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Hi Allesandra – I really love this question. simple and easy to follow and execute, yet it provides heaps of opportunities for in-depth exploration. I love how you broke down the activities into easy to manage steps.
What a great research question! I love how it is stated in such a simple manner and yet there is a whole pile of opportunities there for exploration and broadening it out.
The research question that I have chosen to work with is:
How has climate change impacted on the flooding of the local area?This question comes to mind as recent weather events have led to large scale flooding in our local area. A number of streams and rivers burst their banks and homes were flooded so the children have an obvious connection to the topic.
I would divide the project into a number of areas – weather tracking and monitoring over a certain period and then comparing the results with those of ten years ago and further back. This will involve the creation of rain gauges primarily and the recording of the data on the ground.
Anecdotally, we would gather local news reports and perhaps even interview members of the public to see how they have been impacted by these weather events.
Using satellite imagery and data, we would look at overall rainfall results for the locality and following the course of local rivers back up their courses to see what changes have been made throughout the years. Incorporating historical mapping, we could examine how the course of the river may have changed over time and how floodplains may have been built on.
Experiments could be carried out to show how water permeates through different materials to show how urban areas have to incorporate run-off from mass concrete.
finally, we could look at the features associated rivers and try to identify them in the locality – rapids, meanders, waterfalls, flood plains etc.
I think you are spot on from the SSE perspective here Rachel – this is discovery learning at its finest. The children acting as geographers, historians, scientists and engineers while all the time satisfying their own curiosity. We, as teachers, merely provide the tools – they do the digging for themselves.
I really enjoyed the change in perspective and the looking for evidence aspect of the ‘From the Ground and From the Sky’ resource. Aside from the aspect of looking at satellite imagery and knowing that these pictures are taken from space, I think it was really interesting to be able to compare and contrast the images of the same place but taken from different angles. I would definitely use these activities in class and I would also incorporate some map work activity with this. It always amazes me how the children often find it difficult to compare and contrast aerial photographs and the OSI maps – I think that these activities would really help to focus in on the search for evidence, distinguishing features etc. The facility on Google Maps to ‘look back in time’ could also be used in conjunction with the satellite phots to show how an area has developed and changed over time. This might be a useful activity while studying local history.
I really like how the ESA activities are laid out in an easy to follow format – even those with no interest in space and space related topics would find these activities both useful and easy to use with a class.If my class are anything like me, they would spend hours on end looking at these tracker sites. I didn’t realise how easy it is to see what satellites are overhead. Im always on the lookout for the ISS, but now I will be keeping a close eye on the sentinel satellites too.
Hi Seán – these are great ideas for bringing this issue to the forefront of everyone’s minds. a few years ago I used a Christmas play based on the topic of Climate Change that served the dual purpose of exploring the effect of Climate Change on the Polar Ice-Caps and saving Christmas. The children really took to the topic and were learning all the time without actually realising that they were. ‘Climate Chaos: A Global Warning’ was a big hit. lol
I love the idea of getting the Green School’s committee involved in the promotion of positive attitudes towards environmental protection. Creating posters and presenting at school assemblies is an excellent way to generate interest in the topic of climate change. As we try to create responsible citizens of the future, simple ideas like this can go a long way towards achieving that goal.
The video Home is a stunning piece of cinematography that I think the children will find immediately engaging. I would break the video down into bitesize chunks for the children – maybe creating a series of lessons (3 or 4). I think there is too much to take in to watch it in one sitting. I’ve used ‘An Inconvenient Truth’ before and the children really found the visuals engaging and created an emotional attachment to the subject matter. We can quote facts and figures until the cows come home but it is only in seeing the actual damage that is being done to our planet that the children (and adults) grasp the gravity of the situation.
The other videos in the module provide a good way of getting into the topic and I particularly like the carbon footprint calculator from the WWF. This is something that I would encourage the children to do at home in collaboration with their parents, with the results being screenshotted and posted to our Seesaw platform for discussion in class. This also has the added benefit of involving parents in the learning process as well as reminding them of their own responsibilities.
Finally, I think the inclusion of Greta Thunberg’s speech is an excellent way to illustrate that the children themselves can make a difference. The children of today are the adults of tomorrow and creating a positive disposition towards environmental protection is hugely important.
I totally agree that the series of lessons would be great for a cross-curricular approach. Oral presentations and discussions in English and An Aimsir as Gaeilge. I have participated in the ESB Science Blast on a number of occasions and it is amazing the opportunities that present themselves once you start using the investigative approach. While the focus might be on Science, there are endless roads into other subject areas that the project leads you on.
I agree Fiona – some of the activities are certainly geared more towards the upper end of the school. In our school, we have paired classes together – 6th with 2nd, 5th with 1st etc. Perhaps a similar approach could be used if the whole school was focusing on the topic of weather and climate – a sort of buddy system to allow the children to learn from each other.
When you look at any topic in STEM or SESE or any topic at all for that matter, I think the key to understanding is knowing where the children are already and building on that information. That is why the Curious Minds template is of particular use in the case of STEM lessons and this lesson on Climate change in particular. In lesson 1 and 2, we focused on weather and logically, we need to review that knowledge before starting into the Climate Reporter exercise.
That’s why I think the Paxi video is a great little starting point. There is a fair bit of terminology used in it and these act like a refresher of what the children already know. If I were working on these lessons with my class, I would create a word wall, either on the IWB or physically, with a list of terms and phrases that we come across. This would tie in nicely with the weather lore that we would generate from speaking with parents/grandparents.
The use of the TEAL tool ties in nicely with data generation and graphs in maths and would be an interesting activity, particular for senior classes. I think it would be great to get different groups within the class to focus on different aspects as generated by TEAL – precipitation, wind speed, solar radiation etc. and to produce a poster or powerpoint or presentation of some sort based on what they find out.
I particularly like the idea of sharing the findings with the rest of the school – aside from bringing the work to the attention of the whole school community, this also adds value to the work of the children. Seeing others read and appreciate the effort that they have put in gives them a great sense of ownership and achievement.
As part of a recent project on weather as Gaeilge, we used a green screen to make our own weather forecast. Granted, the forecasts were very basic (and often made up!) based on the Irish the children had, but there is no reason why this activity couldn’t be extended to actually reflect the readings taken in the weather station and forecast the weather.
Having looked through the Weather vs Climate resource, I think that a younger class in particular would find them informative and engaging. There are very good background notes for teachers and the activities themselves are accessible and easy to accomplish. I would suggest that older classes might need to take things a bit further. The initial lessons provide for a certain amount of investigation but I feel that classes towards the upper end of Primary School might need to delve a bit deeper into the topics. Combining the question of STEM with weather and climate monitoring, I think it would be a fabulous idea to create a weather station on the school campus. Obviously there are issues that would need to be addressed – where to site the station, what to make the various devices from, how to build and monitor the different devices, however, I think the benefits of participating in such a project would be huge for the children and enquiry based hands-on learning would be to the fore.
Having browsed through the paper by Liston (2018) on exploding the acronym of STEM, the key point that stands out for me is that STEM is more than just 4 separate subjects, but rather something that can be integrated into all subject areas. I suppose that is one of the key concepts of the new primary curriculum – to treat nothing in isolation – language impacts maths, maths impacts art and music etc. Everything is inter-connected.
In my own class, I try to find opportunities for STEM in as many areas as possible. I find it is particularly relevant in history, where advances in technology can be looked at very easily – the Industrial Revolution being a very clear example of this. However, engineering and science also play a huge part in art activities – the design and make strand of the Science curriculum being a case in point. There are so many opportunities to make connections across the curriculum that treating STEM in isolation seems rather daft.