Description
Nong Thom Wittaya School is a small rural school in Sisaket Province, in the lower northeastern region of Thailand. The school faces limitations in teaching materials, equipment, and budget for conducting practical astronomy learning. Most students perceive astronomy as distant and irrelevant to their daily lives.
This project was therefore designed to develop a set of hands-on astronomy activities using local and recycled materials. The goal is to help students understand fundamental astronomy concepts and connect them to real life in a concrete way. The activities adopt Active Learning, Problem-Based Learning (PBL), and the C.I.R.C.L.E Model, which consists of six steps:
Connect (linking to the problem) → Investigate (exploration) → Reflect (information analysis) → Create (building models) → Link (presentation and discussion for real-world application) → Evaluate (self-assessment and feedback).
The activities focus on three key components:
(1) Solar System Orbit Model: To help students understand the structure and relationships between the Sun, planets, and orbital zones, while developing systems thinking and spatial analysis skills.
(2) Sun Cutaway Model: To help students analyze invisible components such as sunspots and solar wind, and logically explain their effects on Earth.
(3) Space Weather Pathway Model: To help students visualize the connection from the Sun to Earth’s magnetic field, GPS signals, communication systems, and high-voltage power grids, which enhances problem analysis and solution design skills.
The results from Semester 1 of the 2025 academic year are as follows:
• Behavioral Outcomes: 100% of students worked in groups and successfully built models, with all groups presenting and exchanging ideas.
• Academic Achievement and Learning Progress: The average pre-test score was 2.75 and increased to 8.00 after the activities. 100% of students scored at least 70% on the post-test, meeting the knowledge (K) criteria. The average Normalized Gain (g), used to measure learning progress, was 0.73, indicating significant improvement.
• Higher-Order Thinking Skills: 88.89% of students demonstrated creative thinking, while 77.78% showed complete problem-solving abilities.
• Student Satisfaction: The average satisfaction score was 4.65 out of 5, at a high to highest level. Students reported that the activities helped them better understand astronomy and connect it to real-life contexts.
Additionally, the activities include Peer Review using a rubric and Exit Tickets to ensure meaningful learning and provide feedback for students’ self-improvement. Student feedback was also used to improve the activities’ effectiveness.
Despite requiring minimal budget (Low Cost), this approach can deliver High-Impact learning outcomes by making abstract astronomy content easier to understand and relate to real-world situations.
This approach demonstrates that astronomy education can be implemented creatively, inclusively, and accessibly, even in small rural classrooms with limited resources. It can also be further developed and adapted to other topics in Earth and Space Science at the upper secondary level under the IPST curriculum, as well as expanded to other subjects to increase Low-cost High-impact learning opportunities for rural classrooms in a sustainable way.
Keywords: Active Learning, PBL, C.I.R.C.L.E Model, Low-cost, Astronomy Education, Rural Classroom
