Abstract:

The paper describes the course "Discovering cosmic rays" at the Gran Sasso National Laboratories - INFN (National Institute of Nuclear Physics - Italy) for in-service high school physics teachers, organized by INFN in the context of the Italian Plan for Resilience and Recovery (PNRR) "CTA+" program, which aims to extend the scope and strengthen the scientific return of the Southern Cherenkov Telescope Array Observatory (CTAO) site.
17 teachers from all over the country were selected out of more than 170 candidates who applied for participation.

The selection of participants was based on various criteria, including territorial coverage, gender balance and motivation for participation.

The course was proposed as part of the OCRA (Outreach Cosmic Ray Activities) activity of the INFN and aimed to introduce teachers to the following subjects:
- studying the physics of cosmic rays,
- building a muon telescope, the Cosmic Ray Cube,
- performing an atmospheric muon flux measurement and related data analysis,
- developing educational pathways for use in the classroom.

Thus, during the tree-days course, theoretical moments alternated with laboratory experimental activities.

The paper describes the activity of the telescope construction in collaboration with the teachers, the experiments performed and presents the measurements and the results of the data collected during the experimental sessions.

The focus of the paper is the collaborative work to produce educational paths, carried out in synergy by the teachers and the researchers in the didactic design phase for an effective impact on curricular teaching.

Each working group had the task of developing a path based on what was heard and learned during the course with the idea of creating a concrete output ready to be implemented in the classroom.

Accompanied by the researchers, the teachers created a way of exploiting the collaboration of the worlds of school, university and research to bring arguments related to modern physics and research methodology directly to the classroom in line with the National Guidelines of the Italian Ministry of Education.

Keywords:

Cosmic rays, teachers' refresher course, education, telescope construction, modern physics.