Virtual tour of the International Space Station (ISS)

Photo by NASA on Unsplash

We took off for a literally out of this world experience this week, with a virtual tour to the International Space Station. This is an absolutely wonderful virtual tour to go on, which I have done several times now, and I highly recommend it as an exciting, memorable and educationally and linguistically rich experience.

The learners are always motivated and surprised to visit the space station, which would under normal circumstances take between 6 and 48 hours to reach. It flies at 17,500 miles an hour at a height of around 250 miles above the earth and has been continually occupied since 2000 by astronauts, who carry out research that is not possible to do on Earth.

The choice of activities in this tour is  especially designed to support learners who are taking the IELTS test or preparing for further academic study. Of course it would be of interest and relevant for general English learners too. The level required for understanding the videos and the reading is minimum B1.

The purpose of the lesson is the completion of an online graphic organizer, in the form of a KWL (know, want to know, learned) chart. The main activities to achieve this consist of watching a video, which describes the background information and includes a number of facts and figures, and answering a series of questions displayed on the whiteboard; listening to an astronaut talking about his daily life, after predicting his responses; navigating themselves around the cupola and travel module in a 360 degree virtual tour and finally understanding, selecting, summarizing and presenting information on their choice of topic from a set number of options.

We start off with a warmer to raise interest in the topic, by answering the question,’ Would you rather go into space or explore under the ocean? and why?’ Thankfully, there is usually majority support and enthusiasm for travelling into space and very little for underwater discovery!

The students are then given access to a shared Google Doc (See an example of my blank one below). Its extremely easy to create you own. Remember to number or name each table, so the individual learners know where to add their own information. Just share it with the learners (it can be done beforehand, to save time) and give them editing rights. This is an excellent way of being instantly able to see what everyone is writing, and you can also share it on the screen, so they can benefit from each others’ ideas if you want to look at it all together.

The learners are shown a picture of the International Space Station, and I elicit some basic information about what they think it is etc. Then they fill in ‘know’ and continue by discussing this and ‘want to know’ with their partner in a breakout room. We share the Doc. on the screen and have a look at the combined information that is known and what people want to know. The learners didn’t actually know a lot about this topic this week and the 'want to know' box was filled with things like, ‘ does it move ?’ ‘ What do they actually do?’ and ‘Can you see it from earth?’

 

The resource I use for this virtual tour is 20 Years on the ISS - Google Arts and  Culture  in collaboration with NASA.

In the first main activity, the learners practice the skill of listening for detail. They watch a video entitled, ‘A bridge above’ and answer questions which have been displayed on the screen for them to take a picture of. These questions test their ability to listen and differentiate numbers, facts and dates in rapid speech of an unfamiliar accent. The learners have practice in the exam skill of picking out the key words in the questions and thinking of possible synonyms of these and deciding what type of information is required, for example, number, date, person’s name etc. An example of the questions is:

Q1) Which two nations were involved at the beginning of the program? Synonyms are discussed for the underlined key words, and the type of information required being the names of two countries is established.

They complete these questions individually, and then unknown vocabulary is discussed in context.

The aim of the next activity is to give the students practice in the skill of prediction. It involves listening to an astronaut describing a typical day. The topics he speaks about are displayed on the whiteboard, along with several distractors, and there is a discussion in small groups of which ones he will speak about and what they think he will say on such topics as: sleep, moving around, restroom, drinking water. The students write the topics down and, as they hear them discussed by the astronaut, they tick them off and make notes about what is said.

After this there is a bit of light relief, as the students take turns at taking the controls and navigating us round the cupola and the travel module in a 360^o virtual tour. This is the most fascinating part of the whole experience, as you get to look down and see the earth and also to propel yourself through the travel module as if really there. It is absolutely fascinating.

For the final activity, the learners return to the main page on the website and are given the choice of reading one of the topics in the section,’ Research in Action’. They are able to chose from such interesting topics as, ‘How does the human body change in space?, ‘ How do plants grow in space?’ and ‘What is it like to go on a spacewalk?’. They each get to read a section, put the information into their own words to tell the whole group, along with giving us some new and interesting vocabulary. My group was small this time, but with a larger class, this whole activity could be done in individual small groups.

At the end, the learners are given some time to go back to complete the third column on their graphic organizers and quietly reflect on what their main learning had been. The use of graphic organizers provides a perfect opportunity for very useful student self-reflection. Then, with their original partners, they can talk about what they had written and compare what they had found most interesting.

This whole virtual tour provideas rich sources of material for both reading and listening, as well as a stimulus for extended speaking practice. There is always a lot of new and relevant vocabulary which the students are able to learn in context. This is a topic which can potentially crop up in all parts of the IELTS exam, as well as being an important topic for general knowledge. This is a tour which I cannot recommend highly enough, especially for its novelty value and the wow factor! The students this week could hardly believe that they were able to virtually visit such a fascinating place.