Resource Kit: Group Focus and Curriculum Standards

Our group was assigned the academic subject of science to complete our Instructional Materials Project.  During the first few days of our topic, we brainstormed topics such as dinosaurs, fossils, the rain forest, and the solar system.  Everyone came to the conclusion that our main focus should be on the “solar system” for grades 3-4 after each group member researched various curriculum standards.  We originally planned to implement our project in grades K-2 but quickly decided the “solar system” would be too complicated for this age group.
 

After deciding the focus of our group project, we researched the science curriculum standards a second time.  We narrowed our search down only to grades 3-4.  Our group found the following curriculum standards that students would meet if they completed our   Instructional Materials Project.

National Standards
Earth and Space Science

· As a result of their activities in grades K-4, all students should develop an understanding of properties of earth materials, objects in the sky, and changes in earth and sky. (Content Standard D)

Science and Technology

· As a result of activities in grades K-4, all students should develop abilities of technological design, understanding about science and technology, and abilities to distinguish between natural objects and objects made by humans. (Content Standard E)

Tennessee Standards
Process of Science

· To enable students to demonstrate the processes of science by posing questions and investigating phenomena through language, methods, and instruments of science. (K-12 Science Goal 1)
 

Unifying Concepts of Science

· To enable students to acquire scientific knowledge by applying concepts, theories, principles, and laws from life/environmental, physical, earth/space sciences.  (K-12 Science Goal 2)

Habits of Mind

· To enable students to demonstrate ways of thinking and acting inherent in the practice of science; and to exhibit an awareness of the historical and cultural contributions to the enterprise of science. ( K-12 Science Goal 3)

Science in Society

· To enable students to demonstrate positive attitudes toward science in solving problems and making personal decisions about issues affecting the individual, society, and the environment. (K-12 Science Goal 4)
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Instructional Materials

Our solar system consists of an average star called the Sun, the planets Mercury, Venus, Earth, Mars, Jupiter, Saturn, Uranus, Neptune, and Pluto.  The solar system also includes the satellites of planets, numerous comets, asteroids, meteoroids, and the interplanetary medium.
 

 The Sun is the richest source of electromagnetic energy in the solar system.  The Sun's nearest known stellar neighbor is a red dwarf star called Proxim Centauri.  The whole solar system, together with the local stars visible on a clear night, orbits the center of our home galaxy, The Milky Way.

The Milky Way is a spiral disk of 200 billion stars.  It has two small galaxies orbiting it nearby, which are visible from the southern hemisphere. They are called the Large Magellnic Cloud and the Small Magellnic Cloud.  The nearest large galaxy is the Andromeda Galaxy.  It is a spiral galaxy like the Milky Way but is four times as massive and is two million light year away!!  Our galaxy is one of billions of galaxies known.

Most of the planets revolve around the Sun in the same direction, in almost circular orbits.  When looking down from above the Suns north pole, the planets orbit in a counter-clockwise direction.  The planets orbit the Sun in or near the same plane, called the ecliptic. Pluto is a special case in that its orbit is the most highly inclined and the most highly elliptical of all the planets.  Because of this, for part of its orbit, Pluto is closer to the Sun than is Neptune.  The axis of rotation for most of the planets is nearly perpendicular to the ecliptic.  The exceptions are Uranus and Pluto, which are tipped on their sides.

Group Biographical Information

Name:  Lori Moses
Rank:  sophomore
Major:  Liberal Studies
Contribution:  Lori came up with thirteen resources to put in the resource kit.  However she noticed that a lot of her sources were repeats so she picked the best seven resources.  She typed an evaluation of each one that included the type of resource, the content it held, the purpose of the site and whom it was geared for.  Her resources were then added to the resource kit.  Lori also put forth effort in creating the web page for our resource kit, which was the teacher created source.  She came up with the idea and supplied the graphics and the links.  Lori was also in charge of typing up the focus of our resource kit.  Return to top of page

Name:  Lauren Pierce
Rank:  sophomore
Major:  Liberal Studies
Contribution:  Lauren found thirteen different resources also to put into the resource kit.  She narrowed it down to the best seven and typed up a description of each site.  The description included the name, type of site, information it covered and the age group it was to attend to.  Lauren helped on creating the power point presentation.  She created most of the slides and pulled images off the Internet.  Lauren was also responsible for writing up the group bio.  The group bio is to show the effort each group member put forth in finishing the resource kit and preparing for the final presentation.  Return to top of page

Name: Laura Smith
Rank:  sophomore
Major:  Liberal Studies
Contribution:  Laura located thirteen sources from the Internet to put in our resource kit.  Then she chose the best seven out of the thirteen and proceeded to write descriptions of each.  The descriptions were there to notify a user of the content of the site and how informative it really is.  Laura also took part in creating the web page; she contributed the broad information.  A list had to be created of the content standards our group wanted to meet during the project.  Laura had the job of compiling the standards we used as our focus.  Return to top of page

Name: Sherry Trimble
Rank:  sophomore
Major:  Liberal Studies
Contribution:  Sherry gathered thirteen informative resources to use in the resource kit.  However there were repeated resources and she then narrowed them down to the best seven.  She then wrote descriptions about each of the sites that evaluate the site and reveal how informative it would be to the user.  Sherry also took part in creating the power point presentation.  She contributed a few pages and wrote up the affects and custom animation. Return to top of page