Hands-on High School Astronomy

This poster showcases a series of hands-on labs and project-based learning activities designed to engage high school students in the study of astronomy, developed during 2 years of teaching an elective astronomy class at the Seattle Academy of Arts and Sciences. Examples of projects include crater counting, walking out a to-scale solar system, using data to calculate Hubble's Constant, developing novel galaxy classifications, creating their own star system and calculating gravitational forces, and designing a planetary defense system to deflect a near earth object. The curriculum is still being developed with the intention of moving student work from "understand" and "apply" to "analyze", "evaluate", and "create."