Sandburg Center for Sky Awareness
A Fairfax County Public Schools Planetarium
The Year in Review - A Special Report
Highlighting the Activities of the
Sandburg Center for Sky Awareness for 1999-2000
Among many successes this past year, perhaps the one of which I am most
proud is that nearly every class--including grade levels four, five, and
eight--from every school in the Sandburg Planetarium Service Area visited the
planetarium! I would like to encourage every teacher to continue to take
advantage of the extraordinary opportunity to visit this unique learning
environment with their class(es).
Sandburg Center for Sky Awareness (SCSA) Web Site
The SCSA Web site was designed to be a one-stop shopping resource
providing virtually everything the classroom teacher needs to deliver
high-quality, hands-on instruction which meets the Virginia Standards of
Learning (SOLs) and FCPS Program of Studies (POS) in meteorology and astronomy, including instructional activities
featuring correlations with Windows on Science videodisc
"textbooks," pointers to related Internet resources, as well as suggested
assessment strategies.
Regular features of the SCSA Web site which were actively maintained
during the '99-00 school year include 12 installments of Constellation of the Month (CoM), 36
(and counting) Special
Events entries, and 33 Website of
the Week (WoW!) entries (most of which featured multiple pointers to
sky-related online resources as well as WoW!-related suggested teaching
strategies). Among other features, the Themes for 1999-2000 Web page includes the
"Millenium Countdown" and "Today's Sunspot Number," updated daily.
Curriculum Development
In addition to revisions of several "tried & true" activities (most
notably the Grade Level 4 Astronomy BINGO! Vocabulary List
and the Grade Level 5 activity Using a Starfinder, adding A Skywatcher's
Pronunciation Guide), the SCSA produced/published several new
instructional activities during the 1999-2000 school year:
Special Programming
- Orientation - Parents of rising 7th graders, Wednesday, 15 March
from 7:00 - 7:30 p.m. Featured 7th grade English sky poetry unit.
- Hosted CSMS PTA Board Meeting, Tuesday, 11 April beginning at 7
p.m.
- Sandburg Planetarium "Open House" - Tuesday, 2 May from 10:30 -
11:00 a.m., there was a special "Open House" program at the Sandburg
Planetarium. Among other topics, the cross-curricular Grade Level 7
English sky poetry unit
and the Grade Level 8 Science astronomy unit (including upcoming class visits to
the planetarium in May) were highlighted. In addition, visitors were given
a quick tour of the late Spring/early Summer night skies. Parents who
attended the program were able to see firsthand how this extraordinary
resource enriches the instructional program at Sandburg Middle School (as
well as the other schools in the Sandburg Planetarium Service Area).
National Sky Awareness Week/Solar Maximum
National
Sky
Awareness Week was April 23-29, 2000. Its theme: "THE SKY -
Where Meteorology and Astronomy Meet." Locally, the Sandburg Center for
Sky Awareness celebrated SAW by sponsoring the following activities:
- [Tuesday, 25 April (Rain Date: Wed., 26 APR) - Both days were a
washout!] New Date: Wed., 3 May - Amateur astronomers from the
National
Capital Astronomers (NCA) and Northern Virginia Astronomy Club (NOVAC) visited
Sandburg MS for a day of Moon watching and safe sunspot observing
through a variety of telescopes. Visit the Sandburg "Sun Block Party" Web page for a brief
overview (including photographs) of the event. Special thanks to Andrew
Seacord and Ed Witkowski, Outreach Coordinators for NCA and NOVAC
(respectively), and NOVAC members John Avellone and Bob Kwartin--at CSMS,
we greatly appreciate your spirit of volunteerism and willingness
to share your expertise and enthusiasm for observational astronomy!
Students prepared for the day of sunspot observing by completing an
in-class activity, Happy
Birthday Sunspot Plot - Sunspots and the Solar Cycle, a NASA Thursday's Classroom activity adapted by Walter
Sanford, SCSA Director. By graphing the past 14 years of annual sunspot
numbers, students discovered the 11-year solar cycle which peaks in
2000-2001.
- April 27-28, as part of a cross-curricular sky poetry unit,
Sandburg Team 1 Grade Level 7 English classes visited the planetarium.
[Note: Team 2-4 English classes visited the planetarium during
Fall/Winter '99.] As a result of their visit, students wrote and
illustrated sky poems.
AMS DataStreme Course
For the past five years (including the Fall '99 semester), I have led the
Northern Virginia Local Implementation Team for the American
Meteorological Society's Web-based distance learning course, The
DataStreme Project--a free, 3-credit graduate-level
introductory meteorology course. For details regarding the course, please
visit the NoVA LIT Web page.
Special Recognition
The Sandburg Center for Sky Awareness cross-curricular sky poetry unit was
featured in the 12 April 2000 episode of Meet the Author on Fairfax Network
(special thanks to producer Sandra Brennan!). For more information about
this innovative unit, read The Sky Touches Everyone, an article which
appeared in the May 1998 issue of Apple, the FCPS
professional magazine.
The Sandburg Center for Sky Awareness was also featured in the 25 April
2000 episode of Benefits of Technology on Fairfax
Network (special thanks to producer Amy Bolton!). The program focused
on a variety of non-computer-based applications of instructional
technology, including the FCPS Planetarium Program.
And the Survey Says...
Results of the '98-99 Planetarium Visit Student Exit Surveys and '98-99 Planetarium Program Teacher Surveys are
available online ('99-00 Teacher Survey results will be available online
in the near future). The survey data has helped me to gather valuable
information regarding the effectiveness of the planetarium program of
instruction. In the future, teacher surveys will be administered every
year; student surveys every other year.
SCSA Home | www.wsanford.com