7. Improve a Space Glove

• Set up materials stations
• Invite people to Share-Out

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

21st Century Skills

• Creativity

Habits of Mind

• Make evidence based decisions
• Persist and learn from failure

Learners Will Do

• Use test results to redesign space gloves so they are more effective.

Learners Will Know

• Engineers think about, change, and improve their designs.

Connecting Across Adventures

• Adventure 6: Create a Space Glove: Last time, learners planned, created, and tested gloves to protect against space hazards.
• Adventure 7: Improve a Space Glove: Today, learners improve their space gloves and test them again.
• Adventure 8: Preparing for the Engineering Share-Out: Next time, learners will prepare to communicate their ideas about designing space gloves in the Engineering Share-Out.

Level Up! (Optional)

• Refer to the Engineering Design Process (PDF) poster. Ask: What phases of the Engineering Design Process did you use today? (The Improve cycle. We improved our space gloves by creating and testing new plans.) (5 min.)

• If you can, show and then discuss the NASA video clip Spacesuits for the Next Explorers (Full feature) (12:00), which discusses improvements needed to spacesuits for exploring planets. (15 min.)

• NASA is constantly modifying and improving equipment, sometimes even after it’s been launched! Check out this article about how astronauts fixed and improved the Hubble Space Telescope while it was orbiting Earth: “Missions to Hubble – NASA Science” (5 min.)

• Ask these story prompts: Can you tell me a story about something you built that didn’t work as well as you wanted it to? What did you do to improve it? Tell learners, if anyone asks what they did today, they can tell them “We tested and improved our astronaut glove,” and then ask them the above story prompts. Consider returning to learners’ ideas at the start of the next adventure. (5 min.)