February 16-22, 2012, Current Events Lesson Plan
Current Event:
Fifty years ago, astronaut John H. Glenn, Jr., became the first American to orbit Earth. As millions of people watched on television, he circled the planet three times in his Friendship 7 spacecraft. Glenn’s historic flight lasted 4 hours 55 minutes from launch to landing.
Objective:
Glenn’s mission reassured Americans that the United States could successfully compete in the “space race” with the Soviet Union (now Russia). The Behind the Headlines news story and related World Book articles takes students back to the early 1960′s when the space race was in full swing to learn about this historic flight.
People & Places:
- Alan B. Shepard, Jr.
- Cape Canaveral, Florida
- Earth
- Friendship 7 spacecraft
- John H. Glenn, Jr.
- Russia
- Soviet Union
- Sputnik
- United States
- Yuri A. Gagarin
Vocabulary Terms:
Discussion Topics:
1. Glenn took off from Cape Canaveral, Florida, for his historic flight. After crossing the Atlantic Ocean, Glenn flew over Africa, the Indian Ocean, and Australia. Then the spacecraft sped over the Pacific Ocean, the West Coast of the United States, and back again over Florida. Ask your students to trace the path Friendship 7 made around Earth on a globe. What countries did he fly over?
2. In the early years of the space age, success in space became a measure of a country’s leadership in science, engineering, and national defense. The United States and the Soviet Union were engaged in an intense rivalry called the Cold War. As a result, the two nations competed with each other in developing space programs. In the 1960′s and 1970′s, this “space race” drove both nations to tremendous exploratory efforts. The space race had faded by the end of the 1970′s, when the two countries began to pursue independent goals in space. Discuss the Cold War with your students along with the historic “firsts” from each of the two countries during the space race.
3. In 1998, when Glenn was 77 years old, he returned to space aboard the space shuttle Discovery. On this mission, he became the oldest person ever to take part in space travel. Ask your students to first name any other space shuttles they are aware of, and then state a fact about those shuttles. (Some examples include Apollo 11, which took Neil A. Armstrong and Buzz Aldrin to the moon and Columbia, which broke apart as it reentered Earth’s atmosphere, killing all seven of its crew members. Learn about others by reading the World Book article on space exploration.)
4. Glenn was just one of the many men and women who made history with space exploration. Use World Book’s timelines feature to plot out these moments in history starting with Soviet cosmonaut Yuri A. Gagarin, who was the first human being launched into space.