Talk ** Write ** Learn
Asteroids
Templates, sample lessons and training/modeling available at
Objectives
Standards (copy here) / ObjectivesContent: CCSS/NGSS
NGSS: MS-ESS1-3 / Analyze and interpret data to determine scale properties of objects in the solar system. / Explore the conditions required, and the risks of asteroids hitting the Earth.
by
Language:
ELPS
ELPS 6-8.1 / construct meaning from oral presentations and literary and informational text through grade appropriate listening, reading, and viewing . . .: / Understand and discuss the risks of asteroids hitting the Earth.
Support your ideas with evidence from the text and video. As a team, provide at least two pieces of evidence for each question.
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Language:
RST.1
W.6-8.2 / Cite specific textual evidence to support analysis of science and technical texts
Write informative/explanatory texts to examine a
topic and convey ideas, concepts, and informationthrough the selection, organization, and analysisof relevant content. / Write a summary explaining the conditions and risks of asteroids hitting the Earth. Support your ideas with evidence from the text.
Input media: What will students read, see, do, hear to give them material for conversation?
Videos:
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Article: Asteroids or Us -- Bill Nye (adapted)
Asteroids
Name______Partner’s Name______
Asteroids and Us By Bill Nye | Published: February 15, 2013 – 4:00 pm
Support your ideas with evidence from the text. As a team, provide at least two pieces of evidence for each question.
1My oh my, wow… the 7,000-ton meteor over the Chelyabinsk region slammed into our atmosphere at 15,000 km per hour (33,000 miles an hour). Witnesses could see the flash of light 500 kilometers away. It was probably 15-meters (50 feet) across. When these things hit the atmosphere they just blow up. It’s not combustion, at least at first; it’s a rock slamming into something, air so hard, that it disintegrates. Its energy becomes a pressure wave, a shock. They form a shock wave turning the rock’s energy of motion into a wave of pressure and the energy of heat…in an instant. The pressure wave blasted windows and doors. The flying glass and falling building material injured over a thousand people— in an instant. The heat combined with atmospheric oxygen incinerated most of the rock— in a few moments.
1)Bill says “it’s not combustion, at least not at first”. So what’s happening when the meteor hits the atmosphere? / Partner A: One thing that’s happening is…Partner B: Another thing that’s happening is…
Write your response and what you might have learned from your partner:
2When I was in 2nd grade, our teacher, Mrs. McGonagle told us that the reason the ancient dinosaurs went extinct was that their brains were small. This enabled mice and rabbits to take all of the dinosaurs’ food, so the dinosaurs died out. To her credit, Mrs. McGonagle knew this theory waslame.
So, in my lifetime a much more plausible theory came to be, when geologists looking for oil around the Gulf of Mexico discovered an enormous sub-ocean ring of shocked rock. Scientists soon inferred that the ring is an impact crater. Geologistsrealized that there is a layer of the unusual element iridium buried at the same geologic depth all over the world. Iridium is atomic number 77. It’s heavy; its atomic mass is 192. So when the Earth was formed from molten rock, the iridium sank to the middle. To get iridium in a nice layer near the top of the Earth’s crust took an impactor— a hurtling asteroid with primordial iridium got its guts blasted worldwide. The ejecta were spread in a circle wider than the Earth’s diameter. Phew…
2)What does iridium have to do with a theory of how the dinosaurs went extinct? / Partner B: Iridium is usually found…Partner A: But when the meteor hit….
Write your response and what you might have learned from your partner:
3A feature of these impacts that I still find remarkable is that at the velocity these things are moving relative to the Earth, the atmosphere acts virtually like a solid. It’s akin to the stories I heard often as a kid. If you jump off a high bridge into water, you won’t fare very well, because at that speed, water acts like concrete. Yikes. The same was apparently true for the meteor and our air. The same will be true for the next one— unless we do something about it.
3)What does velocity have to do with how “hard” a surface acts when something hits it? / Partner A: When something moving at a high velocity hits…Partner B: One example of that is when…
Write your response and what you might have learned from your partner:
4The key to doing something is to find the asteroids. Astronomers use very sophisticated high-speed camerasto find asteroids.
Among our projects is a scheme to use a network of laser-bearing spacecraft to ablate or cook the surface of an asteroid so that we change its velocity just a little, a few millimeters per second. That way, it would cross the Earth’s orbit when we’re not there. Other ideas include a massive spacecraft with enough gravity to gently tug an asteroid off its course. Or, we could just smash into an object with a smasher rocket (a kinetic transfer vehicle). It’s the stuff of science fiction, but it’s real.
4)What are the three ideas for doing something about an earth-threatening asteroid? / Partner B: One idea is…Partner A: Another idea is…
Write your response and what you might have learned from your partner:
For students, use writing paper or electronic version. Apply CCSS writing standards for your grade level.
Bubble Map
What is the risk of a large asteroid hitting the earth?
What were the effects of the last large asteroid hitting the Earth?
What natural factors might reduce that risk?
What else can humans do to reduce the risk?
Name______Date______
Opinion:______
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______
Reason 1: / Reason 2: / Reason 3:
Evidence 1: / Evidence 1: / Evidence 1:
Evidence 2: / Evidence 2: / Evidence 2:
Opinion (restated):
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______
______
What LTELs Don’t Know Will Hurt Them
The Big Deal: Summarizing
David Irwin
Language Development Opportunities
Infour middle schools, all with low passage rates on the ELPA21 (the annual language test in Washington), we identified long term English learners (LTELs) as students who
1) had been receiving support from the state Transitional Bilingual Instructional Program (TBIP) sinceKindergarten
2) were still in the program in 7th or 8th grade, and
3) had not made progress on the ELPA21 in the last two years.
In reviewing theAchievement Level Descriptors(ALDs) from OSPI, the skill needed in every domain to move to Level 5 Advanced ("Proficient" on the ELPA) issummarizingin some form or other.
It goes by different names.
InReading: "determining central ideas or themes and how they are supported by specific details; summarizing key ideas in text;"
InWriting: "adding evidence and summarizing ideas; composing narrative and informational texts with relevant details about a variety of topics; constructing a claim, introducing the topic and providing compelling, ordered reasons to support the claim;"
InListening: "determining main idea or ideas and how each idea is supported with evidence;"
InSpeaking: "making predictions and drawing conclusions from a variety of sources;making a claim with simple, compound, and complex sentences."
We provided the staff with summarizing strategies and tools in every content area so that the LTELs (and all students) would be using them regularly throughout the day. Each LTEL was also shown his/her previous ELPA scores and was shown what summarizing looks & sounds like in a mini-lesson with examples.
Teacher use of the strategies is being tracked with Google forms. Student progress was checked with the school's winter interim assessment (STAR, MAP or iReady). At Henkle Middle School in White Salmon, the school with the highest strategy implementation rates, 55% of the LTELs exceeded their growth target on the winter iReady, putting them on track to also pass the Smarter Balanced Assessment (SBA) in the spring. Other schools with lower implementation rates have not yet shown such positive results, 25-29% exceeding growth targets. We expect better results in the spring interims assuming more teachers by then will implement the summarizing strategies.
Many organizers and frames are available on theLDO Resourcepage. Some of my favorites are:
Primary Expository
Persuasive writing: OREO
Expository: MIDM
Claim Evidence Reasoning(good fit for STEAM)
Academic Conversation frames(tents)
Kate Kinsellaalso has a wealth of resources in this area.
Big ideas. It's in the details!
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Language Development Opportunities LLC