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I like your idea of an agricultural tour. Many of the children in my school have never been out of the city and it would be interesting for them to see another aspect of climate action and what impact farming etc. has on the climate.
Climate change is a topic that is central to lots of SESE discussions in Primary School. It is great that children these days are so aware of it and this knowledge and awareness will hopefully bring great change in future years. Some things you could engage with in school are a Junk Couture fashion show, COWOW (Cycle or Walk on Wednesdays) campaign, having different bins and making sure that theya re used properly, trying to cut down on single use plastics in lunch boxes, litter picking around the area, having electricity monitors in charge in each class with the job of turning off lights etc.
I like your idea of cultural exchange events. This is a great way to get children experiencing the richness of diversity and the great benefits of a multi cultural society.
The Mosney camp for Assylum Seeekers is the first one that came to mind. I volunteered at a summer camp for children in Mosney a few years ago and it was an eye opening experience. These camps appear to be doing good for these people, proving them with a place to stay and food. However, it is not good enough. These people are seeking assylum in our country as they have been forced out of their own. It is not fair to place them in the middle of the countryside with barely any access to public transport and expect them to be able to build their lives back up from scratch. The conditions they are living in are detrimental to mental health and provide little to no opportunity for growth and development. In reality, they are stuck rather than being provided with adequate aid in order to regain self efficacy and start their lives again in a new setting.
This disconnect is so worrying. Children in schools full of energy and wanting to make a difference in the world, going for green flags, saving water and energy and cycling to school is great in terms of promoting a greener way of life but it is governments and big companies that need to take action in order to make a real difference. Especially in older classes I think this could be a very eye opening project topic to engage with and debate about.
The Sustainable Development Goals are at the forefront of development education. I’m going to focus on goal 13. Climate Action. This goal is something very linked with my school as we strive for a green flag in the coming year. At a local level there is so much we can promote in terms of climate action. Children can arrange litter pick ups, walk to school or take public transport, reduce their consumption of water and plastics. However, often our exploration into climate action can stop there, at the local level. I think even from a young age that children should be exposed to some global effects of climate change and look at some case studies of how different countries are being effected. Ireland luckily isn’t among the worst effected countries but it is important that we are aware of the impacts globally so we can try and do our bit to support the global community as well as our local areas.
I think your point about shape and space being a topic that boys tend to excel at due to toys they play with is very thought provoking. Often toys are bought for children without thinking of these long term impacts and it is crazy to think that it has had such an impact on the scores of children in their Maths assessments in school.
Gender stereotypes are rampant in the school setting. Although I have seen huge improvements in these stereotypes in more recent years, it would be naive to assume that they have been eradicated completely. I think that a lot of children’s views on this topic stem from the way in which they are brought up in the home setting. Children feed off the conversations and what they are exposed to at home and the difference is incredible when it comes to the way that junior infants interact during Aistear. One example that sticks in my mind took place at the role play area during Aistear time in Junior infants. A boy was dressed as a fairy and engaging in the Fairy tale role play area. Another child came up to ‘tell on’ this child because ‘he’s a boy. He can’t be a fairy and wear the sparkly skirt that should be for me’. This was a classic example of a sharing problem where this child really wanted to have a go of the fairy costume but it somehow turned into a gender stereotype issue. I think it’s so important to educate children on these issues from a young age as it is simple comments like that at a young age that can have severe impacts on the self esteem of children.
I like your link to critical thinking which is a key competence that we aim to instill in children through a variety of curricular areas and activities. Children need to be aware of the society and world in which they live. Sometimes I think so much emphasis is put on children knowing about the geography of their area or the science of the world around us which is incredibly important but societal issues and scenarios can be left at the wayside.
I believe Development Education should be a curricular area in its own right in the Irish Primary School curriculum. As mentioned in the article, young people are becoming more and more aware of an interested in standing up against inequality and injustice in the world around us. Furthermore, it emphasises our reliance as a society on interconnectedness. Humans strive on connection and this innate feeling within ourselves to protect and connect with others is what drives us to strive for equality. Learning about this in primary school is vital in order to raise a generation of children who are more socially aware of problems in our world and how we can be responsible in the way we approach them in our daily lives. I also believe that children have the best imaginations and ideas and that we should be tapping into those great ideas when trying to solve problems in our world by getting the voice of the child involved in debates.
That’s a fantastic list thank you. It’s great to get ideas for poems and songs to incorporate into project work.
The night sky is an excellent topic to link with the arts subjects. The first piece that comes to mind for Visual Arts Looking and Responding is Van Gogh’s Starry Night painting. This would be a lovely stimulus for discussing stars, how they appear to us, how they could appear differently without light pollution and how we can imagine them to appear and respond to that with colour and texture. Going right back to nursery rhymes with infants, Twinkle Twinkle Little Star reminds us that the children can be wondering about and learning about the night sky right from infants. Coldplay’s song ‘A Sky Full of Stars’ is a nice one to incorporate music with older class groups.
I like your idea of starting with a biodiversity map. This emphasises the interconnectedness of animal species which is great for deepening the children’s knowledge on the topic.
Biodoversity is the theme of the next green schools flag that my school is working towards so this links in perfectly with the theme. Going on nature walks is a lvoely activity that can be used right from infants up to 6th class to get the discussion going around biodiversity. We would also use the class iPads to get into groups and choosing one species per group research different ways in which that species i being or can be affected by a variety of factors including light pollution. We would look at a case study of an area with very little light pollution to compare and contrast and look at the different impacts. We would also make posters with our findings to hang around the school and share our findings with the broader school environment.