Sky Heroes

This lesson plan is a way to allow for creative thinking in a classroom.  The student's are able to design a constellaton in honor of a non-fiction hero.  The materials are readily available in most classrooms or art rooms.  The instructions are easy to read and follow. This activity can be a stand alone science lesson or could be used as a cross curriculuar activity with writing, social studies, or Black History Month.  The students follow easy to read direction to design and create constellations based on non-fiction real life heros.  The materials could be easily modified with items that you have on hand.

Weblink address (URL): 
Sky Heroes

Standards & Objectives

Learning objectives: 

This is an activity that serves several purposes:

  • it teachese students that the constellation patterns and storiese we now use are the products of particular cultures and times
  • it gets students thinking abouthow arbitrary these patterns and stories are
  • it helps students think through their own values about heroes
  • it allows students to talk with one another in small groups about a topics (whom they admire) they may not usually discuss
  • it helps them develop story telling and sriting skills

Lesson Variations

Blooms taxonomy level: 
Applying
Extension suggestions: 
  • You can assign each student or group to research one of the actual 88 constellations and write a report on the legend associated with their star pattern. For a more advanced class, ask them to lit some nice astrnomical objects in their constellation and then observe them with the Seeing in the Dark Internet Telescope.
  • You can ask each student or group to write a report with more information on the hero they have selected and then present their finding to the class.
  • You can do a variant on the activity where groups now get to nominate a favorite hero from fiction (you need to decide if the hero has to be from a novel only, or if you will allow comic books, movies, or television shows to be part of the hero pool.)
  • Another possibility is to let students (especially younger ones) invent their own hero and to create a story to gowith him or her. The story can be realistic or ca be fantastic, like some of the ancient sky tales. Then they need to invent a nice star pattern that fits with the hero.
  • The thing to notice in all these activities is that it's often hard to agree. Once people come up with their favorite hero, they don't want to give it up for someone else's. The same was true for the constellation stories of the world's cultures. It was sometimes hard to give up the sky stories people grew up with and accept one unifrom set of constellations for the whole world.

References

Contributors: 
Jennifer Hassell
Originator: 
Ayers Institute for Learning & Innovation