Saturn Educator Guide

Successfully launched at 4:43 EDT on the morning of October 15, 1997, NASA's Cassini Mission to Saturn, is the most ambitious deep space mission ever. The Saturn Educator Guide enables this extraordinary mission to become a real-world motivational context for learning standards-based science in grades 5-8.

On this page:

Introduction to the Guide
Overview of Contents
Lesson Descriptions
Download instructions

Introduction

The Saturn Educator Guide (originally named the Cassini Teacher Guide) has been funded by the Jet Propulsion Laboratory and the Space Science Institute. Other partners include the Boulder Valley School District, and McREL, the Mid-continent Regional Educational Laboratory. The Guide is the product of a collaborative venture among scientists, engineers, teachers and education researchers. We have attempted to synthesize the cutting edge of science with the cutting edge of educational research and practicality of use in the classroom. The lessons are grounded in the National Science Education Standards and constructivist learning theory, as well as exalted in the excitement of real life space science and engineering.

For more information on the guide, you can read the Letter to Educators from the preface. For more information on the Guide's development team, click here.

Click on image for more.

Overview of Guide Contents

Lessons
Six standards-based, constructivist lessons.
Enrichments
Relevant connections to art, poetry and mythology.
Appendices:
- Questions and Answers: 101 questions posed as students would ask them
- Glossary: Over 90 well-defined technical terms
- Chart of Saturn's position in the sky over the course of the Cassini mission
- Electromagnetic Spectrum
- Educator Resources: References to books, WWW-sites, videos, CD-ROMS

Lesson Descriptions

Estimated Time (varies by grade)	Lesson Title	Science Content Standards Addressed Connections to State Standards	Lesson Description
3 hrs	1) The Saturn System	Unifying Concepts & Processes -- Systems, Order and Organization Earth & Space Science -- Earth in the Solar System	Students learn the basic concept of a system and work with a scale model of the Saturn system. Math skills: using a scale model, measurement, computation, estimation, and number sense.
3 hrs	2) Saturn's Moons	Unifying Concepts & Processes -- Systems, Order and Organization Science as Inquiry -- Abilities Necessary to do Scientific Inquiry Earth & Space Science -- Earth in the Solar System	Students use data on the 18 moons known to be orbiting in the Saturn system to discover patterns and important relationships between physical quantities in a planet-moon system. Math skills: number sense, controlling variables, recognizing patterns, and measurement.
3 - 4 hrs	3) Moons, Rings and Relationships	Science as Inquiry -- Abilities Necessary to do Scientific Inquiry Physical Science -- Motions and Forces Earth & Space Science -- Earth in the Solar System	Students explore the fundamental force of gravity and how it acts to keep objects like moons and ring particles in orbit. Math skills: measurement, number relationships, recognizing patterns, creating and interpreting graphs,
3 hrs	4) History of Saturn Discoveries	History & Nature of Science -- Science as a Human Endeavor -- History of Science Science & Technology -- Understandings about Science and Technology	Students examine how scientists throughout human history have learned about Saturn. They learn how scientific knowledge evolves and how technology has improved our ability to solve Saturn's mysteries. Math skills: number sense, measurement and scaling (creating a timeline).
3 - 4 hrs	5) The Cassini Robot	Unifying Concepts & Processes -- Form and Function Science & Technology -- Abilities of Technological Design	Students explore the capabilities of a robot like the Cassini spacecraft. They compare its robotic functions to human functions.
1.5 - 2 hrs	6) People of the Cassini Team	History & Nature of Science -- Science as a Human Endeavor Science in Personal & Social Perspectives -- Science and Technology in Society	Students use a diverse collection of profiles of people who work on the Cassini mission to learn about science as a human endeavor, and to reflect on their own career goals.

Downloading the Guide You will need version 4.0 or better of the free Adobe Acrobat reader to view these files
We've made available here a lower resolution version of the Guide which is somewhat smaller (50% smaller, on average) than the full resolution Guide. The text and diagrams are unaffected by this compression, but photographs and similar images are lower resolution. To download the full-resolution Guide, visit the JPL download site.
Front Matter
	Title Page, Table of Contents, Preface, Acknowledgments	512 KB
Lessons Getting to Know Saturn
	Lesson 1: The Saturn System	1.2 MB
	Lesson 2: Saturn's Moons	651 KB
	Alternative version of Lesson 2	319 KB
	Lesson 3: Moons, Rings, and Relationships	900 KB
	Lesson 4: History of Saturn Discoveries	605 KB
	Lesson 5: The Cassini Robot	829 KB
	Lesson 6: People of the Cassini Team	1.2 MB
Enrichments Cultral Connections - Art, Language, Mythology
	Searching for Saturn	925 KB
	Saturn Puzzles	388 KB
	Saturn Poetry	182KB
Appendices
	Questions & Answers	2.3 MB
	Glossary	145 KB
	Observing Saturn in the Sky	253 KB
	The Electromagnetic Spectrum	91 KB
	Resources	150 KB

The complete Saturn Educator Guide in one ZIP file		9.8 MB

Explore More!

For more information on the Cassini mission, visit the Cassini Web site. For more information and images of Saturn, check out JPL's Cassini Picture Archive. For some ready-to-use classroom demos and activities, see Mary Urquhart's Scale Model Saturn for grades 4-8 and her Titan in a Fish Tank for grades 3-8.

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