With all of the buzz about Mars and the new rover, Curiosity, teachers will be looking for ways to use this "real world" event in their classrooms. Here are a few ideas - do them all as a writing-science unit or just one!
When my students were studying the planets, we produced a class book that tied together much of what we'd learned in Science along with writing and Language Arts. You might want to focus just on Mars and do something similar. In our book students had submitted three different pieces of writing. The first was a factual short report on the planet that they had chosen. Since we were doing all nine planets, there was some variety, but if you are focusing on Mars, each child will need to research just that planet.
The second piece was a fantasy creative writing piece on an imaginary trip to their planets. Of course, the "science" had to be factual - for example, if the planet's day was only 10 hours long, they couldn't "fantasize" that it was 24 hours. But what they saw and who they met on the planet could be completely creative. Their stories were great!
The third piece was a letter each student wrote to me from their planet. This was a factual letter describing what an actual visit to the planet would be like.
We bound all of the pieces together into a book, and each student got their own copy. It was a great project and one that everyone really enjoyed. If you class is "into" Mars, you might consider doing something similar.
In the meanwhile - enjoy the Mars show. I'm sure we're due for more spectacular images from our neighboring plant!
Copyright 2012 Irene Taylor.All rights reserved.
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