Earth in the Universe

Looking for something that I will like to teach, I found this awesome explanation and simulation of why auroras occurs. Why am I choosing this topic? Well this is going to sound very child like, but few weeks ago I watch the movie Happy Feet, that by the way I loved it! There was one part that caught my attention, yes!, the beautiful aurora. If you have not seen this movie, watch it is great, specially if you have kids. Anyway back to the topic. :) For more information about auroras go to the following link: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Aurora_(astronomy)

I find that auroras is a good topic to teach because it not only introduce astronomy but chemistry and physics. Therefore, students can understand that all science have to coexist in order to have a balanced planet. Some of the challenges that I see are those of creating misconceptions. Although students will be taught with a model and a simulation, they often tend to get on their mind what they find more easily to "understand". One other challenge will be to reach those students that need to have hands-on experiment to learn. This class is design more for logical and visual learners, but what about those that are skill learners?
The opportunities that this can provide are those of exposing students to chemistry, for example, the explanation of the aurora mechanism and how the collision of electrons has big influence on the colors observed on the auroras. Sometimes, when teachers talk about collision among electrons, or particles, it can be so difficult to grasp because it is an abstract picture that one has to imagine. At least the simulated part of the lesson, can ease the transition of the abstract to the visual. In this case it will be targeting those students that are visual learners.
Below is the link of to which you can go and get the whole lesson plan for the topic.
http://www.eduplace.com/science/hmsc/6/d/simulation/simcontent_6d.shtml

Truly,

Wida