From: mkennedy@head.globalcom.net (Marilyn Kennedy)
Subject: And the excitement builds .....
Date: Mon, 21 Apr 1997 20:12:35 -0400
Dear LFMers,
Bringing more prospective teachers into the PTK fold by hook or crook.....
Live from Mars
and Live from John Wayland,Ottobine,and Lacey Spring
The countdown till Thursday has started! Not only will our John Wayland
students be "Cruising Between the Planets" but they will be joined by 4th
and 5th grade students in two other local county schools. Because PTK is
too good to miss, one of my missions was to get other local teachers
involved.
This week my students have taken over the art room at John wayland and
turned it into a Marscape for our Thrusday guests. Students from Lacey
Spring and Ottobine will arrive early Thursday morning, and we will begin
the day with special get acquainted activities and space snacks!! My
center will be a great hands-on Mars activity: mapping the patterns of lava
flows produced by multiple eruptions. This was one of the cool activities I
picked up from NSTA. Another teacher is doing contour mapping using a Mars
terrain created from Crayola Modeling Clay (great new product). The third
teacher is doing an activity (once again discovered at NSTA) "Life on Mars"
where students investigate "soil samples" looking for signs of life--with a
jar with yeast, another jar with powdered Alka-seltzer, and the third with
sugar.
After this we have our "InterPlanetary Picnic" and if the weather
cooperates we will also map out the solar system in our back fields. If not
we will have computer stations set up with software.
Then it's ready for the broadcast at 1:00. Following the broadcast, we will
have some wrap up for the day.
This will be the first of our three cooperative sessions---From here it's
on to our next coopreative activity, the Mars Rovers. Using moneys from a
local grant and the Aerospace Foundation, the students from the three
schools are creating their own rovers with lego dacta to drive over their
Marscape using our Mac computers.
And finally in May as part of our John Wayland Imagination Fair, there will
be a special Mars Night inviting parents and friends from the three schools
to join the students in all their Mars activities.
Marilyn K. Wall
here in the Shenandoah Valley
among some very excited 4th graders