Astronomy, taught under the sky.

Most astronomy courses are a textbook full of diagrams with one night at a telescope bolted on. This one is the reverse. Every week is built around a question you answer by looking — with binoculars or a telescope, a planisphere, a diffraction grating, a light curve or a spectrum to read — and the reading exists to support that work. That is what "observation-led, not textbook-led" means, and it is the single most important thing to understand about how this course runs.

The course is organized as a two-day rhythm: a Concept Day where the idea is introduced and worked through on paper, and an Observation Day where it becomes real — measured, sketched, tracked across the sky — and gets written up. Running underneath it all, and across the whole term, the student keeps a sky-observation journal at home: moon phases night after night, a planet creeping against the stars, sunspots, the turning constellations. That over-time record is where retention actually consolidates.

Mastery is the progression rule. A student advances through a concept when they can reproduce, explain, and apply it — not when the calendar says so. "Not yet" is the honest, expected default; "mastered" is earned and demonstrated. The rubrics are the instrument that makes that judgment fair and repeatable.