[Ciara Lane]

Class Plan for space week:

Drama:
Go Stargazing. The children can wear pyjamas. Wake up to a dark classroom with Stellarium on the board and sketch what they see. They can use props like telescopes.
They will then come up with a plan to catch a star (Based on Oliver Jeffers’ How to Catch a Star). They will build their rockets, pack for space and step into their rockets for their journey to space.
Afterwards out of role we will discuss if our plans would actually work. Why/ why not.

English:
Write postcards home from space.

Write shape poems in the shape of rockets (inspired by a participant post in the forum)

Play an oral language barrier game (space themed)

Write a procedural How to Catch a Star/ How to Brush your Teeth in Space etc

Come up with questions to ask an astronaut

Irish: space vocab, stories and drama

Maths: decode riddles sent by an alien to us (sums to decode/ shapes to decode etc based on maths topic)

History: The Moon Landing, could then link with moon content from these modules such as the flour crater activity

Geography: Life on Earth, what clothes would we wear to space, does space have weather?

Science: Rocket experiment/ crater experiment/ gravity

Art: design rockets/ clay aliens/ papier mache solar systems, splatter paining stars

Music: Space themed percussion and singing

PE: Space themed dance

[Ciara Lane]

Hi Sinead,

I think this is an excellent Space Week Plan.

In English I love the idea of taking something familiar like a passport and applying it to going to space and then the idea of the children deciding what they need to bring sounds like great fun. To extend this further could you have them pack a suitcase with things they may need to bring and then discuss further. Maybe you could even put in some things and have the children discuss if you will need it/ how you will use it. E.g. starting the discussion of how people brush their teeth in space. Chris Hadfield has a lovely video about this.

I absolutely love the idea of using shape poems in rocket shapes and I can only imagine the level of engagement you would get with this idea.

In the past I’ve done the papier mache planets and they are so so much fun and really get the children thinking about the appearance of each planet and how they differ. I personally found this the most effective way to get the children to remember the various attributes of the planets.

[Ciara Lane]

Hi Aoife,

I clicked into the website you suggested http://www.sciencebuddies.org and was immediately drawn in by the incredibly interesting STEM titles that I can actually imagine my previous class really loving such as Elephant Toothpaste/ Making Ice Cream in a Bag.

I always want to make science fun for the children and can sometimes become overwhelmed with programmes and curriculum objectives and school science plans (which don’t always help with integration) but this website has so many new ideas I had never seen before and makes the search for them so much easier. Instead of spending hours scouring through potential experiments online this website offers a great opportunity to pick out one very quickly and spend time productively preparing for and differentiating for the STEM activity. I have added the website to a science Symbaloo along with others suggested on this course. Symbaloo allows you to access all your links at the click of a button and ensures I won’t forget it come September.

[Ciara Lane]

One of the resources which I would use in my classroom is Stellarium. I think this would be an excellent lead on from some of the lessons about stars discussed in the last module.

I would teach about stars starting with a prompt like How to Catch a Star. I would ask the children to create an origami star as suggested by one participant in the forum and when completed I would hang them up in the classroom and discuss how many there are. We would then discuss if there are more or less stars in the sky, do we know how many stars are in the sky, would it be possible to count them.

Then I would tell the children we are going stargazing together. We would talk about what time we could go star gazing at and what we might bring. We would change the time on our clock to night time and get ready by putting on coats, bringing blankets, telescopes, binoculars etc.

I would make the classroom as dark as possible and ask the children to make the drama journey to outside at night time. I will get them sitting/ standing/lying as they wish and we will talk about how it is quieter at night. Why is that? Everyone is at home/ in bed etc.

I would then put on Stellarium and ask the children to discuss their observations of the sky. I would ask them if they think it looks exactly the same no matter where you are, would it be the same if we tried again a different day.

I would then ask the children to sketch the sky from their perspective and we would estimate how many stars we could see.

[Ciara Lane]

Hi Margaret,

I absolutely love your integration ideas here. I read the story that you’ve mentioned when I was a child and had completely forgotten about it until now. It would be such a lovely stimulus to get the children interested and I am delighted to see that there is a way of accessing the eBook as I feel like I never stop buying picture books!

The origami stars is such a fun idea and I always find origami to be one of the art lessons that really sticks with the children. Every time I have done origami I’ve noticed so many children carry on making the item over and over again during the year at any given opportunity. I also think this is a lovely way to lead into the ‘how many stars’ activity mentioned in this module as we could discuss how many stars are at each group, display and discuss how many are in the whole class, how many would be in the whole school and then wonder are there more stars than this?

[Ciara Lane]

I would base my lesson on the ESERO Special Life unit which looks at life on Earth and life in space. The learning outcomes are to identify what is special about the Earth, learn that there are no alien beings as far as we know and to use their imagination to draw an alien.

I would use the Oliver Jeffers’ story The Way Back Home as my lesson stimulus. I would show the children the cover and ask them to predict what the story is about and explain why. Through questioning I would aim to lead the children to concluding that we live on Earth and that the boy is travelling to space. I would then ask the children to do a walking debate based on life in space asking questions such as ‘would you like to live in space?’ and asking them to explain their reasoning.

I would read the story, pausing when the boy meets the alien to discuss aliens. Do we know if there are any real aliens? What would you tell the alien about why we live on earth etc. I would ask the children to write on a post it why human live on earth and stick it on the earth template. We would then discuss.

When we had finished the story I would then ask the children to imagine and draw their own alien friend.

Using the drawings I would select children to pretend to be their alien and ask the class to interview the alien.

 

[Ciara Lane]

I really liked the ideas based on the sun and shadows and think these would be so much fun to teach at any level.

I would begin my lesson in a similar way to what we saw in the video whereby I would pass around a ball (the sun) as a talking prompt and get the children to share PRK based on the sun. I would display this as a brainstorm on an anchor chart so we could revisit it later.

I would then work on the demonstration of the Earth spinning and why we have day and night/ only see the sun during the day. This idea comes from the spherical earth topic but I think it would link really nicely with this topic and would incorporate curriculum objectives also. I would have the children use the attribute bears as we saw to represent day and night i.e. facing the sun when it is day and away when it is night.

I would then ask the children to imagine teddy’s day. We would set up teddy on the tables and I would give the children time to free play with Teddy as he goes about his day. I would then explain we need to represent the sun shining so that it can really be day time for teddy. I would give the children their torches and have them experiment with shadow, coming up with and answering questions through exploring.

We would discuss what happened to the shadows based on the position of the sun. We would then go outside and do the tracing activity whereby I would have the children trace their partner’s shadow and swap.

We would revisit later in the day and redraw the shadows, discussing how they are different and why.

 

[Ciara Lane]

Hi Grace,

I’ve been similar to you in using stations mainly for literacy and numeracy and had never thought to use them in this way for teaching space but it makes so much sense in terms of keeping the children really engaged by giving short targeted input and building on it by using a range of different activities. I can imagine that this would work really well at any class level and tactile activities such as the activity mentioned in this module whereby the children create craters like on the moon could be so effective when used in this manner.

I think I would incorporate some Inquiry Based Learning by having a station based on the appearance of the moon and craters using images of the moon and the flour activity as a basis, another station based on the moon phases and how it appears in the sky, another on gravity etc.

 

[Ciara Lane]

Hi Catherine,

I love this idea as it seems it could be so child led and really allow them to use their own imagination and skills to learn from themselves and each other so meaningfully. I’m a firm believer that we learn through making mistakes and I think investigating which designs are most effective would really consolidate this learning so well for the children.

I also think your idea lends itself really well to differentiation. Just from reading your post I was imagining the links to fabric and fibre, drama/ aistear, SESE etc. I know in the past I’ve been doing the SESE objectives relating to different types of clothes for different places but I’ve never thought to incorporate space into these lessons. This is definitely something I will try in future.

[Ciara Lane]

Hi, I’m Ciara and this year I will be teaching first class.

My favourite space fact is that Venus is the hottest planet even though it isn’t the closest to the sun.

A way of approaching IBL which I have enjoyed in  the past is using drama for the engagement stage. I think this would link really nicely with the fingerprint example which was shown in this module whereby the children were trying to investigate the case of the stolen jellies using fingerprints. I think that using a structed drama lesson whereby we could uncover the case of the stolen jellies to spark the children’s interest and then asking them to plan in role how we could investigate is a good way of getting the children to think of themselves, removing the pressure of needing a ‘right’ answer or needing teacher’s help (as teacher would be in role). This task could then be extended within or outside of the drama and it lends itself to reflection thereafter. This is also a really easy way of differentiating for the children as their interests can be incorporated by swapping out the jellies for a medal/ a match attack card/ a bracelet etc.

 

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