Reaching Elementary Students in an Online Afterschool Program

NASA's GLOBE Mission Earth (GME) team engaged over 20 students from grades 3-5 in an online Kids Club on Wednesday afternoons for six weeks in April and May, 2022. It was the second year of Kids Club. Student participants came from various locations, from Marquette, MI to Hampton, VA. The geographic spread of the students highlighted the differences in clouds and budburst from south to north throughout the spring.

A GLOBE Kids Club Toolkit was sent to each student. It contained GLOBE’s What’s up in the Atmosphere storybook, cloud chart, science notebook, and the materials needed to participate in activities. Students shared about themselves to the group in an entry “All about Me” in their science notebooks. Students observed clouds, budburst, and tree height using GLOBE protocols and entered the data in their science notebooks. Parents were asked to share photos of their children in a shared Google Photo Album. At each meeting, students shared their findings.

This was a collaborative effort among University of Toledo (Dr. Kevin Czajkowski, Sara Mierzwiak, and Janet Struble), elementary education specialist Dr. Evangeline Harris-Stefanakis, and Jessica Taylor from NASA Langley Research Center.

At the beginning of the sessions, Jessica Taylor engaged students with a “Clouds Dance.” Dr. C (Czajkowski) showcased images of cloud types and sky color with his cloud identifications slides. In later sessions, students observed the budburst of the trees in their location. Students observed that bud burst occurred first in Virginia and last in northern Michigan. Dr. Harris-Stefanakis encouraged students to record observations through drawings in their science notebooks. Students showed their work during each Kids Club session. Brian Campbell, an outreach specialist, was a featured speaker and shared information about NASA’s ICESat-2 Mission. He described how satellites collect data on tree height and he congratulated the students on their accomplishments.

The Kids Club was developed to reach younger students outside the school setting. GME Teachers informed parents about this opportunity to give students an opportunity to learn science outside of school. If you have a student in grades 3-5 in the next school year that would like to join the Kids Club, please email: globe.mission.earth@gmail.com

GLOBE Mission Earth is supported by NASA under cooperative agreement award number NNX16AC54A and is part of NASA’s Science Activation Portfolio. You can learn more about GME’s efforts to help learners participate in the GLOBE (Global Learning and Observation to Benefit the Environment) Program and other NASA activities at http://www.globe.gov/web/mission-earth and https://mynasadata.larc.nasa.gov.