ISP Faculty Fellow Pat Gibbons, PhD, and Jack Wiegers, ISP science educator, are offering an astronomy course for teachers during the fall 2014 semester.
Edu 6012 Earth and Planetary Systems will be geared towards teachers of grades 3-8 and will include multiple hands-on investigations.
- Learn to build simple equipment that students can construct in the classroom (star charts, astrolabes, telescopes, pinhole viewers, solar motion demonstrators, and more).
- Use the equipment for finding, observing, and describing the patterns of motion of the Sun, Moon, planets, and the constellations of the Zodiac.
- Create models to explain the observations, including a ray model of light, a scale model of the solar system, and geocentric and heliocentric models.
- Use these models to answer questions “Why do we have seasons?”, “Why are we approaching the Dawning of the Age of Aquarius?”, and more.
A portable planetarium and Internet resources, such as Stellarium, will be used throughout the course, and there will be a visit to the Crow Observatory. This course is aligned with Missouri GLEs (Strand 6 Universe) and national framework/standards documents (Earth and Space Sciences 1.A and 1.B). There are a number of places in the course where math and engineering connections can be made.
Dates: Tuesdays, 4:30-7:00 p.m., Aug. 26 through Dec. 9
Location: MySci Resource Center
Credit: 3 graduate credits, tuition is $415 per credit
This course may be applied towards the WUSTL graduate certificate in science education.
Reserve a space in the course.
If you are interested or have questions, please contact Paula Smith, 314-935-6846.