English Language Arts
Read Aloud
Title: Curiosity: The Story of a Mars Rover
Opening Move / Book Introduction: Today we are going to read Curiosity: The Story of a Mars Rover.
View the read aloud
here
This story takes us through the journey scientists went through to explore Mars--from deciding to send a rover, building and actually sending it, and what the rover does.
But what is really interesting is this story is told from the point of view of the rover. As we read, think about why the author chose that point of view.
Now, this book has a lot of cool facts in the captions. While you listen, pause the video and take a moment to read those to yourself.
Okay, let’s get started --- Curiosity: The Story of a Mars Rover, by Markus Motum.
Stopping Point #1: (on the page about cleaning the rover clean)
What is the main idea of this page?
Stopping Point #2:(on the page about the rover landing)
How do the words and illustrations on this page help you understand what is going on?
Stopping Point #3: (last page of the story, before the facts page)
Why did the author tell this story from the perspective of the rover, instead of one of the scientists or an outside narrator? How does it help the story?
Writing about Reading related to the read aloud text:
Use your Writers Notebook to complete the prompts below. Add the book title as your header and the date. If your teacher uses Google Classroom, you may begin typing your responses in a new document.
You can complete one of the prompts below or both:
This story had a lot of new words in it. Find a couple that you weren’t sure about and see if you can figure out what they mean. You can use the words and pictures from the story, or look up the definitions in a dictionary. After you figure out what each word means, write your own sentence that includes the word.
The pictures in this story were important to understanding the information the author wanted readers to understand. Choose one of the pages in the book and write a paragraph explaining how the words and images work together to help you understand. Think about why those specific illustrations were chosen for that page. How would your understanding change if no images/different images were used?
Math & Science
Science
Optional activity: Design and Build a Rover!
https://www.jpl.nasa.gov/edu/learn/project/make-a-cardboard-rover/
Tasks:
Create a Mars rover that can navigate difficult terrain out of simple materials. Find out what you can do to modify your rover to make it more effective. Change terrain to extend your thinking and challenge.
Needed Materials:
One 6-inch square of firm cardboard (for the body)
Two 5-inch pieces of firm cardboard (for the wheels)
One round pencil
Two rubber bands
Two Lifesaver type candies (or find something else that might work!)
One straw
Ruler (there might be one in your assignment book)
Tape
Scissors
If you can’t build a rover at home, check out the Curiosity on NASA’s site and try to drive it yourself!
https://eyes.nasa.gov/curiosity/
Math:
Convert Measurements
Standard:
5.MD.1: Convert among different-sized standard measurement units within a given measurement system.
Task:
For the measurements in the story, convert them to different units. Here are some of the measurements, can you find any more?
Miles ? ? Feet Kilometers ? ? Meters Days ? ? Months
350,000,000 miles 61 meters 253 days
200 feet 560,000,000 kilometers
107 feet 33 meters
60 feet 3 kilometers
5,280 feet = 1 mile
1,000 meters = 1 kilometer