< Space Hazards

Full Educator Guides

How to Teach These Units

Take a little time to prepare and get ready to teach. The pages linked below give you an easy-to-follow checklist and resources that get you prepared for facilitating PLANETS activities.

1. Safety Stories – Engineering

Learners share experiences with, and stories about, making hazards safer.

Guiding Question

Why is it important to make hazards safer?

Adventure Downloads

Adventure Timing

10 MIN. Get Ready & Team Up

25 MIN. Storytelling

10 MIN. Reflect

45 MIN. TOTAL

Setup: Prep Time 30 min.

  • Set up a Materials Table

*See Materials & Preparation in the Educator Guide linked above for full info.

21st Century Skills

  • Communication

Habits of Mind

  • Communicate effectively

Learners Will Do

  • Share a story or experience about a time they made a hazard safer in their home, town, or school.

Learners Will Know

  • Humans can make choices to make hazards safer.

Connecting Across Adventures

  • Ready, S.E.T., Go!: Last time, learners explored space trash. As scientists, they observed the energy of space trash impacts. As engineers, they designed ways to protect against those impacts.
  • Adventure 1: Sharing Experiences: Today, learners share experiences with and stories about making hazards safer.
  • Adventure 2: Exploring Glove Uses: Next time, learners do simple tasks wearing different gloves and compare results. Then they learn how spacesuit gloves protect astronauts from space hazards.

Level Up! (Optional)

Refer to the Engineering Design Process poster (PDF). Ask: What phases of the Engineering Design Process did you use today? (The ASK phase. We asked why it is important to make hazards safer.) (5 min.)

Check out some great examples of the more than 2,000 NASA spin-off technologies that enrich our lives–and keep us safe–thanks to space exploration. (5 min.)

Tell learners, if anyone asks them what they did today, they can tell them “We shared stories about why it is important to make hazards safer.” (5 min.)