Joanie Clarkson
This is an awesome video for students to take a virtual field trip to NASA. The video does a great job of explaining what NASA is and why they do what they do. They also give really great history of NASA and space exploration. You also give a great view of several of the exhibits. The video has quiz-like questions at the bottom of the screen. These could easily be made into a knowledge check for students to do either during the video, or after.
After watching this video, students could write about their favorite part of the virtual field trip or what type of job they would want if they worked at NASA. For example, would they want to be an astronaut and go to space, or a person in mission control that helps the astronauts safely from Earth, or maybe they would like to work on and invent the equipment or rockets that go to space.
You could also do stations for this virtual field trip. One station could be the video. The second station could be a writing station for the activity above. The third station could be a mini-lesson on the phases of the moon or other space-themed activities. The fourth station could be a silent reading station with books about NASA or space. I recommend using the library to provide several books for students to choose from. Lastly, you could have a station where students could create a piece of art. My favorite space-themed art project is simply black construction paper and crayons and colored pencils that show up on black paper (i.e. white and neon colors.) Each station can take 12-15 minutes based on the length of the video.
Studies Weekly, Teaching K-12, Core Content, Social Studies, History, Science, Documentary