Plan for Science Activity

This activity will be used for 6th grade and fulfills the requirements of Standard 4 Objective 2, which says to describe the appearance and apparent motion of groups of stars in the night sky relative to Earth. For this particular activity, we are going to focus on the brightness of stars.

To start out, we as a class are going to have a discussion about the reasons some stars are brighter than others. Size and distance are two of the main reasons. After our discussion, students will use the program Stellarium to explore the constellations in the night sky. After finding some well known constellations, students will continue to look at the stars and see if they can find any constellations of their own.

After looking at the various constellations, students will compare the brightness of the stars they see/use in their constellations. The will also state the two reasons for difference in brightness we discussed in class. Students will record their findings in a short paragraph.