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For schools & teachers

A classroom-ready space & sky library.

Skypedia is built to be useful in a real classroom on a real Monday. This page is the teacher’s guide: a quick-start, age-band suggestions, NGSS alignment notes, and a handful of lesson plans you can print or adapt.

Teacher quick-start

  1. Step 1

    Open it on the classroom screen

    No login. The home page works as a daily warm-up.

  2. Step 2

    Pick one section per week

    Most teachers cycle: This Week → History → Space Weather → Missions & Objects.

  3. Step 3

    Print a lesson plan

    Use Ctrl/Cmd-P on any lesson below for a clean printable.

  4. Step 4

    Send the link home

    Families can use the same pages — no accounts on either end.

  5. Step 5

    Tell us what worked

    Email missioncontrol@skypedia.net with feedback or requests.

Where to start by age

Grades 3–5

Ages 8–10

Use the "What is it? / Why it matters / Did you know?" cards on Space Weather as read-alouds. Pair Missions & Objects with simple research worksheets.

Start with

Grades 6–8

Ages 11–13

Anchor a weekly current-events routine on This Week in Space. Use Deep Space as a jumping-off point for student-led research projects.

Start with

Grades 9–12

Ages 14+

Older students can interpret raw NOAA Kp index data, run the Space Weather Lab, and practice source evaluation with the UAP Files page.

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NGSS alignment notes

Skypedia is a content library, not a curriculum, so think of these as starting points rather than complete units. Cross-referenced with the Next Generation Science Standards and common ELA literacy-in-science standards.

StandardTopicUse these pages
3-ESS2-1 / 5-ESS1-2Patterns in Earth and sky
MS-ESS1-1 / MS-ESS1-2Sun, Earth, Moon system
MS-ESS1-3Scale properties of objects in the solar system
HS-ESS1-1The Sun's energy and solar activity
HS-ETS1-1 (Engineering)Defining and analyzing real-world problems

Printable lesson plans

Each lesson is intentionally short — one period, one objective. Cmd/Ctrl-P prints a clean copy. Adapt freely.

Reading the Kp index

Ages 11–1445 min

Objective. Students read a real NOAA dataset, classify each day as quiet or stormy, and explain why the Kp scale is logarithmic-ish (each step is a bigger jump than the last).

Materials

  • Projector or shared screen
  • Printed worksheet (use the table below)
  • Coloured pencils — green, yellow, orange, red

Standards touched

  • MS-ESS1-1
  • NGSS Patterns crosscutting concept

Lesson flow

  1. Open /space-weather and walk through the Geomagnetic Storms card together.
  2. Open /this-week and find the Kp values for the last 7 days.
  3. Have students fill in the table and colour-code each day (green ≤ 3, yellow 4, orange 5–6, red 7+).
  4. Discussion: did anyone notice the news that day? What might astronauts have done differently?

Build a 70-year mission timeline

Ages 9–1260 min

Objective. Students place 10 chosen missions on a wall timeline from Sputnik (1957) to today and explain one cause-and-effect link between two of them.

Materials

  • A long strip of paper or whiteboard space
  • Sticky notes
  • Access to /history and /explorer

Standards touched

  • MS-ESS1-3
  • HS-ETS1-1
  • CCSS literacy in science

Lesson flow

  1. As a class, pick 10 missions from /history (a mix of crewed, robotic, and telescope missions works well).
  2. Each student or pair drafts a sticky note: year, mission, one sentence on what it did.
  3. Place them on the wall in chronological order.
  4. Each student picks two missions and writes a "because of X, Y was possible" sentence underneath.

Source-evaluation drill: official UAP records

Ages 13+45 min

Objective. Students compare a news headline about a UAP/UFO claim with the official record on AARO.mil or archives.gov and write a one-paragraph evaluation.

Materials

  • A recent news article (teacher-chosen)
  • Access to /uap-files

Standards touched

  • CCSS.ELA-LITERACY.RST.9-10.8
  • NGSS Engaging in argument from evidence

Lesson flow

  1. Read the news article together. Identify the specific claim being made.
  2. On /uap-files, follow the link to the AARO or NARA source named in the page.
  3. Each student answers: who is the primary source, what data exists, what is missing?
  4. Write a paragraph: does the headline match what the official record actually says?

Why it works in classrooms

No sign-ups, ever

Students never make an account. Teachers never collect a roster. Just open a tab.

No ads, no trackers

No third-party analytics, no advertising network, no student data leaves the device.

Real public-data sources

Everything traces back to NASA, NOAA, JPL, NARA, or AARO. The data sources page shows the chain.

Refreshes itself

NOAA space-weather alerts and NASA close-approach data update daily via GitHub Actions.

Plain, age-banded language

Topics are scaffolded with "What is it? / Why it matters / Did you know?" so a third-grader and a ninth-grader can use the same page.

Works on any device

Mobile, Chromebook, library desktop. High-contrast colours and keyboard nav by default.

Where the data comes from

  • NOAA Space Weather Prediction Center — alerts, Kp index, geomagnetic forecasts (swpc.noaa.gov)
  • NASA JPL CNEOS — close approaches of near-Earth objects (cneos.jpl.nasa.gov)
  • NASA Open APIs — public imagery and reference data (api.nasa.gov)
  • NASA Exoplanet Archive — confirmed exoplanet catalog
  • AARO & National Archives — official UAP reporting and records used on the UAP Files page

Data refreshes run daily and weekly via GitHub Actions. Every page that shows live data includes a “data updated” timestamp.

Found a typo? Have an idea?

Skypedia is a small, independent project. Teacher feedback is the fastest way it improves.

Email mission control