Hello, my name is Adam Salberg and I am a pre-service teacher, currently preparing to student teach in a 7th grade classroom. One of the main topics in the class is astronomy. I am pretty excited to teach about space, but I am concerned that students might not be interested. It seems that space can be seen as so far away that it is impossible to comprehend for many students. I know there will be some interest among students, but does anyone have any advice about how to allow students to get the most out of an astronomy unit. Are there any fun activities, inquiry-based lesson ideas, or discrepant event lesson plans that get students more engaged? Thanks in advanced for any advice!
Dear Adam, I like your question. A few years ago I worked with NASA - on the Hubble Space Telescope project. It was a great experience. Now I am at NSTA and enjoy sharing the resources that are available for educators to bring the learning to the classroom. I did a quick search on the Learning Center about space - specifically, I looked for journal articles from Science Scope (Middle school journal). I found a few articles that might be of interest to you. Take care, Flavio. http://common.nsta.org/resource/?id=10.2505/4/ss17_041_04_78 http://common.nsta.org/resource/?id=10.2505/4/ss17_040_07_30 http://common.nsta.org/resource/?id=10.2505/4/ss07_030_09_20
Hello Adam, I think that the best way to engage students in any subject is by trying to make the topic relateable to their lives. Making lessons hands on also help to keep students engaged. Hope this helped. Samantha
It's great to have a good attitude towards the lesson and space is always interesting to learn about. Just making the content relatable helps any student. Also making activities hands on is always great to instead of lecturing and lots of visuals.
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