The space code

"Leia and the Tardigrades crack the Space Code" is a fictional story that addresses current Swedish space research. The story consists of five chapters where students get to accompany Leia and the tardigrades on adventures in space, read facts about space and our own planet, and solve various missions on the way to Mars. The material is produced by Kodcentrum, Mattecentrum and the Swedish Space Agency.

The students get to accompany the three tardigrades Obi, Wan and Zen into space. They are sent up with the Swedish satellite Mats and need to save the satellite from colliding with space junk before they, with the help of their friend Leia, can continue the journey to Mars where they will build an environmentally friendly gas station.

The material allows students to take part in current space research. They get to meet tardigrades that survived visits to space in real life – without a space suit. They get to learn about the planets and how satellites help us on Earth, about environmental destruction, weightlessness and much more.

As the main characters in our story are the first creatures to set foot on the planet Mars, the students are also given the opportunity to reason and reflect on how we build societies, what law and justice are and who is to decide.

In the student material you will find the five chapters and assignments of the story. The assignments consist of fact and questions about space, math tasks that you can print out for students, and programming tasks that you do here on Kodboken and with the coding tool Scratch.

In the teacher's guide, you will find suggestions for lesson plans and how you can use the story and assignments in your teaching. The material connects to the curriculum for grades 4–6 in mathematics, technology, natural science and social studies and can be used with advantage in a subject-integrated manner.

The math task found under each assignment comes in three different levels. The calculations themselves and the path to the solution are different for each level and the degree of difficulty increases the higher the level. Important to point out is that the solution, or end result, is identical regardless of level. For example, Mission 1, The Space Rocket, has three levels. If the level increases one step, the mathematical difficulty also increases. The space rocket itself, which is the end result and built, will however be exactly the same for all students, regardless of the level they worked on.

The level of the math tasks allows the material to remain flexible in a class where the students' knowledge level differs, as the solution is always identical and all students enter the next task with the same prerequisites. The material also remains flexible between the grades, as it can be adapted based on what a student can do in grade 4 compared to what a student can do in grade 6.

As a teacher, we recommend that you look through the different levels in advance and decide which level or levels your class will work with.

The programming tasks are carried out in the coding tool Scratch, which was developed at the American university MIT. Scratch teaches the basics of programming by using pre-programmed visual blocks that are put together like a puzzle. Scratch is free to use and is available in Swedish and many other languages. It is available as a web version and as a downloaded offline version and you can use the tool without logging in.

The spatial code's programming tasks have different levels of difficulty, with task 1 serving as an introduction for those of you who never used Scratch before, and then tasks 2–4 have an increasing degree of difficulty. Choose which assignments you think are suitable to do with your students.

If you haven't previously programmed with your students, you will find tips on how to get started as a teacher here.