Development of Teaching Materials that Enable 3D and Active Pseudo-Observation of Celestial Objects: For the 4th-Grade Science Unit “Moon and Stars”

Abstract

The purpose of this study was to develop teaching materials that enable students to actively observe the moon and stars in three dimensions in the 4th grade Science unit on the topic of “Moon and Stars,” which is the initial stage of basic concept formation about “Earth”. For this purpose, we first developed educational materials using images taken by an all-sky camera system that enables direct three- dimensional viewing of the actual sky and allows anyone to observe and learn about the sky and space via the Internet, regardless of the season, time, or weather conditions. Next, we conducted a class for 4th grade students to investigate the movement of the moon and stars using the developed teaching materials. The results showed that the number of students who responded positively to the subjective evaluation in the post-survey was significantly higher than those who responded negatively. It thus became clear that this material helps make it easier for 4th grade students to get a sense of the spatial extent of the sky and space, as compared to conventional visual materials for astronomy learning.