The Myth of Constellations

I loved Tracy's lesson on the myth of constellations. I am sure that this lesson would be a hit with students of almost any age. She made excellent use of the video projector to demonstrate the various constellations, complete with definitions of what a constellation was, and the stories that went along with them. Once we had a good understanding of what a constellation and a myth was, we were invited to the computer lab so that we could discover our own constellation. Using both Google Earth and Google Sky, we could find an existing constellation about our physical address and then "create" our own. This was so cool, and this helps us to literally see "our place in the universe." The constellation Perseus is above my home, so I chose that one, and I reconnected the dots of the stars to create the constellation Aeros Rex, the lone piper, a wood sprite, from southern Ohio, who wandered the hills playing haunting melodies in the key of A minor...

This is an excellent demonstration that would surely fire up the imagination of any learner. We will not quite look at stars the same way now. Students would learn about placement of stars, constellations, and the time in the year when they would be most predominate. We also learned to write, creatively, and then we shared that with the class. The learning was entirely interactive and had a strong technology component, which is appropriate for a science class. This lesson was fun, exciting, and I could see where students would really enjoy making a poster of "their" constellation and printing and sharing the story of the origin of their constellation.

I loved this!