Digitalis Education Solutions provides these curricula free of charge as a public service to encourage the teaching of astronomy. It consists of astronomy lesson plans for use for kindergarten through twelfth grade students.

These lessons are designed to take full advantage of a Digitarium planetarium projector. However, they can be modified for use with different planetarium systems.

These lessons are written as if an outreach program with a portable dome will be using them. They can easily be modified for use in a fixed dome or by classroom teachers who are already familiar with their classes' knowledge and interests.

Throughout the lesson plans are items in [bracketed italics]. This system is used to separate an instruction from the body of the lesson, to remind you to show an image or video, or to provide possible answers to a suggested question.

Digitarium planetarium systems enable you to target many Next Generation Science Standards. This NGSS PDF provides sample ideas for targeting specific Disciplinary Core Ideas (DCI) with a Digitarium system. These are certainly not the only DCI that can be targeted: With some creativity, many other DCI in other subject areas can be discussed in the engaging, immersive dome environment, especially through use of the multimedia functions.

We would be happy to post translations, modifications, or even your own original lessons if you would also like to contribute to open astronomy education.

If you have suggestions for improving these lesson plans, for resources, or for new lesson topics, please contact Karrie Berglund, Director of Education via email: karrie AT DigitalisEducation.com or phone: (360) 616-8915.

Lessons

These lessons are linked below in PDF (for printing) and RTF (for editing) formats.

All Ages

Kindergarten through second grade

Grades 3-5

Grades 6-8

Grades 9-12

Supplemental Documents

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