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Collection of Teaching Resources

Teaching Resource: Let's go into orbit - The quest to conquer Earth’s space junk problem

Subject taught
- Math
- Physics
- Technology

Link
https://www.nature.com/articles/d41586-018-06170-1

Type of Product
- Articles

Language Skills Developed
- Interaction
- Listening
- Reading
- Speaking
- Writing

Transferable/Scientific Skills Developed
To develop critical thought to be able to see the positive and negative consequences of scientific findings and technological applications.

Description
• The general aims are to develop the observation skills and to stimulate the interest of the students in current problems. They must learn to study: to organize their learning, identifying, choosing and using various sources and information. To acquire and to interpret this information in a critical way to form their own opinions. To estimate the scientific credibility of the source and to discern the difference between facts and opinions. To communicate and to understand different languages (daily, technical, literary, scientific) and to use them in different contexts. • The linguistic aims are to teach students a correct scientific language. They will have to read or to watch and to understand a scientific article or video. They will have to use a correct language when they have to explain a scientific topic. • The specific aims are to know different types of satellites and where they orbit, to understand how they work and how they are helping us the our daily life. • The target group age is 16 /18 • Level of competence in English is B1/B2. • The time required to use the resources with the students is two hours. • The first hour is used to read the article, to watch the videos inside it and to open a discussion with the students to understand how much they know about this big problem. Then the teacher splits the students into groups and gives each of them to look up additional resources as homework: one group must find scientific articles about space junk, the other must find about hints and opinions of scientists or other people to solve the problem of the overpopulation of zombie satellites. They must choose which resource they want to share and must present it in the next lesson. The second hour is used to look at and to comment on the new resources. This is the most delicate phase because the students must express their opinion. The first group presents the problem and the other group answers with their opinions. The lesson is carried out by the students as in a debate with the teacher as a moderator. • The students usually have no problem, and they are very passionate about this problem.

Related Video Lessons

Let's go in to orbit!