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Thank you Una, hadn’t heard of those before so I have taken note and will use them this year. Very helpful advice. Thanks
Oh, I used to love “The Owl and the Pussycat” when I was really small. Lovely memories to bring back and not something I would have thought of myself.
1. Consider how many Songs / Poems /Art can you think of to connect us with the Night Sky? For example: Look up President Michael D Higgins’ “Stardust”
This was a really fun question to answer and had to really think about it at first. There are actually so many that connect us with the Night Sky. The most obvious to me was the good ole classic “”Twinkle, twinkle little star.” I remember my own child learning the song “Mr. Moon,”when he was in pre-school. There’s another one called “Mr. Sun.” “Catch a falling star” is a really nice song. Raglan Road and the Voyage have references to the moon and nature.
The most obvious art to me “Starry Night” by Vincent Van Gough. Not too sure of any others but it would be an idea to keep an eye out for modern day artists that connect with the Night Sky.
There are also fab stories for younger children in the “Adam’s cloud Adventure” linked to space and written like poetry. I think “Star light, star bright” is very simple, but nice poem.
It’s great that there are so many resources out there for these topics. I liked in the module when they say about bats don’t get stuck in your hair. I think the children would enjoy that little fact too.
How you would engage your learners to explore biodiversity in your local area and the possible impacts of light pollution on local biodiversity.
This would be such a lovely and fun activity to do with any class. I would start off with a clipboard, whiteboard marker and a printed off template with the various animals, birds and insects on it. We could do a survey based on this. Some sort of “Nature Walk” idea. I did this before and we used google lens on our ipads. Each child had to pick one or two plants, animals etc, take a photo of it and then put it into google lens to see all the information they needed. We did projects based on our results. They really enjoyed it too. We were lucky enough to have an ipad each.
Also, observation over a period of time would be essential, especially to see the possible impacts of light pollution on local biodiversity. Time of day, year, season etc would all play a role here in our results. We could use the light pollution lessons we have done previously to link it in to this lesson. I really liked the idea that someone in this group had in module three about placing cameras with night vision to record around the school. Could even bring a ring doorbell if one was available. Simple but effective.
Fantastic ideas here, thanks for sharing them. I really like the idea of getting on to the council to see if there are any improvements being planned. Also loved the idea of setting up a motion sensor camera for the wildlife. I wonder if you had a ring doorbell could you use that? Pretty fun and exciting idea.
1. Detail how light pollution is impacting your local area and how you would engage your learners to explore this.
Firstly I would look at where we are living. I teach in a rural setting but live in an urban area. Some of the children that travel to school also live in an urban area. We could contrast both of these and see where did they notice has the biggest light pollution. We could also look at the lighting around the school and see if there are any improvements that we could make, for example, having sensored lighting instead. They could do this in groups and maybe present it digitally, through photos and a PowerPoint presentation. We could also do a “light pollution walk” and see where there is excessive lighting, too bright or even just mis-aligned lighting. We could use clip boards for this investigation to make it a little more fun. Finally, I would ask them to take time on a dark evening to just look up at the sky and see can they see the stars from their house or is light pollution a problem. A lot of the children attend youth club in the school community, so on another dark night they could compare the stars in the sky to their homes. We would end the lesson with their presentation of their own, unique discoveries.
I really liked Stellarium when I looked it up. I’m sure the parents would appreciate this homework as it is something very different and interesting.
2. Create a short teaching resource using Stellarium/ WorldWide Telescope
I had never heard of Stellarium before and I have just used it now. It is a fantastic tool to use and I think it would be lovely to introduce it to the class on “Where do we live?” We could compare it to different parts of the world and post different locations into the search box and see the way the constellations appear. It has lots of icons to click on and explore. It is also nice to see on the side tool bar where the moon phase is at, in the “Calendar of Events.” Just to see the passage of time and the motion of the Earth in Space. It is fascinating. It could be done as a whole class activity or in my class we are lucky enough to have ipads so I would let each of them off to explore it themselves. We could extend this lesson by drawing our favourite place on Earth. They could use the star wheels as an extension of this lesson.
I really like the idea of using this as a year long activity. They could see change in the seasons too if you did it all year, shorter and longer days. Sounds like a fun thing to try.
1. Plan how your students could “observe and record the positions of the sun when rising and setting and at different times of the day”
I really enjoyed the video where the two ladies were observing the movements of shadows cast to record the times and used their own makeshift sundial. It would be really fun to do this lesson with any age group and to develop an interest in this area.
Starting off I would pick a sunny day and remind them not to look directly at the sun. We would pick a few times during the day to observe the position of the sun. The idea of the chalk drawing is pretty fun. We would gather rocks and a stick. Using the stick in the ground (vertically) we can measure the end of the shadow. We would, at the beginning, measure every hour. We could continue to do this long-term and eventually we could also progress by seeing how the sundial operates during different seasons (longer and shorter days). We could have a specific scientific log book for recording our findings.
As a progression to the above, the children could do their own log of this at home and compare the positions to that of school.