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You make a good point about litter and pollution in your local park. I feel children sometimes don’t grasp the true impact of litter when they only see it in an urban setting. It’s good to show them and discuss the impact of litter in natural habitats and how they could negatively impact an animal or plant by dropping their litter on the ground.
Our local area does plenty of awareness work for individual and community sustainability. An excellent resource for this in our local school community is Fr. Collin’s Park, which was founded about 20 years ago. It has a large pond in the middle of it, full of waders such as coots, swans and mallards. It also has a large array of young native trees such as birch, oak and hazel, as well as some ancient hedgerows with elder, hawthorn and bramble and plenty of wildflowers. It’s an excellent example of a biodiverse public green space that can be used as an educational tool for local schools.
Our school uses this park educate children on how increasing biodiversity helps the locality to be more sustainable. We educate them on the wide range of different plant and animal species found in the park and compare them to the narrow range of species found in largely concrete areas, green spaces that only support rye grass with the use of pesticides and forests with non-native monoculture species. We look at how well the park deals with flooding and drought and how other places struggle with this. We also educate them on sustainable travel, energy and food choices that we hope helps to create a more sustainability-conscious school community.
I like the idea Caitlin of comparing the likes of fish fingers to lean, healthy sources of fish to drive home the message of how their choices around types of seafood (and any food source!) are very important.
Seafood is a a highly nutritious food source that has many health benefits. Fish and shellfish is a lean, healthy source of protein, which is important fuel for muscle growth and repair. It’s also naturally very high in minerals and vitamins, especially vitamin D, iron and omega-3 fatty acids. They are an excellent source of healthy fats that are very important for organ function in the body.
Knowledge on the nutrition of seafood is very useful in educating children on a very healthy source of many key nutrients. It’s often said that variety is key to a healthy diet and encouraging children to vary their diet by introducing seafood would be very beneficial to their overall health. This could be done through project work where children research seafood nutrition its benefits. We could then look at recipes to get them interested in trying different types out. The likes of a fish spice bag or prawn stir fry could be an easier gateway for this. We could do a trip to our closest harbour in Howth and have tasting activities to pique their interests further on the topic.
You make a very good point Ann Marie about encouraging independence with students as they move towards secondary school. Testing ideas and learning from mistakes is a great way of doing this – especially with a less academic focused (in children’s eyes) topic such as aquaculture and STEM in general.
From studying the lessons and resources developed for ARC, it’s clear that a wide range of STEM skills would easily be encouraged in children by engaging them in the ARC topics. In my classroom I’d make sure to give children plenty of open-ended questions and opportunity for discovery with the topic to ensure they have a creative and critical outlook from the very beginning. I’d use the likes of the nutrition lesson to get them thinking about real world application of STEM topics. This would easily lend itself to a cross-curricular approach with SPHE, maths, literacy and the arts integrated throughout STEM, while touching on key competencies such as curiosity and inquiry, as well as problem solving and design skills.
STEM can be addressed as part of the SSE process by engaging classes in ARC lessons and reflecting on how children, teachers and parents responded to the topics and the pedagogical approach taken with them. This could help our school to create a school-wide approach to STEM and standardise the children’s experience of the subject throughout their years in the school.
Festivals like this in Cromane are a great example of the socio-economic benefits of aquaculture. Being in close proximity to a marine festival such as this would be great to bring into the classroom. A school marine festival would be also be a great way of connecting children to their coastline.
Ireland’s western coastline is dotted with a busy aquaculture sector, with farming of mainly salmon, oysters and mussels. A good example of this is in Killary Fjord between Galway and Mayo. Locations like this bring plenty of economic benefit to the area as land agriculture can be less economical in these areas. Apart from tourism, they can struggle for other industry as they are quite remote, so aquaculture is invaluable. It also gives locals a strong connection to their marine environment.
As a primary teacher in a seaside location on the east coast, I try to connect my classes to the coast as much as possible. I’ve typically done this through seashore safaris and project work about Dublin Bay. Aquaculture is yet another fascinating feature of our coastline that I have no doubt would pique the interest of my 6th class this year. Activities about the likes of farm to fork, sea mapping and lifecycles of marine life will be very useful for the year ahead and beyond.
I also grew up beside the sea and I totally agree that we’re not educated enough at a young age about our coasts. The ARC programme sounds like a great experience for children. I really hope they can make it to my school at some stage.
I’m a teacher in the Dublin North Bay area and feel it’s very important that students become more aware of the marine environment on their doorstep and beyond. Some students take trips to the beach, but I’ve found that the majority have very little understanding of the workings of their coastline.
These resources from BIM would be highly effective in engaging children in aquaculture. I really like how the videos have quizzes after them. It’s always easier to engage children when they have a fun, competitive task to do afterwards. It would be fantastic to have a school visit from ARC, but all the online and virtual resources would also be great in getting children to understand that local, sustainable and nutritious food can be produced right here on our coastlines.
Building bird boxes along with a pollinator is a great idea. It would help children understand the symbiotic relationship between plants, insects and birds and how they all help each other. It would hopefully help them to understand the intertwined nature of biodiversity in general.
Question:
What wild animals would have been in Donaghmede before all of the houses were built? Can we do anything to encourage some of them back?I would first get children to brainstorm what wild animals are very common in the area. I’d then provide children with some open-ended questions that they could research themselves on iPads about native wild animals in Ireland and see what they come back with. I’d then choose a few of the animals that they would find interesting and could realistically be increased on population-wise in the area (raptors/bats/hares etc.). I’d then get them to research what habitats we could create/protect and what measures could be introduced to make the locality more wildlife friendly. We would then create some small ecosystems on the school grounds and also do some campaigning activities to reduce noise/light pollution/ban damaging fertilisers etc. The activities would culminate in some project work where children can present their findings and report on the work done.
Hi Louise. Using the EO Browser to better understand floods and wildfires would be very useful indeed. It’s something that’s very relevant to how climate change is affecting Ireland and would hopefully help them appreciate the responsibility they have themselves to protect their environment.
Option 3:
‘Nose up in the sky’ is an excellent resource pack that I’d definitely find useful with my class. I really like how it opens with the proverbs activity – an excellent stimulus type activity that would draw children in and integrates literacy skills nicely.
The second exercise would again be great for literacy skills with a wide range of vocabulary available to be used. Analysing actual weather forecasts would be a great extension task too, especially for older classes.
The final activity would be great fun for the class and you could easily get a few days out of it, as well as plenty of mini lessons in the following weeks and months. Children would really enjoy the hands-on nature of making the weather instruments and always engage best with activities where they were involved in making the resources.I fully agree on that message on how collective action can make a real difference. It’s something that I find children can dismiss as ‘what’s the point?’ when others aren’t doing it. I also think it’s a nice thing to involve with homework projects as hopefully some of these messages would transfer into their home lives too.