Instructional tools for teaching elementary astronomy

Elementary astronomy is hard to teach, because of the difficulty in representing the complex movements of large bodies in space. It is part of primary school curricula worldwide, but teaching is not matched by an adequate competence in the adult population. Research shows that even educated people have difficulties in understanding phases of the moon, the seasons, the earth's spin, the moon's spin, eclipses. Here we provide some tools that teachers can use in the classroom for short demonstrations. We strive to respect (and at the same time take advantage of) the cognitive limitations that make it difficult to represent our proximal celestial bodies.

Credits

Roberto Casati (team lead); Pablo Fernandez, Glen Lomax, Samaneh Yasaei.