Voyage
to
Mars
Research Tasks
The Process
The Process
The process you will follow consists of three main parts:
A) Prepare for your Voyage to Mars mission by conducting a pre-mission activities, and deliver a report before a "congressional committee." Includes a written report OR a poster OR a PowerPoint presentation.
B) Participate in the Voyage to Mars mission at your local Challenger Learning Center.
C) Prepare for a "press conference" by conducting post-mission activities, and participate in that press conference. Includes team and individual reflections.
Before you begin to prepare for your Voyage to Mars mission, make certain that you clearly understand the goals, procedures, and research questions, and review the scoring rubrics for scoring your written work, congressional presentation, and team participation. The step-by-step process that you will follow is given below:
Step 1: Find out about your mission goal, research questions, and procedures by reviewing this WebQuests pages through the hyperlinks at the left.
Step 2: Apply for and work with teacher to assemble Mission Teams
Step 3: Review the rules of Participation
Step 4: Conduct Pre-Mission Activities
- Whole group activities
- Team activities
- Classroom connections as directed by your teacher
Step 5: Prepare for Congressional hearing.
- It is recommended that each member of your group take on the responsibility for researching qeustions on the Research Tasks page. Once everyone is finished with their individualized research, your group should talk with one another about research findings.
- Each member of your group should research his or her assignment using the Resources page and find the answers to the assigned questions. By no means, however, limit yourself to only the questions listed. If something catches your eye as interesting that you were not aware of before, make note of it. After doing your research, you should be able to answer your grade level's research questions and the ones that come before it at the very least.
- Prepare a short outline of your findings for your other group members in order to inform them of your research results. Make sure to keep track of resource references used for your research as well as the use of any important quotations found throughout your research.
- Once every member has finished the appropriate research and your entire team is knowledgeable about the correct response to each question, produce one of the following for the Congressional hearing: a brochure, a poster, or a PowerPoint presentation. These will be used in your presentation before the Congressional committee.
- See the Assessment page in order to determine what should be included with the brochure, poster, and PowerPoint presentation. Please note that the brochure, poster, and Powerpoint must include a "Works Cited" or "References" section that describes all references (e.g., books, pdf files, web pages, etc.) used in the research and preparation of the presentation findings.
Step 6: Conduct the Congressional hearing.
Step 7: Complete the Mission Voyage to Mars at your local Challenger Learning Center
Step 8: Conduct Post-Mission Activities
- Whole group activities
- Team activities
Step 9: Prepare for and conduct a press conference
- Following your Voyage to Mars mission, each team will be required to make a 5-minute oral presentation at a press conference. Your team will prepare a presentation communicating your findings about such things as “the next mission,” “impressions,” “discoveries,” and “future careers.”
- In order to know what will be looked for in the presentation, check the Assessment page.
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Support for program number HST-ED-90285.01-A was provided by NASA through a grant from the Space Telescope Science Institute, which is operated by the Association of Universities for Research in Astronomy, Incorporated, under NASA contract NAS5-26555. Copyright (c) 2007 Challenger Learning Center at Prairie Aviation Museum and Challenger Learning Center of Northwest Indiana. Staff of Challenger Learning Centers and instructors of classes involved with Challenger Learning Center missions may reproduce this WebQuest guide for classroom and educational purposes. Otherwise this work may not be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transcribed, in any form or by means – electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise – without the prior written permission of the copyright owners. This page is based upon the WebQuest model. |