Lesson video

Hello, I am Miss Simpkin and I am going to be your science teacher today.

I am so excited.

Now you might not have met me before, so I'm going to tell you a little bit about me.

I love science.

It's my favourite thing to teach.

And I used to be a scientist before I was a teacher.

What I really wanted to be when I grew up was a mermaid, but apparently that's not a real job.

So instead I learned to be a type of scientist called a marine biologist.

Can you say that word for me? Marine biologist.

And a marine biologist is about as close to a mermaid as you can get.

Because a marine biologist studies all of the creatures that live under the sea and they even do something called scuba diving, which lets you breathe under water, a bit like a mermaid.

Now you might have had Ms. Harris or Miss Em's as your science teacher already on Oak National if you've done any science lessons with us before.

But I asked them, I said, please, please, please, please, please can I teach some of the science lessons? Because in this unit of six lessons, we are going to learn all about some extraordinary scientists.

And these extraordinary scientists are some of my role models and my favourite, favourite people to teach about.

So I hope you enjoy these lessons and doing your learning as much as I know I'm going to enjoy doing them.

Let's get started.

And let me show you who are scientist that we are going to learn all about today is.

We are going to learn about Katherine Johnson.

So by the end of the lesson, you're going to be able to answer the question, who is Katherine Johnson? But you'll also be able to tell me her story and why she is so extraordinary.

This is what we're going to learn about today.

We are going to start with our star words.

Then we're going to hear Katherine Johnson's story.

I'm going to tell it to you.

Then we're going to map the story.

That means we're going to draw some pictures to help us remember it.

Then you're going to have a go at telling the story.

And then at the end of the lesson, you'll get a chance to do your end of lesson quiz.

For this lesson, you are going to need an exercise book or a piece of paper to write on and a pencil to write with.

If you don't have those things, you can pause the video and go and get them now.

Great, we're almost ready to begin.

We're also going to need our brain.

You don't need to go and get that, but we might need to wake our brain up a little bit.

So you're going to copy what I do.

First of all, we're going to give it a kind wake up.

Hello, brain you ready to begin? Just tap gently and see if your brain is ready.

Great.

Now we're going to give it some energy.

Shift your head.

Make sure it's really awake.

And then we're going to take some deep breaths.

So our brain has all of the oxygen that it needs to do some really good learning today.

Fantastic, my brain is ready, is yours? Let's do our star words for today.

Star words, star words, star words! Your turn.

Great, so when I point at me, I'm going to say something and when I point at the screen or at you, you're going to repeat it back.

So you might see me do this quite a lot in our lessons.

My turn, your turn.

So let's practise with our star words.

NASA.

Great, good job.

Calculate.

Flight path.

Astronaut.

Fantastic.

So these are going to be our most important words for this lesson.

We've practised saying them and now I'm going to tell you what they mean.

You might already know what some of them mean.

So NASA stands for the National Aeronautics Space Administration, which sounds very important.

So actually I'm going to say it in a really important voice.

National Aeronautics Space Administration.

It's quite a mouthful, but do you want to practise saying it with me? We're going to say it one more time.

National Aeronautics Space Administration.

Your turn, in a serious voice.

Good job.

NASA is basically an organisation that is all about space.

It is about it's, it was started so that we can learn about space and it also spends quite a lot of time getting astronauts up into space.

So an astronaut is a person who's trained to travel in a spacecraft or a spaceship.

It's a very cool job.

The word calculate means to work something out using maths.

So you calculate in all of your maths lessons.

And then flight path is the path of a moving object.

Okay I'm going to explain that in a moment, in a bit more detail with some pictures to help me.

So we're going to start with Katherine Johnson's story.

Before I tell you the story though, I want to show you a picture of Katherine Johnson.

This is Katherine Johnson.

Now she was a scientist who worked for NASA, and this is her doing some of her work.

We're going to learn about how she got into that career when we learn about her story.

But before we begin, I want to tell you in a bit more detail what a flight path is.

Because I'm going to use that a lot in our story.

And it would be helpful if we know what it means.

So, imagine that this purple circle on your screen is a ball.

Okay, and I'm floating it.

I'm sorry, I tripped over my tongue, I'm throwing it.

Now the flight path is the path of a moving object.

So if I throw this ball, it's going to go up and up and then it's going to start coming down and its flight path would be if I traced that with my finger.

So can you trace with your fingers on the screen, get your finger, put it on the first ball and trace the path that it follows.

Did it look something like this? That pink dotted line is the flight path.

What's the pink dotted line set to your screen? The flight path, great.

Okay, and we're going to learn how Katherine Johnson calculated the flight path, not for a ball, but for spaceships.

Okay, are you ready for the story of Katherine Johnson? You need to make sure that you are sat comfortably and that you're ready to hear the story of this extraordinary scientist.

So we're going to start with Katherine Johnson's early years.

Katherine always loved maths.

When she was young, she used to count everything.

She used to count the things in her pencil case.

She used to count the pieces of pasta on her dinner plate.

In fact, the only thing that she couldn't count were the stars in the sky.

There were just too many of them.

Katherine was curious and very clever.

When she went to school, she was a star student and maths was her favourite subject by far.

She was so clever that she skipped three whole year groups.

Now this is quite annoying for her older brother because she skipped ahead of him.

Katherine faced some obstacles when she got to her secondary school though.

At this time, at the time when Katherine was alive, America the country that she lived in was legally segregated by race.

That means that people with different coloured skin couldn't go to the same schools.

So Katherine Johnson, Katherine Johnson's high school, her secondary school didn't admit Black students.

Students with the colour of skin that she had.

Katherine was furious.

She just wanted to keep learning.

Luckily Katherine's father worked night and day.

He worked really hard to earn enough money so they could move to a town with a school that let Black students study there.

After Katherine finished school, she dreamed of becoming a research mathematician because she loved math so much.

But in those days there weren't any jobs like this for women.

And so she became a primary school teacher instead.

Then finally in the 1950s, Katherine got her chance to apply for her dream job.

Whoo! NASA was hiring thousands of new employees, including mathematicians.

So she got to work at NASA as a mathematician.

Can we all just do a little celebration dance for Katherine because she got her dream job? Woohoo! Woohoo! Katherine got her dream job! Your turn.

So when she worked for NASA, she became a human computer.

What did she become? A human computer.

Yes, that's right.

They didn't have computers in those days.

So humans had to do all of the complicated maths and programming that computers do for us now.

Katherine's job was to calculate the flight path of spaceships so they could reach their destination safely and return to earth.

Katherine was very good at her job and she soon got promoted to her first important mission.

It was called Project Mercury.

Can you repeat that with me? Project Mercury.

Now, the mission of Project Mercury was going to be very dangerous.

In fact, it was going to be so dangerous that even the project's star astronaut John Glenn refused to fly unless Katherine calculated the flight path.

Katherine did calculate the flight path and Glenn's spacecraft orbited the earth three times and then returned home safely.

Can you do that action for orbit with me.

It means to go around something.

So Glenn's spacecraft orbited, your turn, the earth three times and returned home safely.

Katherine's next mission was to calculate the flight path for Apollo 11.

This was meant to be the first flight to the moon.

And on July the 20th in 1969, thanks to Katherine's maths, the Apollo 11 astronauts walked on the moon.

A year later, Apollo 13 launched.

But this time disaster struck.

There was an explosion.

Can you do that with me? There was an explosion in one of the oxygen tanks.

The astronauts onboard were in danger.

The commander on the spacecraft told Mission Control back on earth, Houston, we have a problem.

It's a very famous line.

Can you practise saying that with me please? I'm going to say it one more time.

Houston, we have a problem.

Your turn.

Great.

Luckily back on earth, Katherine was ready to save the day.

She would have to calculate a new flight path and quickly.

She worked hard and fast and Katherine got the astronauts home safely.

I hope you enjoyed that story about Katherine Johnson.

It's one of my favourites to tell.

We're going to go through the kind of main points of the story, step by step now to help us remember.

So in the first part of the story, what did we learn about Katherine? Does this picture remind you of anything? If you know, tell your screen.

So, our story started with us learning that Katherine Johnson was so clever that she skipped three years of school.

How many years did she skip? Show me on your fingers.

1, 2, 3.

And, her favourite subject was maths.

She loved maths.

So that was the first part of our story.

Can you pause the video and tell your screen what was Katherine's favourite subject? Pause the video.

Great, her favourite subject was maths.

In the second part of the story, we learned that when Katherine left school, she became a primary school teacher.

That was her first job.

And then, she was hired as a computer at NASA.

So she wasn't really a computer like we know computers today.

That's why you can see its in inverted commas.

She was a human computer.

What was Katherine's job at NASA? Can you pause the video and tell your screen? Katherine's job at NASA was a human computer.

Well done if you remembered.

In part three of our story, have a look at the pictures.

Does this give you a clue about what happened next in our story? That's when she was promoted to Project Mercury.

She calculated the flight path for the astronaut John Glenn.

What was the astronauts name? And, he was able to orbit the earth safely three times.

What was Project Mercury's mission? Pause the video and tell your screen.

Great, Project Mercury's mission was to orbit the earth.

The next part of our story was about the Apollo 11 mission, which was to get astronauts to the moon.

This was a successful mission.

And in 1969, the first people were able to walk on the moon because Katherine Johnson calculated the flight path to get them there and to get them home safely.

When did people first walk on the moon? Pause the video and tell your screen.

The answer was 1969.

Don't worry if you couldn't remember that.

Every single time we make a mistake, our brain gets stronger and it's easier for us to remember next time.

So let's all practise that again.

When did the first people walk on the moon? 1969, great job.

Then, what happened to this part of the story? This was the Apollo 13 mission where there was an explosion and Mission Control had to say to Houston, which is the place where NASA is, Houston, we've had a problem.

Practise saying it.

What was the problem with the Apollo 13 mission? Pause the video and say it to your screen.

Great, it was an explosion.

And then in the final part of our story, Katherine Johnson was able to calculate the flight path and Apollo 13 and the astronauts inside it made it home safely.

And everybody celebrated.

How did Katherine save the day? Pause the video and say it to your screen.

Fantastic, good job.

Now we're going to have a go at mapping our story.

Can you draw a picture to help you remember each part of the story? I'm going to show you how to do this under the visualizer.

While mapping our story you're going to need a piece of paper.

Doesn't matter if it's lined or if it's plain and you're going to need a pencil.

Now I'm going to map my story using pen.

But that's just so you can see it really clearly on the screen.

You should be using pencil because it's always better to draw in pencil.

In case you make a mistake.

Now, there are six parts of Katherine Johnson's story.

So we are going to draw six pictures to represent each part.

If you want to be really neat, you could take a ruler and you could draw yourself six boxes for your pictures.

But we don't need to be, because we're not producing a beautiful piece of art.

We are just drawing a map to help us remember the story.

So let me show you what that's going to look like.

The first thing you're going to do is in the top corner of your page, you're going to write a number one to represent the first part of your story.

Pause the video and do that for me now.

Great.

Can you remember what happens in the first part of the story? It's when Katherine Johnson's at school and we learned that she's really, really clever and that she loves maths.

Hmm, what could I draw to help me remember that? Maybe I could draw Katherine Johnson, just a stick figure and I could draw her thinking.

So I've got a thought bubble with a big heart and a plus and a minus sign to show you that she loves maths.

You can draw the same picture as me, or maybe you want to draw a different picture.

Maybe you could draw her at school and putting her hands up and doing really well.

You can choose what's going to help you remember.

Pause the video and draw your first picture now.

Can you remember what happens in the second part of the story? Hmmm.

That's when we learned about her jobs.

So at first she becomes a school teacher, but then, she gets her dream job at NASA.

Can you remember what her dream job was? What does she become at NASA? Tell your screen.

She becomes a human computer.

So maybe, we could draw a picture of a computer to help us remember that.

So, next to our number one, we go to part two of the story.

You can draw an arrow if you want to show, and then we're going to draw part two of the story.

So I am going to draw a computer so here's the screen, here's the keyboard, and here's the mouse.

And I might even draw a picture of Katherine Johnson inside the computer.

So I remember that she's a human computer.

And then I'm going to write a key word here to help me remember.

I'm going to write NASA.

Pause the video and draw your picture for number two now.

Can you remember what happens in part three of the story? This is her first project.

It's Project Mercury, where she calculates the flight path that gets John Glenn's spacecraft to orbit the earth three times.

What can we draw for that? Have a think for me.

Maybe we could draw the earth and draw the flight path around it.

That orbit round it and write it a little times three.

So next, I'm going to draw my number three, I'm moving to the next part of my story.

And I'm going to draw a circle with some countries on it to represent planet earth.

And then I'm going to draw here, the flight path of the spacecraft because it orbits.

It goes around the earth.

How many times? Tell your screen.

Three times, I'm going to write times.

Three.

Pause the video and complete your picture now.

Now we're on part four of the story, good job.

You are doing such great work so far.

What happens in part four of the story? This is their mission called Apollo 11, where they get a man on the moon.

So maybe that's exactly what we can draw, the moon with a man standing on it.

So, I'm going to go down my page now.

I'm going to write my number four here.

And I'm going to draw the moon with some circles on it because the moon has these circles on it called craters.

And I'm going to draw an astronaut standing on the moon.

Pause the video and complete your picture for number four now.

Great job.

What happens in picture five of the story? Can you remember? I'm going to give you a clue with my actions.

Yes, well done.

There's an explosion on Apollo 13.

So that's what I think we should draw, an explosion.

So I've got my rocket here and then I'm going to draw a big explosion round it.

Here we go.

Pause the video, and draw your picture for number five now.

Okay and then what happens in the last part of our story in part six? What does Katherine Johnson do? She calculates the flight path that gets the spacecraft safely home.

So what could we draw for that? So maybe we could draw Katherine Johnson again.

And a thought bubble.

Because she has to work and think really hard.

And what's she thinking about? She's thinking about the flight path, how to get the rocket home.

So let's draw the rocket and then, maybe we can draw a dotted line like this to show the fight path that she's calculating to get our rocket back to earth.

Pause the video and complete your picture for number six now, please.

Well done.

I hope that you are really proud of your Katherine Johnson story map.

Now we're going to have a go at telling the story.

Can you use your story map to tell the story? We are going to practise telling the story.

Now we can use our story map when we're telling to help our memories so that we can look at each picture to remember what happens in each part of the story.

Now we going to tell the story at least two times.

The first time is going to be like a rehearsal or practise.

So we're going to look at each picture really carefully and say what's happening in that part of the story.

So for example, I'm going to look at picture one.

And I'm going to see the picture, I'm going to remember, oh yes, Katherine Johnson, it's important that you say it out loud.

Katherine Johnson loved maths when she was at school.

And she was so clever that she skipped three year groups.

Your turn.

Great, now it's just a practise.

So, you can do that for each picture and it's okay if you make mistakes.

This is the chance for you to remember what's happening in each picture.

So now take a look at number two and then number three, then number four and number five and each time, say out loud, what you think is happening.

Pause the video and do that for me now.

Practise for all six.

Pause the video.

Fantastic, okay.

Now is the time to challenge yourself.

This time you're going to see if you can tell the story the whole way through, without stopping.

Remember that you can be looking down at your pictures to help you if you need.

So I'm going to show you how I would do that just with the first part of the story.

Katherine Johnson loved maths when she was at school.

And she was so clever that she skipped three whole year groups.

She became a primary school teacher and then she got her dream job as a computer at NASA.

Do you see how I didn't really pause in between each picture because I'd already practised it.

And now I can just use the pictures to tell me.

Before you start, there are some things that I'd like you to try and do.

The first is to use a clear, loud voice like I'm using now.

The second, if you want to challenge yourself is to try and use some gestures.

So for example, when you talk about John Glenn orbiting the earth you could use a gesture to show what you mean.

I would like you now to try and pause the video and tell your story again.

The whole way through with a clear voice and gestures.

Pause the video and do that for me now.

Fantastic, good job.

If you feel like you need another practise, then you can go ahead and pause the video and practise again.

Or maybe you're ready to perform your story for somebody in your house.

In which case, pause the video and go and find someone to tell them the story of Katherine Johnson.

Great job today.

You have worked really, really hard and I'm incredibly proud of you.

If you would like to share the work that you've done, maybe a video of you telling your story or a picture of your story map, then you can share it with Oak National by asking your parent or carer to share your work on Twitter and tagging at @OakNational and #LearnwithOak.

They can also tag @Teach_STEMinism and then I'll be able to see your work too.

And I would absolutely love that.

If you don't want to do that, then maybe you can just share your work with somebody else in your house because I bet they would love to see it and they will be really proud of what you have done too.

Just before you go, don't forget to click next and do your end of lesson quiz.

Have a fantastic rest of your day and I will hopefully see you back here soon for another science lesson.

Bye!.