Jewels of the Night
The Jewels of the Night is a hands-on, teacher-tested activity for middle school and older students. Students measure the color and brightness of stars in the Jewelbox Cluster from a color image. They determine the age of the cluster by plotting their measurements in a color-brightness diagram. The activity develops classification and graphing skills and fosters observation, communication, and cooperative learning skills. Students are exposed to ideas about the nature of stars, temperature and color, stellar evolution, the time scales of astronomical phenomena, and how astronomers can determine the ages of objects in the universe.

Earth's Interior Structure
Develop understanding of the structure of the Earth’s interior by constructing a scale model of a “slice” of the interior of the Earth and studying the material properties of Earth’s interior.

Dark Matter: Probing What You Can't See
Astronomers are coming up with all sorts of inventive ways to approach the unveiling of dark matter. We'll learn more about this research in later sections, as this lesson looks into how we learn about things we cannot see...by using standards-based subjects such as gravity, rotation, torque, equilibrium of forces, and more.

Supernova Chemistry
Students will observe visible spectra of known elements and identify an unknown element or combination of elements by visible spectra.

Mercury
To introduce students to the planet Mercury and help them develop an understanding of the planet’s composition, geology, and other important characteristics.

The Expanding Universe
In this exercise, you will use a two-dimensional analogy to explore the expansion of the Universe.

Using Radioactive Decay to Determine Geologic Age
Explain to students that they are going to participate in an activity that will demonstrate to them how geologists determine the absolute age of rocks or minerals.

Radiometric Dating Activity
This hands-on activity is a simulation of some of the radiometric dating techniques used by scientists to determine the age of a mineral or fossil.

Exploring Planets:
More than 25 hands-on science activities are provided in classroom-ready pages for both teachers and students for exploring Earth, the planets, geology, and space sciences.

Discoveryschools.com

Teachnology
Space and Astronomy Lesson Plans

The Space Place
A great site from NASA to explore with your students. Don't miss the Goodies for Teachers area for printables and lesson worksheets.

NASA Spacelink
Use this website to start your search of the NASA collection of educational materials, such as classroom lessons, online activities, and multimedia resources.

NASA Explores
Express Lessons and Online Resources

Lesson Plan Central
An educator's guide to lesson plans, worksheets, web links, and more.

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