Details
| Type of Product: | SciGuide |
| Average Rating: | 
based on 5 reviews |
| Publication Date: | 8/1/2007 |
| Grade Level: | Middle School |
Description
SciGuides are a collection of thematically aligned lesson plans, simulations, and web-based resources for teachers to use with their students centered on standards-aligned science concepts.
NASA has a vision and goal of returning humans to the moon for long-duration missions by the year 2020, how will they do it? Humans have not ventured to the moon since the Apollo missions from 1969–1972 and those were brief excursions. 30 years later, new technologies and applications have been developed that will make lunar living a reality. Why not incorporate this new and exciting adventure into your study of life, physical, and Earth science in a motivating way? Pique your students’ natural curiosity by using space science as your “hook.”
As NASA designs and develops habitats and life support systems for their lunar missions, they will be focusing on the task of having an “Earth like” environment on the moon that contains food, shelter, water, and air for all living things. Scientists and engineers at NASA’s Johnson Space Center have already begun “to make living on the moon a reality.” Beginning with a lunar landing “mock-up” that has a crew cabin with a small galley, waste collection area, sleep area, storage compartments, and even medical supplies, they are designing “mini” space habitats to support life in space for up to seven days. Living in space requires attention to health and fitness, food production and waste management, sources of power, transportation, and communication, and social adaptations that space ecosystems will depend upon.
Teaching about ecosystems, habitats, and health through space science helps students to see the real-life application of their studies, transfer their knowledge to other situations, and wonder about the future. Isn’t this what we all want to accomplish when we design our curriculum around the teaching standards? The web resources in this SciGuide will help students learn core science content in a fun, meaningful context. Using what they know about life on Earth, they will make predictions and inferences about the success of human life in space. Now that’s engaging!
This web guide offers a variety of resources for you and your students, all of which have been evaluated and rated by master teachers across the country in an effort to make your task of incorporating technology into the classroom easier. Looking for life science lesson plans about ecosystems, populations, interdependence, microorganisms, and more? You will find them in this guide along with interactive simulations, images, hands-on investigations, and content background. NASA strives to provide teachers with standards-based, inquiry lessons and this SciGuide is an example of their efforts.
Ideas For Use
A Science Guide is a valuable classroom resource for science teachers interested in integrating the web into their teaching. Each guide consists of approximately 100 web-accessible resources (URLs) that have been aligned to the National Science Education Standards (NSES) and vetted across eight educational rubrics, such as Inquiry, Interactivity, Communication/ Collaboration, How Scientists Learn, etc. These URL resources have been assembled in a thematic drill-down structure with linked lesson plans, vignettes, samples of student work and MP3 files that demonstrate how the Guide’s URLs can be utilized in a classroom. Ultimately, a Science Guide is a resource that saves educators time by providing exemplary web resources that have been pre-evaluated and aligned to the National Science Education Standards.
Additional Info
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Science Discipline:
(mouse over for full classification)
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Competition
Food web
Population dynamics
Populations
Predation
Symbiosis
Environmental change
Nutrition
Physical fitness
Disease
Space technology
Plants
Fungi
Bacteria
Behavior
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| Intended User Role: | Learner, Middle-Level Educator, New Teacher, Professional Development Provider, Teacher |
| Educational Issues: | Achievement, Assessment of students, Careers, Curriculum, Inquiry learning, Instructional materials, Integrating technology, Learning theory, Teacher content knowledge, Teacher preparation, Teaching strategies |
Technical
| Resource Format: | application/msword, application/pdf, application/x-shockwave-flash, audio/mp3, image/gif, image/jpeg, text/html, video/quicktime |
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National Standards Correlation
This resource has 26 correlations with the National Standards.
[HIDE CORRELATIONS]
- Life Science
- Structure and function in living systems
- Living systems at all levels of organization demonstrate the complementary nature of structure and function (5-8)
- Important levels of organization for structure and function include cells, organs, tissues, organ systems, whole organisms, and ecosystems (5-8)
- Disease is a breakdown in structures or functions of an organism. Some diseases are the result of intrinsic failures of the system. Others are the result of damage by infection by other organisms. (5-8)
- Regulation and behavior
- All organisms must be able to obtain and use resources, grow, reproduce, and maintain stable internal conditions while living in a constantly changing external environment. (5-8)
- Regulation of an organism's internal environment involves sensing the internal environment and changing physiological activities to keep conditions within the range required to survive (homeostasis). (5-8)
- Populations and ecosystems
- A population consists of all individuals of a species that occur together at a given place and time. (5-8)
- All populations living together and the physical factors with which they interact compose an ecosystem. (5-8)
- Populations of organisms can be categorized by the function they serve in an ecosystem. (5-8)
- Plants and some micro-organisms are producers--they make their own food. (5-8)
- All animals, including humans, are consumers, which obtain food by eating other organisms. (5-8)
- Decomposers, primarily bacteria and fungi, are consumers that use waste materials and dead organisms for food. (5-8)
- Food webs identify the relationships among producers, consumers, and decomposers in an ecosystem. (5-8)
- The number of organisms an ecosystem can support depends on the resources available and abiotic factors, such as quantity of light and water, range of temperatures, and soil composition.
- Given adequate biotic and abiotic resources and no disease or predators, populations (including humans) increase at rapid rates. (5-8)
- Lack of resources and other factors, such as predation and climate, limit the growth of populations in specific niches in the ecosystem. (5-8)
- Interdependence of organisms
- Organisms both cooperate and compete in ecosystems. (9-12)
- The interrelationships and interdependencies of these organisms may generate ecosystems that are stable for hundreds or thousands of years. (9-12)
- Increasingly, humans modify ecosystems as a result of population growth, technology, and consumption. (9-12)
- Science in Personal and Social Perspectives
- Personal health
- Understandings include how communicable diseases, such as colds, are transmitted and some of the body's defense mechanisms that prevent or overcome illness.
- Nutrition is essential to health.
- Students should understand how the body uses food and how various foods contribute to health.
- Regular exercise is important to the maintenance and improvement of health. (5-8)
- Maintaining environmental health involves establishing or monitoring quality standards related to use of soil, water, and air.
- Changes in environments
- Environments are the space, conditions, and factors that affect an individual's and a population's ability to survive and their quality of life.
- Personal and community health
- Many diseases can be prevented, controlled, or cured. (9-12)
- Process Standards for Professional Development
- Design
- Introduce teachers to scientific literature, media, and technological resources that expand their science knowledge and their ability to access further knowledge. (NSES)
Customer Reviews
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Dwarf Plants for Indoor Gardens |
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Reviewed by: James Johnson (Custer City, PA) on December 15, 2012 |
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I like this resource and will use the dwarf plants in my classroom. I'm still reading through this but really like it so far! |
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Living and Working in Space: Habitat |
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Reviewed by: James Johnson (Custer City, PA) on December 7, 2012 |
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I really like this resource. I haven't completed reading it and following all the links but it is very rich in materials and activities. I'm looking forward to reading more. |
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SSEP participants have to get this guide! |
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Reviewed by: Tabitha Booth on November 5, 2012 |
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In the Student Spaceflight Experiments Program (SSEP), students write experiment proposals to be conducted on board the International Space Station (ISS). This guide provides a multitude of resources to get students' scientific minds thinking about space and helps to guide them in developing interesting and worthwhile experiments. This guide is so extensive, it took days to navigate through all the different links and I was able to do different sections with different classes so that student groups didn't come up with similar ideas, so be prepared to devote some time both in and outside of the classroom. For more information on SSEP visit http://ssep.ncesse.org. |
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Field Trip to the Moon |
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Reviewed by: Erin on April 29, 2012 |
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NASA's Field Trip to the Moon program is inspiring. Students solve and develop on plan to land and build a sustainable habitat on the moon. Students will find solutions to such problems as the lack of oxygen and water, the need to produce food, and medical needs. Students will be wrapped up in this hypothetical situation and incorporate their book knowledge to create a plan. This program requires real life skills of negotiation, team work, brainstorming, experimenting and presenting. I look forward to building this program into my curriculum map next year. |
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My Review of Living and Working in Space: Habitat |
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Reviewed by: Ronaldo Relador (Bowie, MD) on January 17, 2012 |
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NASA's researches are so updated to apply scientific revisions and experimental realities. Currently, the continuous search for other celestial bodies that can be inhabited is among its greatest endeavors. This sci-guide provides these development in science so that the classroom educator and leaners are kept abreast of what's happening in the space. This is linking biological and environmental precepts to current space science advancements. |
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