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I have a similar thought process to yours Shane. We are so lucky to have these gorgeous designs on our doorstep! The children can experience hands-on the wonderful architecture and engineering which make excellent triggers for further learning. Who knows what this might inspire in them for the future!
Taking inspiration from all the modules of this course, describe how you would plan a class project to study the scientific and natural heritage of your local area. Consider what aspects of your heritage you would include, which activities would be suitable for your class group or school, the scale and timeline of your project and how you could get all pupils engaged:
Having engaged in the modules, it made me realise how little I use some of the history in our town. We have such a deep culture with regards to ship building, fishing, RNLI, maritime heritage and more. Bearing Junior Infants in mind, I think a month long project would work well to really explore the different aspects. Here are some aspects I would love to explore.
Arklow Shipping: there are many members of the local community that I know have worked with building ships that sail around the world that would kindly visit school and talk about building ships. This could be an excellent trigger point for a ship building STEM task, similar to the bridge task in Module four.
Fishing: Sustainable fishing has been a huge feature of our town. We have designated areas and times for fishing, which many of our children would engage in. There are lots of opportunities for exploration including walking the river walk and beaches of the town. We could include litter picking walks for certain areas to help biodiversity as well as identify areas that are helpful to pollinators.
Arklow’s lifeboat station is the oldest in Ireland. The RNLI have a wonderful link with our school, promoting visits to the station to look around and try on the lifesaving gear as well as stepping onto the lifeboats.
Maritime heritage: we are lucky to have a wonderful maritime museum which showcases fantastic items from our culture and history. This would be an excellent talking point for children following a visit!
Arklow Gansey: Arklow is rumoured to have created the Arklow Gandey woollen jumper pattern which was reportedly robbed and since became the Adan Sweater! This could be a great point for designers in the classroom who would have a creative flair (design a new jumper pattern etc.) thus making the project inclusive of all learning abilities and preferences!
Thankfully, there are lots of tangible and easily-accessed resources and places within a short distance of our school to inspire the children. This way, we wouldn’t have to rely on just pictures from Google to inspire and trigger good engineering thinking.
I love that you identified the farmer who built a bridge out of necessity. This would really help to show children that bridges aren’t built to ‘look good’, or that they haven’t just ‘always been there’, rather that they have a specific and meaningful purpose. Future engineers with this great task!
Using the suspension bridge in Birr Castle Demesne or a bridge in your local area as inspiration, describe how you would plan a class or whole school challenge to design and make a bridge. How would you integrate mathematical thinking and incorporate the maths skills appropriate to your class level?:
We are very lucky to live in an area with a wonderful stone bridge (I believe the longest in Ireland!) The ESERO enquiry framework would be an inviolable tool for this task especially, giving a clear layout just as engineers would use. For a class lesson I would:
Introduction: Take a class walk by the riverbank to get a good view of the bridge. Discuss what it’s made of, count the arches, name the shapes and 3D objects we can see, take photos. On returning to the classroom, discuss what the benefits and purposes of the bridge are. Talk a little about the history (Junior Infants level – discuss fishing history in the town, how ferries used to arrive here, etc.) Discuss what makes it a good strong bridge.
Main activity: In small groups, draw a large map/plan of what they think they would need to build a bridge in the classroom or on the yard. What shape should a bridge be? How would it be supported? How can we test this? What would happen if we placed objects on the bridge? Would it stay standing? Why? Why not? Who is the bridge for?
The children then gather the materials they need (for example, duplo, Lego, styrofoam, blue tack, cardboard, play dough, etc!) they go about building their bridge with their chosen materials – this will largely influence how they go about the task. Do they require lots of tape? Do they need to add more blocks to strengthen the structure? Etc.
Conclusion: The children report back to the class on what worked for them, what didn’t and why. How did they fix it when they encountered an issue? Did they borrow ideas from the other ‘engineers’?
The children take photos for Book Creator for their parents or other classes to see.
The children have so many cross curricular links in this activity with a heavy focus on STEM. The maths skills involved in this task would include; counting, identifying and naming shapes and 3D objects, measuring, estimating, symmetry, creating and extending patterns.
Register your garden with the All Ireland Pollinator Plan and record your actions for pollinators, then outline how you would register your school and what actions you would take to help pollinators:
After registering for the All Ireland Pollinator Plan, I was delighted to see how many actions are already happening in my garden to support pollinators! It was very affirming! There are also areas that we can improve on such as using potentially harmful wildflower seed mixes (which I previously thought were a wonderful garden addition!)
For school:
Firstly, we would register our school grounds on the website. Once this is through, we can then go onto add in our actions.
Pollinators.ie has a wonderful set of resources including a clearly-laid out booklet of lesson plans which each class or year group could follow for the year.
A team like the Green Schools Committee could be set up to create the whole school pollinator plan, with the help of the posters and resources provided.
One simple action would be to reduce mowing – something I’m sure our diligent caretaker would appreciate! This would hugely benefit our pollinators with the growth of natural flowers. We are lucky to have green areas where daisies and dandelions grow freely so maintenance and care of this would be essential.
We have previously planted sunflowers so perhaps we can link with Tidy Towns to plant seeds – we have a wonderful local group that kindly and frequently provide us with pollinator/friendly seeds to plant. This would make it cost effective too! We are also very lucky to have lots of small green spaces that we can capitalise on.
Finally, the children would take it in turns (e.g. by class group?) to check on and record the progress throughout the year. A whole school notice board would be a great way of presenting this through pictures, drawing and written reports!
Some really lovely ideas here Katie! I love the whole school approach. The cross curricular links are great for reinforcing learning as well as making it more streamlined for teachers to teach instead of having to take on a whole separate project! Great post.
This is such a gorgeous idea! Love the idea of collaborating on the yard with the actual tangible collections from the walk. That would be a core memory for the children for sure! And a great way of learning playfully.
For younger classes, describe how you would plan and conduct a lesson on map making and explain how you might incorporate some online tools such as Google Maps or Geohive:
I have done a similar lesson before. We first did some background work on the book ‘Handa’s Surprise’, a beautiful storybook that can be useful in identifying a ‘pathway’ or map to children.
We mapped out the locations or points as per the story as a whole class. The children then pasted pictures of the story in order, similar to a basic map.
From here, we used Google Maps to view our town. We discussed aerial and birds eye view as relevant vocabulary. We looked for obvious spots in our town (the river, the church, our school, the shopping centre, etc.) and tried to place ourselves and get a sense of perspective.
From here, the children talked about their walk to school and different landmarks they would pass on their way. The children then drew a map of their walk/drive to school. It was so interesting to see how they viewed the big world around them!
The children then shared within their groups their different journeys. Some children elected to show the whole class. They all enjoyed sharing their different journeys and maps, comparing and contrasting – “I see that shop too!” Or “My mam brings me this way..”.
There was lots of room for extension within the tasks where some children could be encouraged to label their maps, some children drew keys and some children really grasped the aerial view look of buildings and landmarks!
That’s such a clever idea about the drones as aerial footage! I tried to get drone footage of my own school for a whole school project and it never even crossed my mind to use the footage like this. I know what will be on my to do list when I return to the classroom!
Yes, definitely! Sometimes you see teachers just doing token activities as STEM rather than real and meaningful engaging tasks. This isn’t a sleight against teachers, just that perhaps the classroom is under so much pressure that we don’t always have the time. There are so many ways we can bring in enquiry based learning rather than just a standalone STEM project or activity!
Try out some of the referenced classroom investigations for yourself or look at other resources and describe how you would conduct a lesson on mirrors, lenses, and telescopes or looking out at the night sky for your class:
The ESERO lesson plans are fantastic and really clearly laid out (for staff and children!)
Introduction: What do people use to help them see things more clearly? Open the discussion up to glasses, magnifying glasses, etc. What can we use to help us see the night sky clearer or more up close? Discuss telescopes, their purpose, where they can be found, sizes etc. Show pictures, visit Birr Observatory page. Explore how a telescope may be made – what would be needed?
Main activity: Make a telescope individually, pairs or small groups (depending on ability and desire) using the materials as listed in the ESERO challenge.
Test the telescope: Can you see objects further away? If so why? If not, what do we need to change?
Reflection: What did you learn from this task? Where can we use this telescope effectively? What is the difference between this homemade telescope and large ones you can purchase? An observatory telescope? What benefits can telescope development and watching the night skies bring to society?
Follow up task: Bring the telescopes home and use in the dark. Write a small paragraph about your findings. Involve family in this task. Report back to class as a show and tell type assignment.
Love these Michelle! I adore all things to do with the sky and didn’t realise how much it pervaded culture – especially in music and art! We are natural observers and innate stargazers!
Consider how many songs/poems/art can you think of to connect us with the Night Sky?
Art:
- ‘Flight Into Egypt’ – a beautifully moving piece which tells the story of the Holy Family running from King Herod. There is so much scope here for discussion as part of religion but also science and space. You can see constellations made out, the Milky Way. Discussion can open up to how these travellers used the night sky to guide them on their journey.
- ‘Fishermen at Sea’ – this picture depicts so much darkness except for the moonlight which appears to be guiding the sailors. While the painting is aimed at physical pollution from volcanic eruption, it is an opportunity to discuss light pollution with children and how lighting has changed over the decades.
- ‘Night Sea’ by Klimt. This picture shows the night sky in all its glory without any pollution from other light sources. It offers the children a chance to see what the night sky could be like if we didn’t rely so much on electric lighting, as well as the importance of dark sky spaces.
Starry Night – Van Gogh
Starman – David Bowie
Music:
- Starry Night – Don McLean. This can be easily linked to Van Gogh’s painting – the children can explore a whole themed project on the night skies using just these as introductory stimuli.
- ‘The Planets Suite’ – Holst. A whole host of beautiful music relating to the night skies that be studied, taken apart, performed and enjoyed over a period of time on the classroom with links to science, history, art and literacy.
- A Sky Full of Stars – Coldplay. A fun, energetic song children can learn and perform.
The Great Beyond – REM
Galileo – Declan O Rourke
Jupiter – Earth, Wind and Fire
Harvest Moon – Neil Young
Poems:
- Untitled (My Father Played the Melodeon) – Patrick Kavanagh. This is a beautiful poem for older students where the night sky sets the scene and is woven throughout the story. It mentions Cassiopeia, the horizon, morning stars (Venus?) which open up lots of discussion.
- What Astronomers Know (Or Think) – Phillip Waddell. This is a more light hearted poem the gives lots of information while questioning the universe and mildly poking fun at what we think we are certain of about it.
How you would incorporate the needs of nocturnal species, especially those that rely on dark skies into school biodiversity plans:
I especially enjoyed the part of the module that discussed bats. I think they are an under-appreciated and sometimes feared creature. It would be great to instil a curiosity in children around bats and their space in biodiversity.
Something that would be easy to implement in the school biodiversity plan would be ‘bat boxes’. In my locality, we have several bat boxes made of wood by locals including the Men’s Shed and other similar groups. There are lots of cross curricular activities that could be implemented by the children and perhaps Green Schools’ Committee to go about having bat boxes in the school.
- Approach the principal to run by the idea of getting bat boxes.
- Write a letter to the Men’s shed asking if they would be in a position to build the boxes, based on similar previous local contributions they have made. This could also be opened up to parents and guardians who have these skills
- The children paint and decorate them in school.
- Caretaking staff install them in appropriate areas – the children would work on where would be most appropriate. Can they find sheltered areas? Areas away from potential predators? Would the bats have access to feeding when they are awake? Biodiversity Ireland has a wonderful resource on how to best set up bat boxes. This would be a simple but very beneficial method of protecting bats and providing nesting space for them.
It would be imperative to regularly check in on the efficacy and appropriateness of the bat boxes – are they working? Why? Why not? What can we do better? Are they still in line with original aims and goals? Can we add more?
