Do you want to follow a space career?

Level of the students: Middle school

Material: paper, pencils, internet access (optional)

Cost: low 

Time: 5 hours

Brief description 

Students will familiarise themselves with space missions, and the opportunities and potential of careers in the space sector. Students will understand the benefts generated by space sciences and technologies. In addition, students will understand that studying sciences at school allows one to develop skills that are extremely valuable to pursue a space career. Students discover about the great relevance of space sciences in our everyday lives.

Goals

• To make connections between objects related to space and our everyday lives.
• To identify students’ interests and hopes for the future.
• To promote space careers as a motivation for learning and studying STEM (Science, Technology, Engineering and Maths) at school.
• To exploit the importance of skills that are relevant to follow space careers.
• To explore and to research about possible future space careers.
• To investigate space science topics and phenomena which relate to space careers.
• To identify the importance of space careers in our daily lives.

Learning objectives

Students will be able:

• To describe physical phenomena related to space;
• To recognize and describe some important objects related to space activities and their importance in our daily lives;
• To identify and explore skills that are important in the pursuit of a career related to space;
• To identify current and future space careers, and their importance to humankind;
• To fnd the science behind some space related jobs.

Evaluation 

• Check that all objectives are reached.
• Ask the student to identify some space careers.
• Ask the student to write a small essay describing a job related to space, indicating what are the required skills and its importance for humankind.