Hi everyone.
My name is Úna and I am working as Junior School SET for the past few years. I have had experience working with some kids who have a fascination and keen interest in Space, I look forward to gathering some facts and ideas for the year ahead.
My fun Space fact – There are more stars in the universe than grains of sand on all the beaches on Earth. That’s at least a billion trillion!
I really enjoyed this module and have reflected on my many years of teaching Infants. The inquiry based learning approach leads way for plenty of opportunity for hands on learning and trial and error analysis.
I recall reading the Big Book “Whatever Next” by Jill Murphy https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Za-g9y0_Y1s .
This naturally led their inquisitive minds to the fascination of rockets and their need to build their own rocket. This develops the Strand: Energy and Forces and Strand Unit: Forces, Curriculum Objectives: Identify and explore how objects and materials may be moved. The amount of cross curricular teaching that can be carried out through this theme is immense; Irish – Roicéad (Rocket), Lainseáil (Launch), Maths – 2D and 3D shapes, measurements, angles; History of flight; PE – throwing and kicking balls.
Trigger questions / wondering e.g. How do rockets work? Gases going out the back of the rocket push it forward, like an untied blown up balloon goes forward when you let it go and the air goes out the back.
Plan, make and evaluate and launch the rocket. A great material/way for building rockets is insulation pipe together with an elastic band taped to one end. They can then use their rockets to conduct a fair test investigation for launching a rocket. Discussion before they start regarding impact of launch conditions, design features etc. Predict the outcome. Conduct the investigation. Sharing their data & results and outcomes.