Our focus this week was our moon and the planets. We watched some video's about the moon's phases. Then we did an activity with styrofoam and flashlights in the darkness of our windowless classroom. It was so cool to be able to see the different phases! Next, we learned about the Algonquian names for the full moons of each month, or moonth. ;) We drew the phases of the moon in our lesson books. Then I showed them a 2 minute clip of the bathroom scene in Hidden Figures. In this scene, Katherine Johnson is expressing her anger to her boss and all the clueless white males at NASA about how difficult it is for her to find a bathroom to use due to segregation. It was nice to place space exploration into the context of the Civil Rights Movement happening at the same time. I highly recommend watching this movie!
Everyone is in the process of creating a travel brochure for one of the planets. I gave them a research guide with questions, my expectations for the project and some books and let them research on their own. I was impressed by the initiative they took on this project. They were really enjoying themselves. I let each student plug their age into a page on Exploratorium's website that let us know our age on every planet. They loved this!
