 |
|
| ||
|
|
|
|
|
| |||||
Poe teamed up with English teacher Jon Kern to develop the unit that asks students to read a fictional work for information. Students at Fletcher Middle School in Jacksonville Beach, Florida, begin by reading Verne's 1865 book at home or in class. For example, students read the character Barbicane's statement, "It is perhaps reserved for us to be the Columbuses of that unknown world. If you understand my plan and do everything in your power to carry it out, I will lead you in the conquest of the Moon..." Then Poe plays the segment of the NOVA program where John F. Kennedy says, "I believe that this nation should commit itself to achieving the goal, before this decade is out, of landing a man on the Moon and returning him safely to the Earth." Class discussions focus on both literary interpretation and scientific content. As students start to make sense of the real and the fiction, they use the John Fitzgerald Kennedy Library and Museum Web site to listen to Kennedy's full speech at www.jfklibrary.org/j052561.htm. This serves as a springboard for making flipbooks to animate lunar phases or looking at maps of physical features on the lunar surface. In another example, the book characters send a letter to an observatory asking for information about the Moon. This leads to a class study of the Moon with activities illustrating how craters formed, studying the Apollo landing sites, and comparing Earth's rocks with lunar rocks. Students view the segment of the NOVA program in which geologist Jack Schmitt visits the Moon on Apollo 17. In a third example, students discuss the fictional characters' plan for supplies needed on their journey and view the segment from the NOVA program on Apollo 13. This leads to a class discussion about survival needs in space. Students design and build a biome in a 2-liter bottle to support two living organisms over their 10-day spring break. Poe, who has been teaching for 31 years, says students are often surprised at the similarities between the fictional 1865 work and the history of the U.S. space program. Poe has anecdotal information that this interdisciplinary work is leading to a greater interest in reading (for example, students are checking out more books) and the district emphasis is leading to improved reading scores.
For more information about Poe's project, you can e-mail
her at: skyteachr@aol.com
—Kristina Ransick
|
|
|||||||
| ||||||||
