This
activity is for 5th grade and is intended to be done in 3 to 5 days. The activity addresses the Life Science Content Standards (a) through (g) and can be applied to standard (5) on the solar system.
Day 2 -- groups should work on writing a description of the planet. The group should discuss and research the anatomy of humans and how their Alien will look.
Day 3 -- groups should finish writing about how their Alien looks and
functions as compared to humans.
Day 1 -- students get into scientist teams and discuss where their Alien
may have come from.
To make the activity easier to manage, each science team should
submit their news release and they should include the URL's so that you
can check them for authenticity. Use the government
page as a check-off list to determine completion of the project.
It is up to you to determine what you want them to find on the list.
Your role is to be the government thus, you can change whatever
you want whenever you want.
A sample rubric is on the how did you do page, so the students can assess if they are going in the right direction.
It is important to help students work as a
team. They need to divide up the work on the government page to answer
all the questions. Having a newspaper as a sample would be helpful
so they can have a template to fashion their news release after. The idea is to have
them learn about human anatomy in a fun way.