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This is a great investigation question, one I think would be worthwhile for many schools. We are in the process of a road safety campaign and I feel something like this would be beneficial for us to carry out.
How are storms impacting farmers in our local community?
We are a rural based school and so many students in our school have a huge interest in farming and agriculture, many students are from farming backgrounds. Therefore I feel linking our investigation with an area many kids already have an interest may spark more enthusiasm for the project.
I would work with a focus group of 5th/6th Class students that have an interest in the topic, working closely with the guidelines laid out in the Climate Detectives planner.
Linking in with local farmers we would invite some guest speakers to the school to discuss how storms in recent years have impacted their own farms directly. From this we would organise a farm visit to explore first hand how farms have been/could be impacted, fallen trees on fencing and buildings, loss of electricity for dairy farmers, flooding of land for tillage farmers, animal safety etc.
We would gather photographic evidence of damage caused by storms to the land, animals and farming areas. The students would include this evidence and guest speaker information to create digital presentations on their findings.
It is very interesting to read the detail you give here about the different satellites. It’s a great tool and something I think older students 5th/6th class would enjoy exploring.
Nose High Up In the Sky
I explored the activities in the ESA lesson resource Nose High Up in the Sky. I found the lesson activities to be very engaging, with lots of new learning. For students while affording the opportunity to work in a variety of group or pair work settings.
Activity One – Exploring Proverbs. I think this is an excellent introductory lesson for the topic. It really allows for topic based learning with many opportunities to integrate into other subject areas. You could link the activity with history – exploring old proverbs, discussing with parents and grandparents. You could also link with art, designing and create posters for accompanying proverbs. This activity could then be extended with the use of IT, students could create digital posters for proverbs. There is also an opportunity to extend this lesson to Gaeilge, exploring Irish based weather proverbs. This lesson activity is one I look forward to using with my class group this year as I really like the integration based learning opportunities it creates.
Activity 2 – Sensing the Weather. I really like this lesson as it draws students attention to the environment around them. It encourages them to pause and take stock of their surroundings, something many of us do not do in the busy school environment.
Scoot the 3 – Building a Weather Station. I think this lesson builds on the prior learning from the previous activities, the students should have a good awareness of the topic at this point and the different aspects of weather they want to explore and record In their environment. I think the students would engage really well when creating their own weather station and would enjoy retrieving and recording the data on a daily basis. This lesson also lends itself to integration with the formulation of graphs to display data recorded, using skills learned in Maths. Again some students may wish to record the data using IT, creating graphs on different softwares.
Overall I feel these lesson activities are well planned, stimulating and engaging. I am looking forward to using them in the coming school year.
The film Home is a very eye opening watch, it really highlights the inter connectivity of life on Earth and the impact we as humans have. It is very well put together, the images are harsh at times but hit home about the true reality of climate change.
As the film is long and some images may not be suitable for all students I think I would just show different segments of the film to a class. There are definitely some scenes worth using as a lesson stimulus with older classes. For younger classes the Paxi video could be used as a lesson stimulus.
I like the idea of using a short segment of the film or a variety of still images for a lesson stimulus and asking the students thought provoking questions such as, ‘What do you think this image is trying to tell us?’ Or ‘What does this image/short clip make you think of?’.
Leading on from an introductory task as mentioned above I think using the carbon footprint tool could be beneficial, letting the students explore individually or as a class group how they are having an impact on the environment.
I would then assign the children a pair work task where there work to generate posters on the theme of climate change. They poster activity would encourage the kids to include some images and drawing showing the impact of climate change, some facts they found interesting and some ways they can help reduce individuals carbon footprint. The posters would then be displayed around the school.
Your suggestion to use the score for a listen and draw activity is great idea, teaching with a thematic approach across as many subjects as possible makes a topic more connected to different aspects of students lives.
I like your idea of using more pictures and graphs to make the data more relatable for students, this could make the data more comprehensible for all pupils.
Activity 3 – Climate Reporters
I like how this lesson opens with establishing students prior knowledge of Greenhouse Gases. It is always good to allow students a chance to brainstorm at the beginning of a topic, some student may have prior knowledge that they wish to clarify in their own minds and it also allows students to voice any misconceptions they may have.
The introductory video clip is also a nice way of grabbing students to attention, it is short, engaging and shares clear concise information. This clip may not be suitable for older classes but I think would work well with a 3rd class age group.
I like how the main body of the lesson affords the opportunity it’s to work in groups while also incorporating ICT, for the use of Teal. I think this activity would work well in a 5th/6th class, the students would enjoy working with such a computer task and recording their results.
This activity also lends itself to short pair or group work presentations as an extension activity, students could work together to create a short poster/Google Slides showing how the increase in temperature could impact their lives in the future. Results could be shared with their peers or other classes of similar ages.
I like your suggestion Deirdre where students could explore their own carbon footprint, making it more relatable and real to everyday life for them.
Weather Vs Climate Resource
In activity one I really like the idea of introducing the students to the topic by relating it to a real life event, the weather on their last birthday. Having a connection like this can make a topic much more relatable for students. The extension to group work with this activity, grouping students with similar birthdays I think would also be a very beneficial activity. The activity lends itself to collaborative learning and would also highlight weather differences throughout the seasons.
Another aspect of activity one that I like is the opportunity to extend learning for older students with the introduction to climate zones activity.
Nose High Up in the Sky
Activity 3 Build a Weather Station. I think this activity would work extremely well in the older classes, I have completed similar with younger classes before but focusing as a whole class group on one aspect e.g temperature at a time. I like how this activity encourages some group work which allows then for a variety of weather factors to be recorded. I think the children would enjoy making the weather stations and in turn recording a weather journal.
I would like create a weather station with my class in the coming school year and as I will be working with older students I hope they will be able to link in with some younger classes and when they are confident with their work show and explain to others how it works/ explain their findings.