Many students are fascinated by outer space and space exploration. Understanding our planet, solar system, galaxy, and beyond is part of the BC Curriculum for science at several different grade levels, including objects in the sky at grade 1, the earth’s orbit in grade 4, and tides and eclipses in Earth Sciences 11, among others.
Educational Resources:
- The Canadian Space Agency has many resources (in both French and English) for teachers, including printable materials, hands-on experiments and activities, and digital games and resources. A couple of highlights include instructions to build your own projector for watching solar eclipses safely and a lesson about designing astronaut patches that would be a great community building activity.
- If you’re looking for videos to support learning about space, The Kids Should See This is an award-winning website of curated videos (ad-free) with hundreds of searchable videos separated by subject areas.
- Let’s Talk Science has a number of ongoing projects that classes can join by collecting, recording, and uploading their own data related to space research.
- Students can explore the surface of Mars via Access Mars. This is a VR experience using data collected from NASA’s Curiosity Rover.
- NASA offers many resources for educators, such as a daily moon guide experience and a number of interdisciplinary activities, like the Pi in the Sky activity (math + science).
Apps:
- Apps can be a great way to integrate tech into science classes. For example, Star Walk 2 allows users to view constellations (images paired with stars) anywhere in the world, in the past, present or future.
- The NASA app offers videos, information about missions, and a live-feed from the International Space Station.
Guest post by Peer Mentor Lindsay Cunningham (Ph.D. student, EDCP), October 2023.
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