Lunar and Meteorite Disk Certification Educator Workshop
An education specialist from Armstrong Flight Research Center provided a four hour workshop at the AERO Institute in Palmdale, California. Twenty-seven regional teachers and one teacher from New York participated in a professional development workshop. The workshop featured Lunar Disks with moon rock and soil samples brought back from the historic Apollo missions encapsulated in clear lucite. Teachers engaged in hands-on standards based activities while learning about accretion, differentiation, cratering and volcanism. With the Lunar and Meteorite Disk Certification, educators can request to borrow the Lunar or Meteorite disk, for use within their classroom. Equipped with activities, students will have access to view and explore these small portions of these “extraterrestrial” materials. Quotes from Teachers: • Geoffrey Langbehn from Summerwind Elementary School remarked that “Even though the purpose of the workshop was the certification for lunar rocks and meteorites, the workshop provided activities that are relevant to sixth grade science. Specifically, the Lava Layering activity fits nicely with ‘Shaping Earth’s Surface’ in the sixth grade science curriculum as does the Impact Craters activity. I look forward to implementing both with my students.” • “I am excited to show my students that the elements we study in class are throughout the universe, and here are actual fragments of extraterrestrial rocks with the same elements,” stated Joe Vanasco from Walter O’Connell High School. “Then we can explore percent composition and compare that to earth rocks.”