Teachers

Welcome to Challenger Center's Teachable Moments in the News, a newsletter that takes recent earth and space science related news stories and places them in a context relevant to the science curriculum. It enables teachers to use a breaking news story to create a teachable moment in the classroom.

From a spacecraft capturing samples from a comet, and rovers deciphering signs of ancient seas on the surface of Mars, to the launch of a new probe to the planet Mercury, Teachable Moments in the News is meant to provide educators a seamless pathway from the news desk to the classroom.

For each news story, an overview of the newsworthy information is provided, along with high quality inquiry-based lessons at various grade levels and links to more in-depth articles. The lessons develop a conceptual understanding of a topic relevant to both the news story and the science curriculum as defined by the National Science Education Standards. News becomes relevant to students in the classroom, and teachers are provided with the means to integrate the news into the curriculum.

Teachable Moments in the News is issued to Challenger Center's networks of Learning Centers, Educators, and Journey through the Universe communities, as well as the MESSENGER Educator Fellows for the MESSENGER spacecraft mission to Mercury.

Each issue contains a number of teachable moments in the news and is accompanied by PDF files containing the relevant lessons.