Spaceman Sam and Comets

This resource is on comets and includes a twelve-minute video and a PDF with four follow up activities. Including: recommended books to borrow, watching a video, doing a quiz, researching and conducting your own experiment. The target audience for this resource is children aged 8-11 years-old. There is also another session which follows the same structure but is about forces, called: Forces Fiona Asks about Gravity.
This project focuses on space, which is a key area of physics outlined in the Science Benchmarks, Experiences & Outcomes (Es & Os) in the Curriculum for Excellence (CfE). The activities reinforce the knowledge introduced during the stories and range from less to more involved so the participants can progress through them, but they also serve as standalone activities.

This resource bundle includes the following:
• The Space Video is available to watch via the link on the Word document, ‘Spaceman Sam and Comets’ on Media Hopper Create, the University of Edinburgh. The twelve-minute video is a story written and told by Amy Cook following Sam, who lives on the moon, as he meets the Astronomer Caroline Herschel who introduces him to comets through a telescope!
• The follow up activities sheet accompanying the video is available in a downloadable PDF.

SCN 2-06a: By observing and researching features of our solar system, I can use simple models to communicate my understanding of size, scale, time and relative motion within it.
SCN 2-20a: Through research and discussion I have an appreciation of the contribution that individuals are making to scientific discovery and invention and the impact this has made on society.
LIT 2-04a: As I listen or watch, I can identify and discuss the purpose, main ideas and supporting detail contained within the text, and use this information for different purposes.
LIT 2-07a: I can show my understanding of what I listen to or watch by responding to literal, inferential, evaluative and other types of questions, and by asking different kinds of questions of my own.
ENG 2-12a: Through developing my knowledge of context clues, punctuation, grammar and layout, I can read unfamiliar texts with increasing fluency, understanding and expression.
LIT 2-14a: Using what I know about the features of different types of texts, I can find, select and sort information from a variety of sources and use this for different purposes.

To find more Open Educational Resources from the University of Edinburgh, visit open.ed.ac.uk.

This resource was created as part of the GeoScience Outreach Course which is a 4th year undergraduate course in the School of GeoSciences aiming to provide students with the opportunity to develop their own science communication and engagement project.
This resource was originally developed for the City of Edinburgh Libaries.
Author: Amy Cook, adapted by Alysha Wilson.
Unless otherwise stated, all content is released under a CC BY-SA 4.0 license.