! We were able to insert different events with pictures and captions. In this timeline we included events such as: Kepler observing a supernova, Galileo observing the moon, and a more recent event, which was a group of university students found a cluster in space so unique that it has no name. Here is the link to the timeline that we created as a group! I hope you enjoy it!

Overall, I enjoyed this project and really wish that we had more time to complete it. I feel that most groups felt their wasn't enough time, but if there was we could have created much more visibly interesting presentations and projects. However, I think that we all did a great job. This project was good because it allowed us to experiment with even more technological tools that can be used in the classroom to engage students in learning. In addition, it gave us students a chance to experience an inquiry lesson ourselves. I liked learning about current events and I definitely think that they should be incorporated into a classroom environment because they are events that are happening right now in the world we live in and they can interest many students in reading and learning about science (or any subject). Overall, I enjoyed learning about the advancements that are being made in space science currently and in making these projects and working with my classmates!