Chris Hadfield is back on earth following his mission on the International Space Station, but the astronaut's charm has students across the country still looking up at the stars.
Kelly Green teaches Grade 6 at Odgen Community Public School. She decided to incorporate Hadfield’s popular YouTube videos into her science lesson plan back in October in hopes of engaging her pupils more.
Using a smartboard, the teacher shows all the various videos Hadfield posted online from the space station.
“They were so wowed that they could see somebody in a cupola and in the background is Earth,” she said. “That was really amazing. My kids didn’t know what ISS was at the beginning. Now that he is back on Earth, we can take things further. We’re following the effects on his body, how long it is going to take him to recover. I think there’s still a lot more to come.”
Hadfield also caught the students’ attention when he joined Ed Robertson of Barenaked Ladies to sing from the ISS. Green said that captured the hearts of her students.
“I had one girl who said that she felt so sad after listening to the song because she was feeling how he must feel being away from home,” she said. “They really connected with that.”
Most schools are starting to incorporate inquiry based learning, which encourages students to ask more in depth questions. Green says Hadfield’s space mission helped in achieving that goal.
But it wasn’t just science that Green used Hadfield for.
She also used the famous YouTube song for her students to look at the various poetic devices and many of the children’s art pieces, which hung across the classroom, featured space.
“He’s purposely connecting with the kids,” she said. “He’s relating what’s going on in a way that’s at their level and anyone’s level. He’s done an amazing job.”
Jadyn Jensen, a Grade 6 student in Green’s class, said he thought he knew a lot about space but that was before he learned about what Hadfield was doing at the ISS.
The 11-year-old said he surprised to learn how often people go up into space.
“It’s just interesting on how people use to think that space travel would never be possible and now it is super possible,” he said. “The songs had a lot of information in them about space travel and they were just interesting. The song was great.”
Jadyn’s classmate Alistair Fuzzen also thought the Barenaked Ladies song was good and added that his father was a big fan of the group.
The 12-year-old said he learned that the Hadfield’s space shuttle traveled faster than a speeding bullet and then orbits the Earth about 14 times.
He added that it was interesting to know that people do go into space and hoped that in the future humanity could go even further in space exploration.
