Space weather, taught on the real thing
Three ready-to-teach lessons, each about 45 minutes, built on the live tracker and the six-module course. Everything is free, needs no accounts, and runs on Chromebooks and phones. CME Tracker is listed in NASA's SOHO classroom links.
Lesson plans
Each fits one class period
Lesson 1 · The Sun threw something at us
Grades 6 to 12 · 45 min · projector + student devices
- Warm-up (5 min). Today's Sun on the today page. Count the CMEs. Ask: how many are aimed at us?
- Direct instruction (10 min). CME versus flare: cannonball versus flash. Use the explainer and the anatomy panel in Module 1.
- Guided activity (20 min). Students do Module 1 on their devices: click the newest CME, read its speed and aim. Then the Gannon replay on the projector; students narrate what they see and ask to scrub.
- Exit ticket (10 min). "Why does a CME give days of warning but a flare gives none?"
Lesson 2 · Forecasting with honest error bars
Grades 8 to 12 · 45 min · student devices
- Hook (5 min). Module 4 on the projector: change the solar wind, watch the arrival move by hours.
- Predict, then reveal (20 min). Students run Module 5. They commit each call on paper before the reveal. Collect the calls.
- Discussion (15 min). Why was the July 2012 call predictable and the March 2015 call not? Arrival is physics on speed and distance; strength depends on a field direction nobody can see until the last hour.
- Close (5 min). The model's real scorecard from Module 4: about twelve hours either way, misses included. Ask: is that a good forecast?
Lesson 3 · The great storms (jigsaw)
Grades 6 to 12 · 45 min · small groups
- Setup (5 min). Each group takes one storm from the famous storms pages: Carrington 1859, Québec 1989, Halloween 2003, Gannon 2024, Starlink 2022.
- Group work (20 min). Replay it, read the story, and answer three questions: what happened, what broke, what would break today?
- Report back (15 min). Two minutes per group.
- Closing question (5 min). What is different about our infrastructure now versus 1859?
Classroom setup
Five minutes before the bell
- Projector: open the tracker in its clean preset: panels collapsed, just the map. Press F for full screen in most browsers. Keys 1, 2, 3 switch presets.
- Class webpage or smartboard: the free embed widgets put the live map on any page.
- Orientation: the 90-second video tour gets a class using the interface fast. The glossary covers the jargon.
- Accuracy questions: the science page publishes the model's real validation, including the misses, if students push on "how do you know?"
- Privacy: no accounts, no student data. Course progress lives only in each browser's local storage.
Standards
Where this fits
- NGSS science and engineering practices: analyzing and interpreting data (Modules 1, 3, 6); developing and using models (Modules 4, 5); evaluating uncertainty and the limits of a model (Modules 4, 5).
- NGSS disciplinary core ideas: ESS1.A the universe and its stars, ESS1.B Earth and the solar system, ESS3.B natural hazards. Cross-cutting: cause and effect, systems and system models, scale and proportion.
Tell us how it went
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