Suggested Resources
Blue marble in empty Space
The activity is a guided voyage in Space that uses videos, images and hands-on activities to help students learn about scales and distances of the Solar System and understand how important yet small the Earth is. It should also give students a sense of global citizenship, making them understand that we all live on the same tiny blue planet floating around in the vast emptiness of Space.
Is the Sun rotating? Follow the sunspots!
The Earth rotates on its axis, giving us night and day – but what about other celestial objects like the Sun? In this activity students will use real satellite images of the Sun (Solar Dynamics Observatory, SDO) to discover that the Sun also rotates about its own axis! For this they will use a technique used for the first time by Galileo Galilei himself, and still used by astronomers to this day: following the displacement of sunspots.
Let there be light… but not too much!
This hands-on activity involves the creation of a model to show the impact of light pollution on the night sky and raise awareness about this subject. By building this model students are encouraged to take responsibility for reducing light pollution: they can learn how to use outdoor lighting responsibly by only using it where it’s needed and in the required amount.
Speed-Velocity
Goals: Focus on the 3-terms relations of the definition of velocity : velocity/duration/distance Introducing speed as the ratio of duration and travelled distance in the case of a constant speed.
Inner planets – Venus
This activity is part of teaching unit 1, Inner and Outer Planets. You can find the introduction and teaching guide here.
The Fibre Optic Cable Class
With this activity students will uunderstand the basic concepts of light and fibre optics, and how they are used in everydaylife communication and in astronomy (specifically, a better understanding of SDSS and spectrography). Students will be guided throught a set of activities: they will be involeved in a hands-on acitivty to learn bascis properties of light, they will analyse information gathered by the Sloan Digital Sky and finally they will be introduced in the citizen science project Galaxy Zoo.
Life cycle of stars – Plotting your own HR diagram!
This project goes through plotting your own Hertzsprung-Russell diagram using Faulkes Telescope data and SalsaJ.
Solar System model
Students will prepare a model of the Solar System by placing the planets in the right order relative to the Sun (even if the Sun and planets will not be in exactly in the right proportions). The students will use a a pre-built kit, or they will learn to use papier-mâché or other household materials. By the end of the activity, children will learn about the actual sizes and relative positions of the different planets.
Making a Sundial
In this activity, students approach the notion of time and how time can be measured. They build and use a sundial, learning that you can tell the time using the Sun and discovering that a long time ago, it was much more difficult to tell the time than it is today. They will also compare the accuracy and precision of this method with modern ways of telling time.
3…2…1… time for water rockets!
Building and launching rockets is a funny activity. It combines the excitement of watching a rocket launch with the additional pleasure of mastering an engineer problem. In short, it’s fun for all ages.