|
|
Student rendering of Saturn
|
Developed in partnership with the Cassini-Huygens Education and Public Outreach Program, the Bay Area Writing Project/California Writing Project, Foundations in Reading Through Science & Technology (FIRST), and the Caltech Pre-College Science Initiative (CAPSI), and classroom educators, "Reading, Writing, and Rings" blends the excitement of space exploration with reading and writing.
All materials are teacher developed, aligned with national science and language education standards, and are available free of charge from the Cassini-Huygens website.
Materials are divided into 2 grade level units. One unit is designed for students in grades 1 and 2 while the other unit focuses on students in grades 3 and 4. Each includes a series of lessons that take students on a path of exploration of Saturn using reading and writing prompts.
|
|
Student rendering of Saturn
|
Tips for navigating, "Reading, Writing, and Rings"
Rationale
Scientific discovery is the impetus for the K-4 Education program, "Reading, Writing, and Rings." But uniquely, the focus is to engage elementary students in reading and writing to strengthen these basic academic skills through scientific content. As science has been increasingly overtaken by the language arts in elementary classrooms, the Cassini Education Program has taken advantage of a new cross-disciplinary approach to use language arts as a vehicle for increasing scientific content in the classroom. By utilizing the planet Saturn and the Cassini-Huygens mission as a model in both primary reading and writing students in these grade levels, young students can explore science material while at the same time learning these basic academic skills.
