The SDO curriculum teaches students through self-directed solar explorations and encourages them to be engaged learners in order to understand the science of our Sun and to apply the knowledge they gain to solve tomorrow’s solar situations.
Context for Use
The series of four lessons/modules in the SDO curriculum leads students through an interactive exploration of Solar Science. See the Materials section below for the curriculum overview.
The four lessons are:
- Lesson 1 - What Are the Features of the Sun?
- Lesson 2 - Why Do We Study the Sun?
- Lesson 3 - How Does the Sun Affect the Earth?
- Lesson 4 - SDO Exploration Museum
And don't miss the supplemental comic book What Color is the Sun? available in both English and Spanish!
Goals Header
What Students Will Do
- Planning their own course of research by engaging in a range of activities to study the Sun
- Designing a Solar Science movie, image sequence, and more created from real-time solar imagery and data from NASA’s SDO satellite
- Predicting space weather using actual SDO solar data to make a forecast
- Building and investigating with instrumentation used to study the Sun
- Presenting an interactive Solar Science exhibit to a community audience to explain and demonstrate the Sun’s effects on Earth’s life and society
Materials
Introductory materials contain a curriculum overview and timeline. The Appendix contains a student pre-/post-assessment, rubric, and standards alignment. Teaching materials for all four lessons can be found in the Google Drive folder or linked above in the Context for Use section. And don't miss the comic book What Color is the Sun? (available in both English and Spanish)!
Description
The SDO curriculum is unique in that it enables collaborative student teams to select their own pathway in choosing and completing three of the nine SDO Solar Modules Activities. Based on their interests, teams select one Activity (A, B, or C) from each of the three Solar Modules/Lessons (1, 2, and 3). The fourth Solar Module/Lesson culminates in teams presenting their 3-D Solar Exhibit as part of a class-wide SDO Exploration Museum. The museum event is a unique opportunity for teams to illustrate and demonstrate student learning and mastery of Solar Science concepts via a summative performance assessment.
