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, rather than advancing simply because a week has passed. "Developing" is the honest, expected default; "mastered" is earned and demonstrated. The rubrics are the instrument that makes that judgment fair and repeatable.