Pre-Reading Activities for Article on Space Junk

[Randall Sadler]

Here you'll find "pre-reading" ideas associated with this article from Space.com:  http://www.space.com/24900-europe-space-junk-clean-up.html

In the Reading section of the forum, you can also find During Reading and Post-Reading ideas for this article.

[jkotnarowski]

The chart on p. 109 of Hudson has some good suggestions for pre-, during and post-reading activities. I tried to come up with a couple of activities that have students access prior knowledge, ask questions that require students to make inferences about the title and get them to skim for a specific reason.

Pre-Reading Questions[/u]
-Take a look at the article title. What do you think the article will be about? Why?
-What do you know about this problem?
-Where could you go to find out more information about this issue?

Pre-Reading
Now, skim the article. Are there any words you're unfamiliar with? If so, make a list. Discuss these words with a partner to try and discover their meaning(s).

[eunicenam]

Schema Activation and Making Predictions
1. Show students the picture from the article without the text.   

2. Ask students to get into pairs and discuss the following questions:
- What are the things you can see in the picture? Explain what you think they are.
- What do you think is happening in the picture? Why is it dark?
3. As a class, share what they think this picture is describing on the board.
    If students have any words, like space, universe, junk, trash, waste,
    the teacher can use those words to introduce the concept of “space junk.”

[helstro2]

Pre-reading Prediction/Schema activity:


Read the title of the article and look at the associated pictures (and their captions).  Discuss your answers to the following questions with a partner:


1)  What do you think the article will be about?
2)  Do you think it is important to "clean up space junk"?  Why or why not?
3)  The article title says "Europe Explores Ideas to Clean Up Space Junk".  Do you think other countries should participate?  Why or why not?

[ctseng]

Warm-up Discussion
1. Show the picture of the distribution of space junk and ask students what the dots are.

2. Divide students in groups and ask students to discuss the following questions: 
a) Why is space junk a problem? Why are people concerned about it?
b) How many pieces of space junk are there? Make a good guess!


Vocabulary Pre-teaching
Students will be given a list of cleaning tools/techniques mentioned in the article and an array of the pictures of the tools/techniques. In groups, students will work together to match the right tool/technique with the right picture. The tools/techniques include nets, harpoons, tentacles, slingshots, solar sails, lasers, electrical currents and air bursts.

[Sergei]

Tell the students to get into several groups of 2-3 people, and ask them to think reflect on the following questions:
 
--Do you ever read articles about Space? Do you know any problems associated with it?
--What do you know about space junk? Is it dangerous? Why?
--What do you think can be done to solve the space junk problem?   
 

[Kathy Dongyao]

Pre-reading activities:


1. the teacher shows the picture of the space junk from the article and introduces the term "space junk", asking the students what they know about space junk as a class.


2. have the students work in groups, each group will do a cubing activity, listing six aspects they can come up with regarding space junk.


3. have the students report their results, if "cleaning up" the space junk comes up in the reports, dig further into it.

[rkallister]

1. Do an activity that summarizes the students' knowledge of space junk.  This will determine how much they know about the topic before it is discussed.
2. Do an activity to compare garbage collection on the surface of the planet and see how that would relate to space.
3. Ask students to predict what they will see in the article.  Since the title is vague, this could lead to several different predictions.

[Geri Jieyu]

           Background information
  Warm-up discussion:
  What is space junk? What causes space junk?

Vocabulary List: List some words which are potentially difficult for students

[JiwoongHong]

Pre-reading activities!
1. After making students be in a small group and give some important vocabulary to students and then ask them to try to explain the vocabulary so that students can get familiar with the vocabulary which makes students think about topic!
2. Let students guess topic and background information.
3. Teacher introduces grammar points that could prevent students from reading the article.
EX)
-A new European proposal to get rid of space junk adds to a growing list of ideas to get rid of the manmade pollution (which is) currently orbiting the Earth.
-(Since the debris-hunting spacecraft is )called e.DeOrbit, the debris-hunting spacecraft would zoom to a polar altitude of between 500 and 620 miles...

[helen6952]

I like pre-reading activities that focus on activating the schema of the students so I would do activities like
1. Show them the picture from the article and ask them to describe what it looks like. Afterterwards, I will ask them to guess what the article would be about.
2. Ask them general questions relating to the article like
a. What do you know about the outerspace?
b. Have you seen a movie that takes place in the outerspace?
c. Have you ever heard of the word "space junk"? If not, can you guess what it would mean? Do you think space junk could potentially cause problems? How are they created?
3. Give them the title of the article and make them guess what the reading would be about.
4. Do some activities concerning space-specific vocabularies from the reading since some of these vocabularies are space-jargons and it is very possible that students have not learned the vocab before.

[spark]

Pre-reading activity

• First, have students jot down 5 ideas or words associated with space and/or junk (have them do this within 1 to 2 minutes)

• Next, have the students get into pairs of 2 -4 and share their ideas with their group members.

• Afterwards, ask students to discuss what they think space junk is within their groups.

• Then, have each group come up with one idea as to why space junk exists and have the groups share their idea with the classroom.