How do teachers help students realize their place in the universe? How do they teach the relationship among the Earth, Moon, stars, and galaxies during daylight hours? Most teachers assume that astronomy is a difficult subject to teach in the classroom and that without a planetarium little can be learned. In this article, the authors discuss…

Two of the nation's top providers of teacher professional development, NSTA and NASA, are a great source of materials that help educators brush up on their science content and process skills. So when they asked the authors to participate in the development of four live online short courses for teachers, the authors' immediate answer was yes! This…

Less than a century ago, astronomers began to unlock the cosmic distances within and beyond the Milky Way. Understanding the size and scale of the universe is a continuing, step-by-step process that began with the remarkably accurate measurement of the distance to the Moon made by early Greeks. In part, the authors have ITEAMS (Innovative…

Schools are under increasing pressure to meet accountability requirements and show growth in student achievement across tested content areas. As a result, throughout the school year, student achievement data are analyzed to discover data trends that highlight both student gains and gaps in learning. Achievement gaps are identified and addressed…

Solar system exploration in November includes flybys of Saturn's moons, a comet, and the next-to-last launch of a space shuttle before the shuttle program ends. In addition, on November 1 and 29 before sunrise, the waning crescent Moon will be close to asteroid 3 Juno. In fact, by observing the Moon and using some of the stars in the background…

The Moon is an ever-present subject of observation, and it is a recurring topic in the science curriculum from kindergarten's basic observations through graduate courses' mathematical analyses of its orbit. How do students come to comprehend Earth's nearest neighbor? What is needed for them to understand the lunar phases and other phenomena and…

Explore claims of extraterrestrial life and our efforts to communicate with inhabitants of worlds outside our solar system. Even though there's no "proof positive" for extraterrestrial life-forms of any flavor, we've set the stage for applying a battery of critical-thinking skills to the valid analysis of scientific data. (Contains 3 figures and 5…

In the first months of 2009, the International Year of Astronomy, the authors developed an educational project for middle-level students connected with the first astronomical discoveries that Galileo Galilei (1564-1642) made 400 years ago. The project included the construction of a basic telescope and the observation of the Moon. The project, if…

When teaching Moon phases, the focus seems to be on the sequence of Moon phases and, in some grade levels, how Moon phases occur. Either focus can sometimes be a challenge, especially without the use of models and observations of the Moon. In this month's column, the author describes some of the lessons that he uses to teach the phases of the Moon…

After studying phenomena related to the positions and motions of the Earth, Sun, and Moon, many students are familiar with the positional ordering of the planets, but their knowledge of the distances involved is vague. Scale models are one means of bringing extreme sizes into better focus, cutting them down to relative values that they can better…

Learn the astronomy behind the changing of the seasons. Students know that we mark the change of seasons with the position of the Sun over certain parts of the Earth. The specific time and date for the change of seasons is determined by the position of the Sun, not above the horizon necessarily, nor geographically, but rather where the Sun is…

In the exciting, "out of this world" activity described here, students measure the Earth using meter sticks while measuring their shadows in two distant locations. To obtain the size of the Earth, students discover the connection between the measurements of the shadows and a model of the spherical Earth following the method developed by…

Stars of different masses have varying life spans, with the more massive stars "burning out" more quickly than stars of lower masses. How or what they do when they burn out also varies, depending on the mass of the star. All stars are called "main sequence stars" as they continue fusing hydrogen and staying in a state of equilibrium--a balance…

Earth and space science figure prominently in the National Science Education Standards for levels 5-8 (NRC 1996). The Earth in the Solar System standard focuses on students' ability to understand (1) the composition of the solar system (Earth, Moon, Sun, planets with their moons, and smaller objects like asteroids and comets) and (2) that…

An important goal of the current reform movement in science education is to promote scientific literacy in the United States, and scientific inquiry is at its heart. However, the National Science Education Standards clearly indicate that to promote inquiry, more emphasis should be placed on "science as argument and explanation" rather than on…