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This is a fantastic lesson Stephanie, with lots of cross curricular integration. I will certainly be taking ideas for a theme about rockets in my classroom. I love your PE activities whereby you use physical activity to reinfore the learning outcomes of your lesson.
I really like the idea of teaching about different homes. Again, I would use a multi sensory approach with my autism class.
Lesson: Where do you love?
Learning outcomes:
Identify different types of homes
Design a new home
Create the home using a matrial of choice.
Learning activity:
Introduce the lesson by reading ‘The Three Little Pigs’. Discuss the types of homes in the stories and identify flaws in the pigs homes.
In a tuff tray, invite the pupils to build the houses using a variety of materials – matchsticks, lollipop sticks, lego, wooden blocks etc. Discuss the building process – building, falling, strengthening etc.
Discuss different types of homes e.g. detatched, semi detatched, bungalow, cottage, igloo etc. Look at pictures of different houses. Match corresponding pictures to these pictures. Use these words on AAC device, where appropriate.
On A3 paper, allow the pupils to design a new home / a creative home / their dream home. Allow them to describe it to the class.
Build their new home with material of choice e.g. lego / wooden blocks / stickle bricks / polydrons etc.
Discuss the size, structure, stability of the houses.
Sarah, this is a fab lesson. I really like the idea of allowing the pupils to becaome an architect, and giving them full automony with their deisgn. There is great scope for STEM engagement and engineering here. It could be further developed by creating their designs using junk material.
This is a lovely Aistear station. I love the idea of making their own telescopes from junk material. The spaceship sounds exciting. Some glow in the dark stars would be very effective in there too!
Lesson: Space and Aliens
Lesson outcomes: Describe what they think an alien would look like
Create a variety of aliens
Lesson body:
Because I teach an autism class, I like to use a multi sensory approach. I would being by reading the story ‘Aliens Love Underpants’ to the class. I would focus on the pictures and discuss what the different aliens look like.
Allow each child to brainstorm what their alien might look like.
Illustrate their alien on a page and use colours.
Mould clay to make an alien. Allow to dry and paint.
Describe their alien to their classmates.
Group work – give each pair or group of three a long sheet of drawing paper. Allow them to draw the outline of the alien and decorate / illustrate /colour the alien as they see fit. Discuss their work and the work of their peers when it is completed.
Drama – Hotseat an alien. In my case, the teacher would be the alien.
Talk using alien voices.
I love the idea of returning to your original spot to see how your shadow has changed. This is real life, hands on learning. This is a fun, engaging and interesting lesson for the kids, one that is most likely repeated at home too!
I teach in a junior autism class so I immediaately loved the lesson about the planets. My ppupils learn in a variety of ways so it is essential that I use a multisensory approch to my teaching.
Lesson: The planets
Learning objectives:
Name the planets using a variety of methods
Identify and match pictorial resources
Activity:
Use a prompt question to engage the pupils e.g. Where do you live? What town is it in? What country is it in? What planet are we on? Do you know any other planets? Is the sun a planet?
Show the song ‘The Planet Song’ to make the pupils familiar with the names of the planets.
Display photos of each planet. Guess the names of the planets. Match corresponding pictures to the original pictures.
Place hoola hoops on the ground with a picture and label of each planet beside them. Give directional instructions – stand on Venus, stand beside Mars, kneel behind Earth etc.
Extension activity – marble art. Illustrate each planet using a marble art printing technique.
These hands on, multi sensory approaches will eanbale all learners to engage in active learning about the planets. Planets can also be names on an AAC device to enable non verbal pupils to engage in the lesson.
I also teach an autism class and I love the idea of this lesson. It is hands on, child led learning. I love how visual it is and the pupils can clearly see a crater being made on the moon. I will be using this idea when we are talking about the moon. Lovely lesson, well done.
An experiment that I tried with my autism class last year was creating teddy bear ziplines to test which material created the most amount of friction. We had already learned about what friction is and played with cars to experience frictin. It was great fun and there was a lot of ‘engineering’ involved to calculate the findings.
Lesson: Zip line friction
Learning outcome: Investigate which string / rope creates the most / least amount of friction.
Materials: string / rope, straw, pipe cleaner, small teddy, chairs, table, stop watch
Prompt: Introduce the class to a new teddy and explain that the teddy loves new adventures. Discuss further. Introduce 3 types of string and a harness made from a straw and a pipe cleaner. Elicit fromt the pupils what could the teddy do and discuss zip line.
Starter question: Which string / rope will allow teddy to zip line the fastest?
Learning: Each pupil will add a smiley face to a pictogram to indicte their predicition. Introduce maths vocab – more than, less than, equal, how many etc.
Tie a string / rope between two points, one higher than the other e.g. a chair on a table and a chair on the ground. Thread a straw throught the string and thread a pipe cleaner through the straw to make a harness.
Attach the teddy to the harness on the string and allow the teddy to slide down the zip line. Record the time.
Repeat for two different strings / ropes. Record the times.
Elicit from the pupils that the string / rope that had the slowest time created the most friction. The string that had the fastest time created the least amount of friction.
Discuss the effect friction has on speed.
Extra activity: disuss times and figure out time differences.
Skills such as predicting, making, observing, recording, investigating, problem solving, creativity and critical thinking were all utilised during this experiment.
Hi everyone! My name is Alison. I will continue to teach a Junior Autism Class in a mainstream school setting next year. I will have pupils from Senior Infants to Second Class in my class. My teaching is generally based on thematic units so I am really looking forward to getting stuck in and bringing a great Space themed unit of learning back to my class.
