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Introduction to Week 3

Find out what we will be learning in Week 3 of the course.
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Welcome to week 3. This week we will highlight the very latest developments in the field of space science and upcoming astronomical phenomena. We’ll point you in the right direction for the latest news stories and show you how to translate them in an accessible way for your class. We’ll help you get to grips with current and future missions and their science goals so that you and your class feel a part of the scientific community. We want to enrich your teaching with real scientific research. And we want your class to hear from and meet real scientists– astronomers on the ground and astronauts in space.
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We hope that you have the opportunity to go beyond the classroom and take your class to a museum or science centre for a lifelong memorable trip. We’ll ignite your creativity with some ideas for cross-curricular interdisciplinary learning and provide you with the confidence for multidimensional astronomy teaching. We want your pupils to learn, investigate, and enjoy the cosmos. And we want to empower you with the knowledge and skills to take them on this mind-blowing journey through space.

In Week 3 we show you how to find out information about the latest space missions and we give you ideas on how to incorporate them into your lessons or class science projects. We have interviewed astrophysicists and astronauts and asked them about their schooling, career background and research to find out what inspired them to follow a career in space science.

We explain the importance of taking your pupils to a science museum or discovery centre, a place where they can get involved with hands on science and talk to experts. We will show you the research to support our reasoning behind science trips and we hope to see as many of you as possible at the Royal Observatory Greenwich.

We’ll also ask you about your perceptions of science having completed the course and we encourage you to summarise what you have learnt and plan your lessons in space science using a broad set of resources, tools and demos. Remember, if you are enthusiastic and excited your pupils will be too.

We hope you have learnt lots about the subject and take a personal interest in astronomy – the Universe belongs to everyone. If you have any of your own questions about space we are ALWAYS very happy to help, please don’t be shy!

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Our Solar System and Beyond: Teaching Primary Science

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