Journey to mars: Role playing game experience in an astronomy classroom

Abstract

It is presented a report of an extracurricular course of Astronomy, performed in a Brazilian extracurricular school, making use of Role Playing Games (RPG) implementation in classroom, based on theoretical Physics and Astronomy contents. During four months, six private school students (ages 13-16) had Astronomy classes with the Journey to Mars theme. Students had to experience how they could plant on Mars, to construct and after to launch their rocket, to perform Spatial Physics, Mechanics and Astronautics calculations. In this work it is presented the specific story "Journey to Mars" in details, with the soundtrack used, how much time had been spent with each scene, and other useful issues; and the reactions of students and teacher are also presented. The results, obtained by the constructivism perspective, indicates good engagement by the students, as well the achievement of effective learning. This is an unabridged RPG report that can be adapted and replicated in other scholar contexts.