In February, EU Universe Awareness (EU-UNAWE) participated in a Dutch primary school’s ‘astronomy month’. With help from some of the Universe Awareness Student Ambassadors, eight astronomy workshops for children were held over an eight-day period in a school in Voorburg, the Netherlands. Each day, a different class in the school attended a workshop, with a total of 180 pupils aged 4 to 12 years taking part.
In addition to these workshops, EU-UNAWE also used the event as an opportunity to provide training for the school’s teachers in how to introduce young children to basic astronomy concepts. Training sessions were held prior to each astronomy workshop so that the educators could see the teaching methods put into practice afterwards and how the children responded to them.
“Holding the astronomy workshops immediately after the teacher training sessions helped to reinforce what had been discussed,” says Wouter Schrier, National Project Manager for EU-UNAWE in the Netherlands. “The improvement in the teachers’ confidence levels in tackling astronomy concepts in the classroom was tremendous. It’s definitely a format that I’ll use again in future teacher training events.”
EU-UNAWE also arranged for the Netherlands Research School for Astronomy (NOVA) to visit the school with a mobile planetarium on 21 February. For many of the children, this was their first planetarium show.
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