Instructional Materials in Astronomy

Instructional Materials in Astronomy

Here are a number of links to other Internet resources which contain information and/or other links related to Astronomy. Please read our disclaimer.

AskERIC Lesson Plans - Science: Space Science: Over 25 lesson plans covering various grade ranges in K-12.
Astronomy Activities: Over 10 ready-made astronomy lesson plans for teachers of grades kindergarten through high school. The lessons utilized materials that are found in almost every classroom.
Astronomy Lessons: Over 25 lessons plans, organized by grade level, from the Southeastern Michigan Math-Science Learning Coalition.
Astronomy with a Stick: Teaching activities for elementary and middle school students intended to help them understand how the relationships between the Sun and the Earth affect changes in daylight hours. The site has three teaching units, each made up of several student activities that can be conducted during daylight hours.
Counting the Stars: A lesson plan for teaching students a practical technique for counting the stars.
Earth System Science Community (ESSC): ESSC is an ongoing NASA funded project with the goal of building an on-line Earth Science curriculum so that teachers and students can investigate the Earth system quickly, easily, and inexpensively. Visit this site for more information about the project as well for the curricula that have been completed.
Encarta Lesson Collection: Astronomy: Select "Science" and then "Astronomy" on their Lesson Collection Page to find about a dozen lesson plans in this subject.
Exploring Planets in the Classroom: More than 25 hands-on science activities are provided in classroom-ready pages for both teachers and students for exploring Earth, the planets, geology, and space sciences.
Internet Activities: Each month, IBM provides a new set of Internet activities focused around a specific theme for a targeted range of grade levels. A number of astronomy units are available. A teacher's guide is included for each topic.
Life in the Universe Curriculum Sample Lessons: These SETI (Search for Extraterrestrial Intelligence) lessons take advantage of the intense interest that young students have in the existence of extraterrestrial life to motivate their studies of science and other subjects.
NASA Rocket Classroom Activities: Activities using simple and inexpensive materials that can be used within a science unit about rockets.
New York Times Learning Network: A variety of Astronomy lesson plans for students in grades 6-12 which use a New York Times article as a starting point.
Outer Orbit: This site has two distinct sets of instructional materials that teachers will find useful. From their main menu, click on "Lesson Plans" for over 50 such resources, many of which can be used within a multidisciplinary approach. Or, click "In the Classroom" for ideas and examples of what other teachers are doing to bring astronomy into the technology classroom.
Reaching for the Red Planet: An outline of a 6-8 week course for grade 4-6 students that includes teacher guides, student assignments and experiments, and recommended web resources. The theme of the unit is planning a Mars colony.
Space and Astronomy for Kids: Build an Astronomy Model: A page of links to sites on the web that have plans for various types of spacecraft models from About.com.
[The] Sun: Power Plant of the Solar System: This module from the New Jersey Networking Infrastructure in Education Project introduces students to the Sun and its interaction with the Earth. As part of the unit, students use real time data supplied by the Internet to confirm scientists' findings or to come up with their own conclusions.
UC Berkeley Centre forEUV Astrophysics Education Program: The main attraction in this site for the classroom teacher will be the lesson plans and K12 activities on Earth and Space Science that have been collected. Topics covered by the lessons include: The Electromagnetic Spectrum, Satellite Communications, Satellite Dishes, Constellations and the Zodiac, Solar System Objects, Earthquakes, and More!

Note : The sites listed above all have lesson plans/activities for the Astronomy classroom teacher. For other resources in this subject area (e.g., instructional materials in General Science, Life Science, or Physical Science), or for curricular content and theme pages, click the "previous screen" button below. Or, click here if you wish to return directly to the CLN menu which will give you access to educational resources in all of our subjects.