[Aoife Havlin]

Projects: Design your own dark sky place

Students will explore the importance of dark skies, learn about light pollution, and design their own Dark Sky Place by applying scientific knowledge, creativity, and real-world problem solving.

Introduce/revise the topics of dark skies, light pollution, and why preserving dark skies matters( For eco-systems, human health, astronomy etc)

Each group will choose a location for their dark sky place-e.g A real town, park or rural area, Their own area or school.

Students will then design a plan to turn their site into a dark sky place, eg how to reduce light pollution.
They will then present their projects to the class.

[Aoife Havlin]

Lovely ideas Nicole. There would be such a difference in the dark skies in the inner city and in other areas which would probably grab the children’s attention and make them more engaged with the topic.

[Aoife Havlin]

How you would engage your learners to explore biodiversity in your local area and the possible impacts of light pollution on local biodiversity?

I would use hands on and inquiry-based activities to engage the children.

Lights out simulation: Darken the classroom and use torches to show how artificial light changes the environment at night, asking the children how would animals be affected by this?

Local wildlife guessing game- show images and sounds of nocturnal animals and let students guess what they are and if they live in our area.

Biodiversity scavenger hunt- give children a checklist of common plants, insects, birds in local park.

Night time biodiversity observation for homework- Observe any animals near home at night time. Record animal sounds, sightings or light sources.

[Aoife Havlin]

Great ideas in involving the green schools committee, I think this would really engage the children and make it more personal for them.

[Aoife Havlin]

Create a teaching resource using the ‘Globe at night’ citizen science programme

I would ask the children firstly, ‘What can you see in the sky at night?’
We would discuss the different types of light pollution.
We would look at images of starry skies vs city skies and discuss the differences.
We would look at a short video on light pollution.

I would the introduce the Globe at night programme and let the children have some time to learn to navigate this.
We would look at the Globe at night sky maps to compare which stars are visible in the sky.
I would ask the children for homework for the week to go outside with a parent/guardian on a clear night and complete a star visibility observation form.

We would then compare the children’s results and discuss.

[Aoife Havlin]

Lovely ideas Aoife. Group work/project work always works well in senior classes. I will definitely be using some of your ideas when we return to school.

[Aoife Havlin]

Exploring the night sky with Stellarium

5th class

Explain first to the children that Stellarium is a toll that shows what the sky looks like from any place on Earth, at any time.

We will use Stellarium to look and constellations-pointing out some well known ones first. We will then observe the planets.

Children will draw one constellation they saw in Stellarium and also the name of a planet, describing it’s colour or brightness.

I would also encourage the children to make use of Stellarium at home.

[Aoife Havlin]

Skyview and Stellarium seem like excellent resources that would be very interesting for children to use. I had never heard of them but will definitely be looking into using them in the classroom next year.

[Aoife Havlin]

One year on Earth- Understanding the seasons Resource

Lesson idea for 3rd/4th class

To help children understand the seasons using this resource, I would make use of satellite images. I would show the children near space views of Earth in different seasons. We would look at how the vegetation changes during seasons.

Then I would make use of a globe so the children could see why seasons happen. Inserting a skewer into the globe, or any sphere and using a torch to simulate the sun, rotating the earth around a fixed ‘sun’ point.

 

I think using hands on activities like these make it easier for the children to understand and also make the lessons more enjoyable for them.

[Aoife Havlin]

The sky diary is a lovely idea. Great lesson, think kids would love this.

[Author]

Posts