A few weeks ago, I was attending a music festival in Santa Barbara. As I was walking around the camp ground, I met a man named Brian who invited me into his camp. We had been talking for a while when he pulled out his meteorite collection, which he had previously found in the Nevada desert. They were still covered in white desert dust, but that quickly rubbed away to black, revealing the iron space deposits’ true color. Brian even held them up to a magnet to prove their authenticity. I was blown away knowing that those rocks were possibly older than the ground we stood on. I told Brian that I taught sixth graders about astronomy and meteorites and he gladly gave me one of my own.

Since that festival, I’ve been in cabins and had the opportunity to show off my meteorite twice. My students have been as amazed as I was when I show them the space rock. This gift I was given has really become a teaching tool. The meteorite is great for connecting the material kinesthetically and making it memorable to students. It’s also a great carrot to keep students focused throughout class.

As teachers we become much stronger when we are able to bring in unique props, stories, or viewpoints to our lessons. Children will perk up and pay much more attention when something rare is being shared. When we are reviewing our lesson plans, we should remember that those are skeletons to work around. Our classes will be much more memorable and rewarding and our students will learn so much more if we find ways to connect our lessons to students through personal stories, gifts, adventures, and finds.

My meteorite has helped me take my astronomy class from interesting and fun to truly unforgettable. While we can always add something unique to our lessons, some times we get help in making our class a success.

The exciting thing about astronomy is that there is always a way to plan a teachable moment. Knowing how to locate constellations and planets will give you something to talk about while star gazing or waiting for the telescope.

Teachable moments, those once-in-a-blue-moon events, are a great way to incorporate the events in the world around us into our class. Whether we are reminding students that bugs are decomposers or using active precipitation to teach about the water cycle, there is often something going on around us to provide inspiration and character to our class. When students see a shooting star or a satellite zooming across the sky, they will be much more excited to learn about astronomy.

There are also several meteor showers that come regularly each year. One is the Leonid shower, which will has two peaks of activity in late November. This meteor shower scatters debris throughout our sky once a year in the Leo constellation. The meteorites are actually the remains of the Tempel-Tuttle comet which is slowly being split apart by gravity as it orbits the sun every 33 years. But astronomy is not the only class we where we can plan out teachable moments. Hiking by a thatch ant pile during OSH, a grandpa tree during Plant Detectives, or Frog Creek for Water Wonders are ways to integrate lessons into the world around us.

By being aware of the schedule for natural events and phenomena such as meteor showers, seasonal winds, or migrations, and by planning our hikes according to our lessons we can keep our classes fresh and exciting and give our students a once in a lifetime experience. Although we don’t all have meteorites, everyone has something unique to bring to each lesson plan. Whether it is a prop, story, or a natural occurrence, we should always be looking for ways to make our classes one of a kind. Those unique angles excite our students to learn and also get us excited to teach. When everyone is excited, the classroom is fun and the lessons are memorable. As instructors, we can ask for nothing more.

At High Trails Outdoor Science School, we literally force our instructors to write about elementary outdoor education, teaching outside, learning outside, our dirty classroom (the forest…gosh), environmental science, outdoor science, and all other tree hugging student and kid loving things that keep us engaged, passionate, driven, loving our job, digging our life, and spreading the word to anyone whose attention we can hold for long enough to actually make it through reading this entire sentence. Whew…. www.dirtyclassroom.com