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The Classroom Astronomer

The Magazine for the Teachers of Astronomy

Coming Soon...

RAP Sheet Extras - Those reviews of practical articles in the scholarly journals that we couldn't fit in the magazine.

The Green Laser - A sky teacher's blog for news and commentary

TCA Slide Shows and Movies

Tell Us Your Interests - Communicate with the editor! And...
Who is that man in the dark hat?

The Classroom Astronomer is a quarterly PDF and printed publication designed as a practitioner journal for classroom teachers of astronomy. While centered at the high school level, it also provides tips, techniques and informative how-to articles for teachers of grades K-8 and undergraduate college "Astro 101" courses. Our mission is to increase the amount of astronomy in the school systems and improve the skills of teachers.

Current issue

TCA cover Issue 2
I have just subscribed to your magazine and have read the fall issue. What a great concept! What a fantastic resource! Thank you for taking your love of the skies and turning it into something that will help us teachers create a future generation of knowledgable sky observers! - Deborah J. Snow, Perrysburg Jr. High, OH

An impressive mass of interesting material! - Guy Ottewell, Author Astronomical Calendar

This is truly awesome and so needed. - Donna Young, Chandra X-Ray Obs. workshop director

I just spent my lunch hour reading through it, and it's a lot of fun with some good classroom ideas ready to go. - Colin Jagoe, Kawartha Pine Ridge, District School Board, Canada

Your magazine will be a good resource both for me, and for the B. Ed. students who are taking the elementary science course...Well-done! - Terry Bridger, Queen’s University, Canada

Table of Contents

Kinesthetic Cosmology - The Expanding Universe and its temperature, by way of circles of students.

Is It Really Noon? Just Ask Your Shadow - Using your head's shadow to find True North (or South if you live in the Southern Hemisphere) and finding out that solar noon isn't necessary noon on your wristwatch.
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A World Turned Upside Down - Why is North on the Top of the globe when a sphere has no top, and other misconceptions discovered Down Under.

Analyzing Planets and Exoplanetary Systems Through Graphing - A lab exercise with spreadsheets to find groups of planets with common characteristics, in our system and three others.

Teachable Moment: Let's Bomb The Moon! - LCROSS crashed into the moon looking for water, here's how students can do so to learn how the different kinds of craters are made; an inquiry lab.

Bringing Old Telescopes Back to Life - School have old or donated scopes in the closet? Here's how to clean the lens or mirror and restore it.

Regular columns include:

Astronomical Teach-niques - Tips and tricks to teaching specific concepts, for teachers, this issue: Making moon phases crystal clear, three ways to make the difference between the moon's orbital period and its phase period understood, using Cub Scout activities to teach about distance and size scales.

The RAP Sheet - Research Abstracts for Practitioners - Useful excerpts from articles in scholarly journals.

Alternative Universes - They said "What???" Textbook astronomy, bringing them back to the real world.

Teacher's Challenge - --How's your C.V.Q? (Cosmic Vocabulary Quotient?)

and

Teachers' Winter Planning Sky Calendar {click here!}

Read by astronomy educators in the United States and 15 other countries. Join our Universe!
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