Introduction

Moon, Mars, and ISS was designed to meet in full the 8th grade California Standards for Section 4: Earth in the Solar System. The curriculum consists of twenty 45-minute lesson plans. In the Meadowbrook implementation, instruction will be in 10 blocks of 90 minutes each. (Other combinations of single lessons and blocks will probably work equally well.) The standards are covered by a combination of lectures, experiments, and videos/DVDs. In the Specialties the students will develop a technical expertise that will be useful to planning a mission to the Moon, Mars, or the ISS. In Schedule and Handouts you will find lesson plans, lists of materials, and all the handouts required to carry out Moon, Mars, and ISS.

For the first 4 activities, the entire classroom will work together. Starting with Activity 5 the students will be divided into 3 groups according to destination. Each group will be working on a different Activity. One of the Activities will be teacher moderated and in the other two the students will be working independently. Moon, Mars, and ISS requires at least 4 computers in the classroom. Assuming a class or 36, a third of the class (12 students) will be working on the computers during the 4 Activities that are devoted to Specialties. This comes out to 3 students per computer. A larger number of computers is however preferable.

Moon, Mars, and ISS was designed to be educational, fun, and easy to deliver. It is presently being beta tested at Meadowbrook. Nu-Edu is also signing up schools and teachers for next year, assuming we get a Phase II contract. Please do contact us NOW, as a strong interest will increase the probability of getting funding. We can be reached at miriam@nu-edu.com.