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Without a doubt it is clear that climate change is a huge topic in society at the moment and something which is important to explore with children in schools.
I would encourage the children to think about: “What is our school’s carbon footprint and how might that be affecting climate change?”
To start, we would discuss energy usage in school: lights, IWBs, internet etc. We would then discuss what actions we can take day-to-day to ensure we are not wasting this the energy (such as turning off lights when we leave the room)
We would also look at the type of heating system the school may use – fossil fuel based or electric – and talk about the most efficient ways to heat buildings. This could lead to discussion about renewable energy forms such as solar and wind and the potential to use solar panels and insulation to better heat our building.
I would show the children videos and we would do lesson as about climate change before undertaking the next steps which would be do problem solve how best they could record and measure the energy use in the school, how they could represent this data and how best to interpret it. This would then be turned into a whole school project about how we could improve our schools carbon footprint.
Unfortunately in todays society structural inequality is prevalent across many areas such as education, housing, healthcare.
Personally I can see first-hand in school how housing inequality can have an affect both at global and local level.
Traditionally we may have associated homelessness with third world countries however unfortunately it has become a crisis in our country and this can be seen in our schools. Many children are living in direct provision centres, B&B’s, hotels, inadequate social housing and this has a profound impact on their quality of life. Many children have no adequate playing areas, cooking facilities, proper beds and naturally this would affect them. This then affects them in school as they many come into school tired, frustrated, hungry and this impacts on their learning. As well as this children may feel shame and embarrassment about their social situation. I would encourage my class and my school to engage in exploring and understanding these situations more to help better empathise and assist these children and their families.From my experience in teaching gender stereotypes can affect students from a young age. This can be seen often during playtime for younger children, when given toys to play with we often give girls certain toys and boys certain toys.
Also as children progress up the school we can see again during yard time boys may tend to be given a soccer ball or a hurl and encouraged to go down the field to play, while often girls can be encouraged to watch out for the younger children on yard or be ‘helpers’. Of course this is not always the case but often time we can see ourselves subconsciously applying these stereotypes to children.
An example I saw of this is where boys were girls and boys were asked to play different games purely based on their gender as opposed to being asked which one they wanted to play. It was not meant in any way to stereotype the children however it is something to consider when teaching that we don’t fall into those habits.Development Education is important because our society is ever evolving and children are far more exposed now to social media and news outlets.
As mentioned children are far more exposed to social media and hear a lot more about what is going on the world. For this reason development education is important as it is vital that children receive truthful and accurate information. We as teachers can show children how to access this.
Also classrooms in today’s society are far more diverse. There are many different ethnicities, cultures, social backgrounds and it is important that children understand this to help develop mutual respect amongst each other.
I would encourage this in my own teachings by having cultures days, allowing children and their parents to discuss with the class their culture. Also I would introduce friendship groups whereby children have to play with each person in their class at certain parents of the term to encourage children to mix.Prepare a school project to collect Piseógs/Traditions/Stories of the Night. For Example: Dúchas Folklore Commission
I think this would be a lovely project/ activity to undertake as a whole school. This could be also incorporated across many curricula areas such as history, art, English, gaeilge.
I also think it would be a lovely idea to incorporate this with grandparents day. Leading upto this children could interview their grandparents about old Piseógs/Traditions/Stories of the Night and children could discuss this with them. Children could then create a presentation about what they discussed. Grandparents could also be given the opportunity to discuss these on grandparents day and tell them to the other children. Children could then incorporate this by doing an art lesson relating to the story. Grandparents could also help the children and it would be a lovely activity to do on the day together.How you would engage your learners to explore biodiversity in your local area and
the possible impacts of light pollution on local biodiversity.
The biodiversity in the local area where my school is consists mainly of birds and insects. We are based in the city with few green areas nearby. One way we could improve the impacts of light pollution is to introduce bat boxes. These would provide a dark space for bats to locate away from the harsh street lights and building lights. Another way we could explore biodiversity is by creating a bug hotel. This would give children the opportunity to observe insects co-habiting with each other and to see how they eat, move, grow. This could be further develop by creating a compost heap to help fuel the bug hotel. This would then create a whole system for which biodiversity would flourish.Detail how light pollution is impacting your local area and how you would engage your learners to explore this.
This would be a very interesting topic to explore with students in my school. I work in a city school and many of the children lie in neighbouring housing estates which are lit up by street lights. This is what the children are used to and know no different. However it would be interesting to explore with the children how the sky looks in other parts of the country and world. Many children in my school would have family members living in other parts of the world. It could be a nice opportunity to compare and contrast their view of the sky from wherever in the world they are. We could then further investigate what are the factors which are causing better/ poorer light pollution and what can we do in our locality to improve our light pollution.
