Are you a primary school teacher in Scotland looking for an author-led classroom visit that’s a little bit different? Do you want a workshop that will combine reading comprehension, practical demonstrations and out-door learning?
If so, then this might just be the classroom visit you are looking for! For more information, read on, and to enquire about booking a class visit, or if you need any additional information, simply fill in the contact form below.
Based around the soon-to-be published factual children’s book titled Draw Your Own Encyclopaedia Space Exploration by Colin M. Drysdale, these classroom visits are best suited to children in Primary Two to Primary Six (although they can be successfully done for children as young as Primary One and as old as Primary Seven).
Lasting approximately one hour (depending on the time slot available), and costing £50 for each class visited (plus the cost of travelling to the school), these classroom visits start by introducing students to space exploration, its history and what the future might hold for it. This will include both practical and interactive elements, including a demonstration of how rocket engines work, a discussion of what we would need to do to establish a colony on Mars, and discussion of how they could become real-life space explorers.
The visits are led by Dr Colin M. Drysdale (the author of Draw Your Own Encyclopaedia Space Exploration), who has spent over twenty years working as a research scientist.
Note: If you wish, we can also provide copies of Draw Your Own Encyclopaedia Space Exploration for each student in the class at a 50% reduction on the RRP. This means that each copy would cost £3.74, rather than the usual £6.99. This allows these interactive books to be used in follow-up activities to help develop and embed the knowledge the students have gained during the visit itself.
Contact Form
If you would like to book a class visit, or if you would like any further information, simply fill in the contact form below using the subject Space Exploration Book Classroom Visit Enquiry and we will get back to you as soon as possible. Alternatively, you can email us directly at info[at]pictishbeastpublications.com.
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Additional Information About What Usually Happens During These Class Visits
An author-led classroom visit based around Draw Your Own Encyclopaedia Space Exploration involves working with an individual class. The visit starts with the students being introduced to the book itself and the subject it covers, and they are then taken through a series of activities based around information from this book, including:
- Introducing the children to key moments in space exploration, such as the first person in space, the first person to land on the moon and the various probes and robotic rovers that have been used to explore our solar system, and beyond.
- Introducing the children to rocket engines and how they work. This will include a practical demonstration of how a rocket engine produces enough power to blast a spacecraft into space, and also a short series of practical experiments that explore how to design a rocket using plastic water bottles (this part of the session needs to be done outside).
- Discussing what humans would need to do to establish a colony on Mars. This would include how long it would take to get there, what sort of shelters we would need to build, where we could get oxygen to breathe and water to drink from, how we could get power and how we could grow food. This incorporates information about the need for sustainable living and recycling, which are also becoming increasingly important for living on Earth.
- Discussing whether we could ever travel to another star system, what we would need to be able to do this, and how long it would take (which is about 24,000 years!).
- Discussing what they would need to do if they wanted to become space explorers when they are grown up.
- Introducing the children to how we can learn about other solar systems without visiting them (using things like the Hubble Space Telescope, and how they can become real-life space explorers by taking part in citizen science projects.
A suggested follow-up activity is for the teacher to re-visit the facts that the students learned during the visit, and ask them to design a Martian colony, either by drawing it or creating a model, and then label all the different parts with the fuctions they have (like generating power, growing food, and so on).
All the equipment required to conduct all these activities is provided.