Introduction
This unit is dedicated to 6 years old children to understand that they live on planet Earth and that there are 8 planets in total.
by the end of this Unit, children would understand the following Outcome:
1. Identifying the planet we live on. is Earth and it is part of the Solar System
2. Naming the eight planets in the solar system and identifying which are in the Inner Solar System and which are in the Outer solar system.
3. Identifying that Mercury Venus Earth and Mars are in the Inner Solar System and have solid rocky surface. And are closer to the Sun
4. Understanding that Jupiter, Saturn, Uranus and neptune are in the outer System. And are made of Gas Giants.
Task
Teacher parepares a project - based - learning activity to promote a deep understanding of the solar system, whereby each student takes an acting role of an astronaut and in a discussion based learning, the astronauts will be divided in 8 groups. Each group consisting of 3 students. The project based learning activity intervenes when the students take the rocket to visit a planet from the solar system.
Each group will use their imagination and scientific facts from the solar system in order to describe the planet features.
Process
1. Teacher plays a song about the solar system to introduce the topic. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BZ-qLUIj_A0
2. Teacher promotes a discusssion based learning to deepen children´s understanding of the inner and outer solar system.
3. Children take acting roles of astronauts.
4. In groups, the astronauts go to visit different planets from the solar system and come back to Earth to report to other groups of astronauts what they have seen.
Evaluation
Regarding assessment, we believe that as it is a group project, it would be fair to be assesed by the rest of the classmates. However, it would be based on the teacher observation.
In order to reach that, the teacher would provide a rubric for each student focusing on the steps they need to achieve to ensure that they have acquired the new content.
Conclusion
Astronauts who visited planets in the inner solar system reported that they landed safely on the planet. They reported that these planets were closer to the sun and that they were very solid and made of rock.
Also, students who landed on Mars, noticed the same as the previous groups except that Mars is more red.
Whereas astronauts who took the rocket to visit planets in the outer system reported that they could not land because these planets are Gas giants, therefore they just went around them to explore.
All in all, through this project we verify that the "learning by doing" process is essential if we want our students acquire the new content. Not only we are developing their cognitive skills but also the creative and communication skills are also included.