Collaboration Between Teachers on a Team

Middle school science teachers have a hard time engaging English teachers with a joint research project. This article outlines a positive collaboration between team members of the same stud... See More

Middle school science teachers have a hard time engaging English teachers with a joint research project. This article outlines a positive collaboration between team members of the same students. In short, student teams write scientific propos¬als for using the 2001 Mars Odyssey orbiter through NASA’s Mars Student Imaging Project (MSIP). All aspects of this collaboration between teachers are described in the article and include a timeline utilized after state testing. This seems like a good way to get students to do research during what if often called dead time in the school year.

Interdisciplinary Research Paper

Students in middle school form teams to engage in a 12 week interdisciplinary project that combines science and language arts through a research paper about a trip to Mars. Each phase (week... See More

Students in middle school form teams to engage in a 12 week interdisciplinary project that combines science and language arts through a research paper about a trip to Mars. Each phase (week) of this journey is outlined in Figure 1 in the article. Each team was composed of a Principal Investigator, Archivist, Publicist, and Bibliographer. The archivist produced blog posting as to the progress of the team. Resources provided in the article were essential for the final product. This is an interesting approach to combining language art skills and science. Twelve weeks might present a challenge to covering curricula unrelated to this topic.