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

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.