April 25, 2019: GMS Annual Star Party (take 3)

The weather has finally cooperated with our desires to host our annual Evening with the Stars.  Approximately 50 people, not including the Southern Maine Astronomers, gathered at Twin Brooks with many telescopes to view the night sky.  With spacey music playing in the background (think Coldplay, Niki Minaj, Bonnie Tyler, and Train), we took a tour across the sky guided by the Southern Maine Astronomers and their handy dandy laser pointer!

Students were amazed at the detail that the high powered telescopes provided.  Different objects that we viewed included:

• Orion 
• The Beehive cluster
• Cassiopeia
• Gemini
• Cancer
• Ursa Major
• Big Dipper
• Little Dipper
• Betelgeuse
• Sirius
• Arcturus
• North Star - Polaris (which is not the brightest star)

The night vision camera app caught the students looking up at the perfectly clear night sky! 

April 23, 2019: Exploring Mars Features

Today I Am:

• Exploring and annotating an image of Mars
• Identifying features on Mars.

So That I Can:

• Determining the relative ages of features on Mars.
• Begin to identify ideas for a research project about Mars.

I Will Know I Got It When:
I have a picture of my annotated document with 4-6 features identified, and page 3 is completed in the group document.

Plan for the Day:
FOCUS QUESTION: What are some of the features found on Mars?

1. Sit in your groups - gather markers and Mars image.
2. Analyze your image using MSIP Resources - feature chart --> in Classroom
3. Annotate your image (add words, questions, etc...)
4. Take a photo
5. Start your homework --- (paper sheet)

Reflection:
Today was a short day as students spent the first hour and 45 minutes taking the iReady reading test. They needed an opportunity to get up move and talk to each other and this lesson was just that! I found some student dove right in to looking for features - many found the MSIP guide very helpful. There were two camps of kids - those that used the guide and then looked at the image to find features and those that found features then used the guide to figure out the names.

All students were successful in finding at least 4 different features; dating the features was a bit more difficult as the only tool for relative dating that we have is the Law of Superposition and some features were not layered. Overall though, the activity was successful. Students have a quick homework identifying crater types and completing some relative dating.