Activity Set: Rockets lesson idea for Senior Infants.
I would envisage using this lesson following on from work related to the Activity sets based on planets and the Moon. I would also cover the Story of Neil Armstrong in SESE:History and complete some work in Drama related to his story before starting this lesson.
To engage the children at the beginning of the lesson, I would display my NASA Saturn V rocket poster on the board and also show the children a video clip of the rocket launch as the stimulus to get the children talking and wondering. See https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ViNcBQ8cDA0
We could discuss rockets their shapes and sizes, explore different types of rockets, all the time encouraging children to make observations, ask wondering questions and discuss and share their ideas with the class. I feel it is very important for the children to lead this area, and I would follow their lead with my questioning or prompting. Could we make our own rockets and launch them in the classroom?
I would allow children to explore in small groups the materials available and see what ideas they could come up with first. Next I would teach the children how to make a Mouse Rocket https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GUKCT2L3DjA&t=26s or the Balloon rockets from https://spark.iop.org/balloon-rocket (depending on the fine motor skills of the class!) I would encourage the children to explore how the rocket is launch and see what wondering questions they come up with.
For the investigation our starter question may be- Does the rocket travel further if I push harder/ blow the balloon bigger? Children will share their predictions in their group as the teacher circulates the class and engages with the different groups. Next the children will carry out their investigation. Teacher will use prompting to help children decide if their test is fair. the children may use whiteboards and marker to collect their Data. Afterwards they will discuss and interpret their data before sharing their finding with the class.We will then compare the finding with the predictions made.
When completing of next PE lesson on throwing, we could use the foam javelins and see if the children can make connections and apply their learning from the rockets to how the javelin travel the furthest.