History Smashers, The Space Race

by Kate Messner

Kate Messner’s History Smashers: The Space Race revisits the competition to reach space, challenging simplified stories about rockets, astronauts, and the first Moon landing. Through accessible nonfiction, illustrations, and myth-busting explanations, the book places famous achievements within a larger history of Cold War rivalry, scientific teamwork, setbacks, and contributors who have not always received recognition.

Big Idea

Historic achievements are rarely the work of one hero or one moment. Readers can build a more accurate understanding of the space race by questioning familiar claims, examining evidence, and recognizing the many people behind each milestone.

Discussion Questions

1.How does Messner complicate the familiar story of the space race as a contest with one clear winner? What different achievements might count as success?
2.Why do you think stories about individual astronauts often become more famous than stories about the teams supporting them? How does that affect our understanding of history?
3.How did Cold War competition influence space exploration? In what ways might competition encourage discovery, and in what ways might it create problems?
4.Choose a claim that the book challenges or qualifies. What evidence helps you reconsider it, and what questions do you still have?
5.How do humor, illustrations, and conversational explanations affect your response to serious historical information? When do they help you understand, and when might you need to slow down?

Lesson Plan

⏱ 50 minutes; adaptable for grades 5–7.📦 Copies of the book or selected excerpts, paper, pencils, colored pencils or markers, sticky notes, and a board or chart paper.

Learning Goals

Identify a simplified historical claim and explain how evidence adds nuance or corrects it.
Describe how political competition and collaborative scientific work shaped a space-race milestone.
Use accurate facts, paraphrasing, and source references in a short nonfiction composition.
Adjust pacing through sentence length, information placement, transitions, and visual layout.
Explain how a revision changes a reader’s attention or understanding.

Activity Steps

1.Introduce the question, “What gets left out of a headline?” Read a selected passage about a space-race milestone and model separating a familiar claim from the book’s more complete explanation.
2.In pairs, choose a milestone covered in the available reading. Record three verified facts, one important contributor or team, and page references; distinguish evidence from inference.
3.Fold a sheet into four panels labeled Familiar Story, Context, Behind the Achievement, and Fuller History. Plan one main idea for each panel.
4.Write captions and add simple illustrations. Use short sentences to accelerate the milestone panel and a longer explanatory sentence to slow down for an overlooked detail.
5.Exchange storyboards. Partners check factual accuracy and mark where they read quickly, paused, or needed clarification; writers revise accordingly.
6.Share selected storyboards and complete an exit ticket explaining one historical misconception corrected and one pacing choice that improved the explanation.

Standards Connections

CCSS.ELA-LITERACY.RI.6.1: Cite textual evidence to support analysis of what an informational text states explicitly and what readers infer.
CCSS.ELA-LITERACY.RI.6.3: Analyze how a key individual, event, or idea is introduced, illustrated, and elaborated.
CCSS.ELA-LITERACY.W.6.2: Write informative texts that develop a topic with relevant facts, details, and clear organization.
CCSS.ELA-LITERACY.W.6.5: Strengthen writing through planning, revising, and editing with peer and adult guidance.
CCSS.ELA-LITERACY.SL.6.1: Participate effectively in collaborative discussions, building on others’ ideas and expressing ideas clearly.

Pace-Write-Read Study with Pace-Write It!

History Smashers: The Space Race offers a useful model for studying pacing in informational writing. Its subject contains naturally dramatic events—launches, risks, rivalries, and historic firsts—but Messner’s purpose is more than building excitement. She also asks readers to stop, reconsider familiar versions of history, and make room for context. In this workshop, students investigate how writing can move readers toward a milestone and then slow them down to understand what that milestone really means. The book’s accessible voice and illustrated presentation invite students to study how prose and visual information share the work of explanation. Select a short passage and its accompanying page layout, then compare moments that recount events with moments that explain causes, correct assumptions, or highlight contributors. Read aloud to test where syntax, punctuation, and shifts in information create momentum or invite reflection; avoid assuming that every visual feature automatically makes reading faster. The Pace-Write-Read cycle turns those observations into craft practice: notice a pacing choice, write a brief evidence-based account using that choice, and read it aloud to a partner. Because this is nonfiction, students must preserve factual accuracy while changing emphasis, sentence length, and arrangement. The goal is not to make history artificially dramatic, but to help readers feel both the excitement of space exploration and the importance of a fuller historical account.

Element	How to notice or teach it in the novel
Pacing	Compare a passage recounting a launch or milestone with one explaining its historical background. Ask how the amount of information and the sentence structure change the reader’s speed.
Plot	Treat the historical sequence—not an invented plot—as the narrative backbone. Trace how rivalry, technological challenges, and successive achievements lead toward the Moon landing without making that outcome seem inevitable.
Prosody	Read a selected explanation aloud with different stresses and pauses. Discuss how emphasizing a correction or qualification helps listeners hear the difference between a popular story and a fuller account.
Word	Collect words associated with spaceflight and competition, such as orbit, launch, and race, when they appear in the reading. Examine which words communicate precise science and which shape readers’ interpretation of events.
Concept	Explore the distinction between reaching space, orbiting Earth, and landing on the Moon. Notice where conceptual explanation asks readers to pause before continuing the historical sequence.
Voice & Worldview	Study how Messner’s approachable, myth-questioning voice encourages skepticism without dismissing genuine achievement. Ask what values are reflected in giving context and credit to less-celebrated contributors.
Point of View	Distinguish the nonfiction narrator’s explanation from the perspectives of historical participants. Compare what a government, an astronaut, and a supporting scientist might consider the most important part of the same milestone.
Setting & Place	Track how the account connects events on Earth with journeys into space. Discuss why laboratories, launch facilities, and political settings matter alongside spacecraft and the Moon.
Original Characters	Here, study real historical people rather than invented characters. Compare how the book introduces a familiar astronaut with how it establishes the importance of a less-familiar contributor.
Dialogue	If a selected passage includes quoted speech, identify its source and discuss why it is placed there. Do not turn illustrative speech or student-created dialogue into evidence of what a historical person actually said.
Details	Choose one technical detail and one human detail from the reading. Explain how each changes the account from a simple record of achievement into a more informative history.
Descriptions	Examine how descriptions help readers picture unfamiliar equipment or conditions. Have students revise a description so it remains accurate while becoming easier to visualize.
Firsts	Investigate the precise meaning of a space-race “first,” such as first artificial satellite or first human in orbit. Ask how specifying the category complicates a simple claim about who won.
Immediacy & Engagement	Notice how concrete actions and surprising corrections draw readers into historical events. Try replacing a vague opening about progress with a verified action connected to Sputnik or Apollo 11.
Story Scenes, Summaries & Structures	Identify a passage that focuses closely on an event and another that compresses a longer period. Discuss why a history writer needs both close attention and summary to cover the space race.
Tension / Suspense / Surprise	Separate the suspense participants experienced from the surprise modern readers feel when a familiar belief is challenged. Even when students know Apollo 11’s outcome, they can investigate uncertainty and risk without inventing danger.
Flashback, Flash-Forward, Cliffhanger	Look for places where the account returns to earlier causes or points toward later consequences, rather than assuming all three devices occur. Explain how such time shifts can interrupt chronology to improve understanding.
Page Turns and Chapter Breaks	Inspect an actual chapter ending or page transition and predict what information should follow. Discuss whether the break creates anticipation, marks a new topic, or gives readers time to absorb a correction.
Pace & Creativity	Rewrite the same verified milestone as a rapid three-sentence account and as a slower explanatory paragraph. Compare their effects while checking that neither version sacrifices accuracy.
Play	Use the History Smashers premise to play with a “headline versus fuller story” format. Keep the playful frame focused on correcting misconceptions rather than mocking historical people.
Performance	Perform a short passage as a two-voice reading: one voice reads the familiar claim and the other reads the evidence-based qualification. Use only wording or paraphrases that the class can substantiate.
Personality	Identify how the narrator’s personality emerges through phrasing and emphasis. Distinguish that lively authorial presence from claims about historical people’s personalities that require evidence.
Humor	Locate a humorous verbal or visual moment and discuss what it helps explain. Consider where humor should give way to a more serious tone when the history involves danger, loss, or exclusion.
Pause	Mark a place where readers should stop to reconsider a simplified belief. Experiment with a paragraph break or a brief reflective question to make that pause visible in student writing.
Poetry / Poetic Devices	Look for figurative language or sound patterns only where the selected text supports them; this book is nonfiction, not poetry. Discuss how “race” itself frames exploration as competition and what that metaphor leaves out.
Repetition	Track recurring ideas about competition, achievement, or historical credit. Ask how returning to an idea across different milestones can deepen understanding rather than merely repeat information.
Rhythm	Read a paragraph aloud and listen for changes between short statements and longer explanations. Have students vary those patterns to distinguish a dramatic milestone from its necessary context.
Punctuation	Study the punctuation in a selected passage and test how it affects phrasing aloud. Revise student writing with punctuation that clarifies relationships between facts, rather than adding excitement indiscriminately.
Questions	Notice whether a question in the selected reading invites curiosity, challenges an assumption, or organizes an explanation. Students can frame their own inquiry around who receives credit for a space-race achievement.
Compare-Contrast	Compare American and Soviet milestones using the same criteria, such as date, objective, and result. Discuss how changing the criteria changes a claim about leadership in the space race.
Objects	Choose a satellite, rocket, or spacecraft discussed in the book and trace its historical significance. Use the object as an entry point into the people, decisions, and work behind it.
Threes	Have students organize a milestone into three verified parts: achievement, supporting work, and significance. Treat this as a writing experiment, not as a claim that Messner consistently uses groups of three.
Lists	Compare a list of milestone facts with a paragraph explaining their relationships. Discuss when a list speeds retrieval and when prose is necessary to show causes or qualifications.
White Space & Negative Space	Inspect how open space around prose and illustrations influences attention on an actual spread. Students can test whether adding space around a key correction makes it more noticeable.
Art & Graphics	Compare information communicated by an illustration with information supplied by nearby prose. Ask which visual details clarify history and which are expressive elements rather than documentary evidence.
Interactives & Gamification	Create a classroom “support, qualify, or challenge” sorting game using claims drawn from the reading. Require textual evidence for each decision; this is a teaching adaptation, not a claim that the book contains a game.
Placement	Examine where a surprising correction appears relative to the familiar claim it addresses. Test how moving the correction to the beginning or end changes emphasis and comprehension.
Form	Discuss how illustrated, myth-busting nonfiction differs from a textbook timeline or a fictional space adventure. Identify how the form supports both historical explanation and reader engagement.
Dummy	Make a folded-paper dummy, or rough page mock-up, of a short illustrated history. Arrange a claim, context, evidence, and conclusion across its pages, then test the sequence with a reader.
Passion	Discuss how enthusiasm for discovery can coexist with scrutiny of national rivalry and unequal recognition. Invite students to choose a contributor or question they want to research further and explain why it matters.

Pace-Write It!

20-minute Pace-Write-Read task: “One Small Headline, a Bigger History.” Before class, select a short passage about Apollo 11 that provides enough context for students to explain the achievement without reducing it to one astronaut’s actions. Minutes 0–4: Read the passage and record two verified facts, a supporting contributor or team identified in the reading, and a page reference. Minutes 4–7: Discuss how the headline “Armstrong Reaches the Moon” draws attention but leaves out the mission’s collaborative work and historical context. Minutes 7–13: Write an 80–120-word account that opens with a short, accurate milestone sentence, slows down with an evidence-based explanation of the work behind it, and ends with why the fuller story matters. Minutes 13–17: Read to a partner, who marks one fast moment and one thoughtful pause and checks the facts against the excerpt. Minutes 17–20: Revise one sentence or paragraph break and share how that change affects pacing. Do not invent dialogue, thoughts, or technical details.

Classroom Activities

Countdown to a More Complete History

Students create a four-panel nonfiction storyboard about a space-race milestone discussed in the book, such as Sputnik, Yuri Gagarin’s flight, or Apollo 11. They begin with a familiar headline, add historical context and the people behind the achievement, and finish with an evidence-based explanation of why the fuller story matters. They then revise the storyboard’s pacing so that one panel moves quickly while another deliberately slows readers down.

Countdown to a More Complete History

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