Development of Practical Curriculum for Astronomy using Scientific Observational Data

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Decreasing interest in science is one of the serious problems of high school education. The aim of this research is to develop teaching materials by which high school students realize characteristics of celestial objects and cosmic scales through practical analysis of real data of observation, and to promote their scientific interests, ability of logical thinking, and creativity.In the first year, we developed teaching materials, "Hubble's law", "Supernova and distance of a galaxy" for high school, and "Let's measure brightness of stars", 'Let's find the minor planet" for elementary school. The observational data are selected from authentic images obtained at National Astronomical Observatory of Japan, etc The curricula are developed with collaborating teachers. Along with the teaching materials, we developed software for the image analysis The next year, we developed "Stellar magnitude and brightness", "Rotation period of the Sun", and "H-R diagram of stars" for high school. We have also revised "Nature of light and color of stars", and the teachers' guide of "Hubble's law". In the last year, we developed "Temperature of sunspot", revised "Supernova and distance of a galaxy" and "Stellar magnitude and brightness" based on the practice, and also examined educational effect of the teaching materials with the questionnaires before/after practice and with the student's worksheets on the practice.In order to make our fruits spread, we have held workshops for the staffs of schools, museums, science centers, public astronomical observatories, etc., and the proceedings are widely distributed to the interests. Please check our WWW site, http://paofits.nao.ac.jp/. You will find our teaching materials and the relevant also in the URL.