Mission To...

The best thing about grade nine science is getting to teach about space exploration. I have always been fascinated by space and the possibilities of space travel. I grew up watching Star Wars, Alien and all the Star Trek TV series. Currently I am waiting for Virgin Galactic to have a seat sale so I can purchase a ticket to go to space.

Over the last two months my grade nines have been learning about space exploration and have been developing a mission to visit an object in our solar system. Throughout the unit students have been working in pairs developing pages for a website they created using Google Sites. They also had to create an advertisement for a position on their team and write a letter to a Canadian astronaut inviting them on the mission, which was to be included on their site. The final part of this project is for students to write a report that describes whether or not they would volunteer to participate in the mission. The report is written by each student and is the only part of the project that will be assessed for a grade. Students also completed a self and peer assessment.

Student Sample - Mission to Io

What worked well:

• My school division uses Google Apps for Education so my students could use their school accounts to log in to Google Sites. It took students awhile to get accustomed to the Sites layout and structure, but once they did they could create the content very easily.
• I liked that this project spanned the entire unit. We would learn about a topic in class and then students would take that information and apply it to their mission.
• We did not do a lot of work from the textbook, which is one of my goals to reduce tedious work in class. Students would demonstrate their knowledge through the content they added to their website. I could view their pages and add comments to provide feedback.
• I was able to work with ELA teachers so that students could do some of the writing in ELA. The business letter they wrote to an astronaut fit perfectly with what they had just learned in ELA.

What I will improve for next time:

• Collaborate more with ELA teachers so that the writing assignments are also a part of their ELA class.
• Although I was able to provide feedback through comments on the site pages there were some students who did not read the comments or ignored them. Feedback is a very important part of student engagement so I need to ensure that I also follow up after the feedback has been given. I think that it would also be good to sit down and discuss the students' mission and site information with them, rather than rely on them reading it.

When we return to school after the Christmas break we will attempt to send the invitation letters to the astronauts. I am looking forward to getting some replies.