Solar System Project

It's March, which means my English classes are wrapping up for the school year. At the end of the 3rd semester, I have my kids do a "final project". I select an interesting, yet arguably non-practical topic, have the kids do a bit of research, then make them give a presentation on it in English. In the past, I've done bugs and dinosaurs, this year I went with the solar system.

What kid doesn't like space? Last week I taught them the names of the planets. This week, they selected a "home planet" and did research (in English) on it.

I first gave them a blank fact sheet and had them make notes in Japanese as to the meaning of each line. Then I gave them a piece of paper with data on it that looked like this:

(data taken from nssdc.gsfc.nasa.gov)

The goal was to fill in the appropriate data onto their fact sheet, then draw a picture. It turned into something like this:



The Japanese characters under the drawing describes the Roman deity. So in the case of Venus, this girl wrote "The Goddess of Love, Beauty, and Harvest". Yes, I am an English teacher who also teaches Science and Humanities!

The key to this lesson was the presentation. I had to give out the worksheets and give step-by-step instructions in a way that they wouldn't freak out on me. I think I succeeded because even my "slower" kids were able to complete the lesson.

The class I did today has 18 students, and I gave free reign in the choosing of their own planet. I think what deity each planet represented had a huge influence. Here are the stats:

Mercury - 1 boy, 1 girl
Venus - 8 girls
Jupiter - 3 boys
Saturn - 2 boys
Uranus - 1 boy
Neptune - 1 boy, 1 girl

Nice to see some originality coming from the boys. Not so much with the girls. I did a similar project when I was in 5th grade and I went with Neptune. Why? Because my favorite color was blue.

Next week for the final lesson, each kid will stand in front of the class and give an alien self-introduction along with some facts on their "home planet". For example, if the student's name is "Ryuta", he will reverse his name to create an "alien name". Then he will say things like:

"My name is Taryu."
"I'm from Uranus." (cue immature laughter)
"Uranus is a gas planet."
"Uranus has 27 moons."

I still have to come up with a list of things for them to say, though. I'll work on that next week.