The Mixed Up Solar System: professional development for secondary science and math educators

The Hubble Education Team has developed the standards-based Mixed Up Solar System activity to provide middle and high school educators with the experience and tools for using real astronomical data in their classrooms. The activity builds upon a table of characteristics of 16 selected objects (without identifying names) that are representative of the diversity of the solar system. Through a series of plotting exercises, participants explore individual characteristics and the trends that appear when comparing characteristics. Through the activity, participants discover similarities among certain solar system objects and begin to classify them accordingly. They discover that Pluto has much more in common with KBOs than rocky or giant planets, and, in doing so, go beyond a mnemonic (MVEMJSUNP) to understand the true structure of the solar system. During professional development workshops, the Hubble education team has worked through this exercise with more than 1000 educators. Evaluation results indicate that by experiencing this activity for themselves, educators gain a better appreciation for solar system science, an understanding of how to incorporate and scaffold real data into their classrooms, and begin to think of adaptations for their students.