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Classroom Activities on Astronomy

These classroom astronomy activities, which I either created or re-formulated, are appropriate for a range of grades. People have used them in middle-school classrooms, high school elective programs, and college Astronomy 101 labs. Feel free to adapt them to the level of your audience.  (If you make copies, we do ask the you leave the information about who wrote and published them intact.) Included are activities about future tourism and where tourists might want to go, debunking astrology, rethinking the constellations, how high up space begins, and more.

Where Will Bill Gates’ Great Great Grand-Daughter Go For Her Honeymoon: The Cosmic Tourist Sights Activity
http://dx.doi.org/10.3847/AER2009007

Cosmic Calendar [imagining the scale of the history of the universe]

https://astrosociety.org/file_download/inline/209270e9-db28-455c-85cc-c4f29f1fa349

Family Heroes: Should Uncle Fred be in the Sky? [re-thinking constellation stories, for families]:
http://www-tc.pbs.org/seeinginthedark/pdfs/family_heros.pdf

Finding Your Way to Mars, Pennsylvania: An Astronomy and Geography Activity:
http://www.pbs.org/seeinginthedark/pdfs/geography_astronomy_activity.pdf

How High Up is Space (thinking about where space begins and modeling the scale):
http://www.astrosociety.org/edu/activities/I11_How_High_Space.pdf

A Flag for Your Planet (design a flag appropriate for each planet):
https://www.fraknoi.com/wp-content/uploads/2020/08/M9-Flag-for-Your-Planet.pdf

Picture an Astronomer Activity (good first activity with younger classes or groups):
https://astrosociety.org/file_download/inline/fdee92e4-924a-4bd4-ad0d-1b73182aec51

Did We Actually Land on the Moon? (Activity and Symposium):
https://www.researchgate.net/publication/268895007_Did_We_Actually_Land_on_the_Moon_An_Activity_and_Symposium

Sky Heroes: Reinventing the Constellations (for classrooms):
http://www-tc.pbs.org/seeinginthedark/pdfs/Sky_Heroes.pdf

Starry Lives, Starry Skies: Observing Different Stages in Stellar Evolution:
http://www-tc.pbs.org/seeinginthedark/pdfs/starry_lives_starry_skies.pdf

Testing Astrology Activities:
https://astrosociety.org/file_download/inline/b93fa8d7-4dc5-4372-9270-feacd73ac56d

Who Speaks for Earth (activity about replying to a SETI message): 

Who Speaks for Earth Activity

The family-oriented games we created for the Family ASTRO project are available from the Astronomical Society of the Pacific at:
https://myasp.astrosociety.org/products/familyastro

A Guide to Eclipse Outreach Activities for Libraries and Other Informal Education Organizations (booklet with suggested activities, also with information about the 2017 eclipse):
https://www.researchgate.net/publication/315731030_The_All-American_Eclipse_A_Guide_for_Public_Libraries_and_Their_Communities

Many of my activities are collected in The Universe at Your Fingertips 2.0, a DVD-ROM from the Astronomical Society of the Pacific:
https://myasp.astrosociety.org/products/DV122/theuniverseatyourfingertips20dvdrom

Classroom Activities on Astronomy - Andrew Fraknoi - Astronomy Lectures - Astronomy Education Resources