By Stacy Palen. Discussing the calendar can bring a “science and society” learning objective into the astronomy classroom. Lunar Calendars Islam, for example, uses a lunar calendar. The resulting gradual drift of holidays and festivals such as Ramadan through the seasons opens discussion not only to the use of calendars, but also to the earliest…

by Stacy Palen. Sometimes, you do a thing in class, and you think, “Why did I never do that before?!” That happened to me this semester, when for the first time, I gave my introductory astronomy students a first assignment in vocabulary building. This was basic, absolutely basic. I gave them a list of astronomical…