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Sinead, thank you for listing some of the resources, particularly the storybooks and hands on activities you mentioned in your post. I like the idea of the visuals, displaying pictures showing clean vs polluted areas. I think displaying pictures of before and afters of certain areas of the world as shown in the movie would be quite thought provoking and trigger some very good wonderings and exploring. Example- the ice caps, the forests of Bolivia, coral reefs, Easter Island etc
I thought the movie Home was very powerful and thought provoking. It certainly would make a big impact on the children. I would show it in parts as it is a lot to take in and the children would have many questions along the way.
I would ask the children to complete the Carbon Footprint questionnaire at home with their parents and discuss their opinions and come up with a list of small manageable changes they could make at home and at school. This could link in with Green School activities in school.
I found the Climate Reporter activity would be an excellent resource to use with my 5th class when studying Climate and Climate Change. The Paxi video on climate change, greenhouse gases and melting ice caps is a simple, engaging video. I feel the children in my class would enjoy watching this video as an introduction or trigger to the topic of greenhouse gases.It would lead to lots of I wondering and exploring. As other participants have noted, the Teal tool to explore predictions about future temperatures is very interesting and a tool which could be used to investigate not only the changing temperatures in Ireland but of countries and regions where other children in our class have come from. I enjoyed the melting ice caps activity and will try them out next year. I am very interested in looking at Curious Minds in more detail as it appears to be a good resource.
I also like the idea of incorporating seanfhocail into the topic of weather. I have looked at the common english sayings but did not use the seanfhocail before. Alos I am sure children from other countries or from families from other countries have their own sayings which would be interesting to learn.
After downloading and reviewing Unravelling STEM: Beyond the acronym of Science, Technology, Engineering, and Mathematics by Dr. Maeve Liston, I am fairly confident that I am very aware of the importance of integrating engineering and maths into my STEM activities. Initially, engineering was often forgotten about but I find the children gain most insight from an integrated approach.
Activities 1 and 2 are excellent activities. Teaching 4th class, we look closely at weather and the devises used to collect weather data in our local area. The children love setting up the weather station and collecting data daily from it. We usually set up a home made weather station in a clear area in front of the school in a grassy area. We make a rain gauge and using graduated cylinders from our maths area, we measure and record on graph paper the ml of rain/precipartion collected. We use a commercial and home made anenometers to record wind speed and the children enjoy designing and making these. We record the temperature daily and graph the results and observe the rise and fall according to the seasons. We also observe and record, as best we can, the hours of sunrise and sunset. The children really enjoy these activities.
In 5th class we look at climate in more detail and examine the different climatic zones. Children enjoy learning about these through project work. They also make Kahoot quizzes for the rest of the class.