Curriculum Planning Chart 3

Generative Topic (Blythe et al, 1998): Space Race Concept*

("The student will understand")

Name: Sarah Kasama Facts

("The students will know")

Standard

Assessment
(How will you have evidence that they know it?)

Skills
("The students will be able to")

Problems to pose
("Guiding questions" or "unit questions")

Activities

(The big idea, the "enduring understanding" [Wiggins, 1998]; a broad way of making sense of the world, or a life lesson)

PA D.O.E. 3.4.7.D Identify and articulate space program efforts to investigate possibilities of living in space and on other planets.

Discuss the next phase of space exploration and the variables that must be considered (Be able to describe the space programs current efforts and recent discoveries). Identify characteristics (features that permit sustainable life forms) of a habitable planet and create their own planet based on these characteristics.

What conditions are necessary for human life. What NASA is considering as next steps to space. Recently discovered potentially habitable planets, such as Kepler 22B, Gliese 581g, GJ 667Cc.

Hold a discussion about the possibility of living on other planets. Question the steps that would be required for our civilization to live in space/transfer to another planet. Build a model or draw an illustration of their own planet. Write a narrative about their planet, citing evidence.

What is the future of space exploration? Are there other habitable planets?

Create planet and write narrative. Class discussion of living on other planets, extraterrestrial life, and what we should be searching for next.

Students will understand the future of space exploration and the space program.