Lesson video

Hi everybody, my name is Miss Simkin.

You might have done science lessons with me on Oak National before, in which case, welcome back.

It's very nice to see you again.

For those of you who might not have met me through a screen before, I'm just going to tell you a little bit about myself.

I love science, I'm sure that won't surprising.

That's why I'm teaching it.

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

And I was the kind of scientists called a Marine Conservationist.

That's somebody who tries their best to protect the ocean environment and the creatures that live in our seas.

So, it will come as no surprise as well.

But my favourite animal is a dolphin, and I love swimming.

I'm spending time in the water.

So, that's a little bit about me.

Now, let's get started with our science lesson today, which is all about a notable and impressive scientist called Katherine Johnson.

Our lesson question today is who is Katherine Johnson? And by the end of the lesson, you will be able to tell me lots about her.

This is what we're going to cover in today's lesson.

We're going to look at our star words.

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

Then we're going to map the story, that's when we draw a picture to help us remember each part, and then we're going to do an experiment and investigation at the end of the lesson into something called flight trajectory, which I will explain to you in a moment, and then like always, you will have the chance to do your end of lesson quiz, to see what you have remembered.

For this lesson, you will need please a piece of paper, a pencil, a coloured pencil, so you can mark your work in a different colour and a ruler.

You might also need in this lesson, but we'll get to at the end of the lesson, a piece of paper that you can scrunch up and throw.

So, hopefully a different one to the one that you're doing your work on, and maybe something else that would be safe to throw in your house, like a tennis ball or a cuddly toy, something like that.

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

Great, now we're ready to begin.

Let's do our star words.

So, our star words are our key vocabulary.

They're the important words that we're going to need in the lesson.

We're going to practise saying them, and then we'll talk about what they mean.

I'm going to say them, and then you're going to say them out loud.

NASA, trajectory, let's say that one again, trajectory, great, flight path, astronaut.

Brilliant, so NASA you might've heard of, NASA is a space agency.

They're the National Aeronautics and Space Administration, that's what NASA stands for.

Trajectory is similar to flight path.

We're going to talk about that in a bit more detail in a moment, I've got a diagram that's going to help.

And an astronaut is a person who's trained to travel into space in a spacecraft.

This is Katherine Johnson, and she's the scientists that we're going to be learning about today.

But before I tell you her story, I want to explain to you what flight path means, because a big part of Katherine Johnson's job, was to calculate the flight path of different objects in space.

So, before we can understand her story, we need to understand what that means.

The flight path is simply the path of a moving object.

So, let me show you an example, this purple circle on your screen, I want you to imagine it's a ball that I've just throw.

As I throw it, it goes up and up, and then it goes down and down.

Can you get your finger, please? Can you place it on the first ball, and can you trace the way that the ball went? Can you trace the path that the moving object followed? Great, it should look something like this.

This pink dotted line, that's the flight path.

That's the flight path of that path of the ball.

The path of the moving object.

Flight path is the same as trajectory.

So, the pink dotted line is also the trajectory of the ball.

We can use them interchangeably, but trajectory is a more scientific word.

Now, Katherine Johnson didn't spend her career calculating the flight path or the trajectory of balls, she actually spent her career calculating the trajectory of spaceships.

So, a little bit more complicated.

This is the same idea she would calculate, and she would map out the path that a spaceship had to follow in order to complete its journey in space and back to earth safely.

Okay, let's learn a little bit more about her story.

Katherine Johnson always loved maths.

When she was young, she used to count everything.

She was curious and very clever.

When she went to school, she was the star student.

And in fact, she was so good that she skipped three whole school years.

She even skipped past her brother who was older than her, and he was not very happy about that.

Katherine faced obstacles from when she got to secondary school, because at this time in America, America was legally segregated by race.

And that meant that people with different coloured skin had different rights available to them.

So, Katherine's high school, didn't admit black students.

It didn't let them in.

So, Katherine was furious at this as you would be, especially because she loved learning so much, and she wanted to continue her learning.

Luckily, Katherine had an amazing father, who worked day and night to earn enough money, so that he could move town to a school that would let black students in, so that's what she did.

After Katherine finished school, she dreamed of becoming a research mathematician, but in those days there weren't any jobs like this for women.

And so, she became a primary school teacher instead.

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

And she applied and she got the job and she became a human computer.

I know that sounds quite weird, but they didn't have computers in those days.

So, humans had to do all of the complicated math and programming that we now have computers for.

And her job was to calculate the flight path, the trajectory of spaceships.

They could reach their destinations and safely return to earth.

Okay, we're going to pause there.

Tell your screen, what was Katherine Johnson's favourite subject? Great, it was maths.

How many years did she skip at school? Three, what was her first job? It's on the screen.

Primary school teacher, good job.

Okay, let's keep going with her story.

Katherine was very good at her job, and she got promoted to her first important mission, which was called Project Mercury.

Mercury's mission was going to be dangerous, so dangerous that even the Projects Star Astronaut, John Glenn refuse to fly unless it was Katherine who calculated the spacecraft's trajectory.

Glenn's spacecraft orbited the earth three times, based on Katherine's calculations, and then returned home safely.

Katherine's next mission was to calculate the trajectory for Apollo 11, the first flight to the moon.

And on July the 20th, 1969, thanks to Katherine's calculations, the Apollo 11 astronauts walked on the moon for the first time.

Okay, quick pause, what was the name of her first project? Say it to your screen, you're saying doctor planet, Project Mercury, good job.

How many times did the spacecraft orbit the earth and the Project Mercury mission? Say it to your screen, three.

It's actually the same number of years that she skipped school.

So what a coincidence, and it is on the screen, but tell me out loud, what year was the Apollo 11 mission? 1969, exactly.

A year later Apollo 13 launched.

But this time disaster struck.

There was an explosion in one of the oxygen tanks.

The astronauts on board were in danger, and their commander told mission control back on earth in Houston, that's the city where NASA was at that time.

"Houston, we have a problem." Which is quite a famous phrase.

So, you might have heard it before.

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 in the end it was her calculations, and her plan trajectory that got the astronauts home safely.

Okay, so that's the story of Katherine Johnson.

Let's see how much you can remember.

Our story, the split into six main parts.

And I would like you please to draw a picture to help you remember each part of the story.

Have a game and see what you can do from your memory.

If you're finding it really tricky, you could always go back and watch that part of the video again.

Pause the video, enjoy your story map for me now, please.

Great, okay, that brings us to the next part of our lesson, where we are going to have a go at being many Katherine Johnson's.

We're not going to calculate the trajectory of a spaceship because we'd have to study for years and years and years, to be able to do that.

But we are going to have a go at calculating the trajectory of some objects that we might have at home.

Where I said calculating, 'cause you'd really say drawing.

So, can you remember what trajectory is? What was our definition? If you can say it to your screen? Well done if you remember it.

it's the path followed by a flying object.

Okay, so it's this dotted pink line.

Now, we are going to have a go at using some objects that we have around our homes.

We're going to throw them and then we're going to try and we're going to watch path flight, that's trajectory, then we're going to try and draw it.

And you'll see that different objects have different trajectories.

I'm going to show you an example fast of what this looks like.

And in my example, I'm going to use two objects.

I'm going to use the tennis ball, and I'm going to use just a scrunched up piece of paper.

Then I throw both objects and watch their trajectories, I'm going to remember that I need to keep the force at which I throw them the same each time.

And I need to try and throw them from the same height.

Okay, those will be my control variables in the experiment.

And those are the things that we tried to keep the same each time so that we have a fair test.

Otherwise, if they have different trajectories, it might be because I threw them differently, as opposed to the fact that they're different objects.

Okay, I'm going to start with the scrunched up piece.

I'm to throw piece of paper.

It might be a good idea to follow the trajectory of a piece of paper with your finger while I'm throwing it.

So, get your finger ready on a piece of paper.

Okay, and follow it on the screen as I throw it.

Great, so in my table, I've written my object was scrunched up paper and then I've had to draw during the trajectory, which I think went a bit like this kind of went up, and then it came down, and it kind of rolled along the floor a little bit, at the end, you can see it goes up there.

Let's see how the tennis ball compares.

Okay, this time I'm going to throw the tennis ball, again, can you follow the trajectory of the tennis ball with your finger on the screen? And I'm going to make sure that I'm throwing it from the same position.

So, I'm in the same place in the room.

My arm is at the same height and I'm going to try and throw it with the same force as well.

Did you follow it? So, with the tennis ball, I thought it went like this.

It went down quite fast, went down quite fast, and then you could see it bounce like this.

So, I tried to draw that in my picture.

So, that's my example.

What I'd like you to do now is to draw your own table, decide how many objects you're going to do.

I aim to do a few more than two.

So, draw your table, then choose your objects.

Okay, and then you're going to throw each one and try and draw the trajectory.

Remember, to check with a parent or carer before you start throwing anything in that house.

And to make sure that you are using objects that you can throw.

Okay, please don't pick up anything that might break.

That would be awful.

And you wouldn't learn very much about trajectory.

You'd just get in quite a lot of trouble So, pause the video and have a go at doing your own trajectory investigation now, please.

Well done for all of your hard work today, you have learned about fantastic scientist.

You've worked really hard and you've conducted your own investigation.

I hope that you enjoyed this lesson as much as I did.

If you would like to share your work with Oak National, you can ask your parent or your carer to share your work and tag @OakNational and #LearnwithOak.

You can also tag @Teach-STEMinism, which is my name.

So, I will be able to see it as well.

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

And most importantly, have a fantastic rest of your day.

I hope that you have a lovely time, and I hope that I will see you back here, for another science lesson too, bye everybody.