ThinkSpace Labs: Teaching Seasons and Moon Phases with WorldWide Telescope

WorldWide Telescope (WWT) is a powerful visualization program that allows users to connect Earth-based and space-based views of the Sun-Earth-Moon system. With funding from the National Science Foundation, our team has developed an 8-session Seasons curriculum and a 3-session Moon Phases and Eclipses curriculum designed for middle school students, called ThinkSpace Labs. The labs blend WWT's virtual models with hands-on physical activities, allowing students to better visualize these spatially complex topics. The team is also researching how model-based study of spatially rich topics like Seasons and Moon Phases can help to support students' spatial reasoning, a skill that has been shown to be improvable through practice, and which is critical for success in many STEM fields. We will present student learning and spatial thinking outcomes from the ThinkSpace curricula for 900 middle school …