Science in the News

ThingLink

Science is all around us! I logged onto NewsELA, which is a wonderful website that has a compilation of so many articles on different topics and can be customized for different reading levels. Using this website, I was able to find tons of articles having to do with science. I focused on astronomy and compiled a collection of about ten articles that I thought were relevant and interesting. I took those ten articles and put them into a thinglink to make a scrap book. All of the articles I chose were very current and recently in the news. I thought this was a great type to choose because these discoveries are relevant to our lives right at this moment! For example, I found a few articles about scientists learning about life on other planets! The thinglink I created was fun and easy. This is a great tool that students can easily use in the classroom. Next, I took all the articles and created a timeline about when these articles were written. To create the timeline, I used tikitoki. This was an excellent tool and the final product is amazing! It is a little bit more confusing and hard to navigate, but in the end it is completely worth it to use it! Students can have the prompt to research articles and create a scrapbook, then put them into a timeline, just like I did. Then to take it a step further, they can pick one article that interests them, and continue to investigate this article. Depending on the grade level a research project or paper can even be incorporated to make sure students are grasping the topic they chose. 

TikiToki T

One article that I found particularly intriguing was about scientist possibly finding a new world past Pluto. This planet is part of our solar system and scientists are thrilled that they may be so close to a new discovery. Another article I found to be great was a new, nonexplosive source of black holes. Usually black holes form from the violent death of a star but with this new discovery a computer says that at least one black hole may have been formed from collapsing gas cloud. This is so interesting because this is such a new and interesting discovery that could lead to so many more discoveries about black holes. A third article that I thought was worthy to discuss is that astronomers found planets that they think could support human life. Obviously, they are no where near actually being able to make a final decision as to whether it is one hundred percent possible, but they are on their way and one step closer. 

This has helped me to realize how science is all around us all the time. This would be a great assignment for students so they can realize this as well.