Sixth Graders Go Cosmic

Each year, sixth graders at Saint David’s step into the cosmos through the Digital Universe Field Study (DUFS), an ambitious interdisciplinary unit co-taught with the American Museum of Natural History. A first-of-its-kind collaboration, the program blends science, technology, and English into a single, integrated unit, and has become a cornerstone of the school’s broader “learning in action” theme across divisions. Over several months, boys blend research, writing, and real-time astronomical data to create their own immersive space shows—narrated, visualized, and presented live in the Hayden Planetarium. With access to professional-grade tools and mentorship from astronomers and educators, they explore a self-chosen topic in depth, then craft a journey through the stars using NASA’s OpenSpace software, which interfaces with the museum’s Digital Universe Atlas—a 3D visualization of real-time astronomical data captured by telescopes around the globe. Along the way, they learn to ask better questions, build arguments from evidence, and translate complex data into stories the rest of us can understand.