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Wow this is such a beautiful, special project – it would benefit the whole school and would be visually stunning. I will be absolutely borrowing this idea for next year! Thank you.
Describe how you would involve your pupils in an art, music drama or creative writing project based around your local natural or scientific heritage.
We are very lucky to have our school directly opposite the ward river valley which is a beautiful source of geographical features such as the valley and a river, native grassland area and woodland planted with native woodland mix and lots of native plants and animals. It also has a number of historical features with recent archaeological digs discovering evidence of human activity from the Bronze Age. In the park we have a motte and bailey and former working mills remains and 18th century ornamental garden. It is a rich resource for the school within our historical town of Swords.
Using the river as a source of study we will integrate activities from the arts – we will In music we will begin by listening the classic music piece The Moldau (Vltava) by Bedrich Smetana which is about the Vlata river’s journey from mountain spring, past a castle to Prague. This is similar to the ward River in Swords which passes by swords Castle before reaching the estuary. We will listen to the music and using UDL concepts children can choose their own method of response – using scarfs for movement, drawing a picture, drawing a line to trace the music, recreating the river etc. We will look at pictures/video clips of the Vlata Ricer also.
In the next lesson we will visit the Ward River Valley, we will walk along the river tracing it’s journey and taking photos. We will stop regularly to record sound clips of the area. We will use this visit and the sound clips we will use this visit, pictures and sound clips to compose and perform our own composition to describe the journey of the ward river valley using percussion instruments.
Children can also choose to create a PowerPoint photo story, a picture or a story titled – A moment in the life of The Ward River.
Hi Ashton, great idea to include 2D shapes, angles, symmetry and lines to bring really strong mathematical concepts into the lesson. It is a great example of using maths eyes and seeing real world applications of these abstract concepts.
• 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.
A local bridge in our area is Lissen Hall Bridge. Description: Five-arch random rubble road bridge over river, c.1760, with triangular cut waters to upstream side. Possibly incorporating fabric of pre-1600 bridge. The class would go visit the bridge to take photos and survey the materials the bridge is made from.
Teacher will ensure clear photos and videos are taken for reference.
On returning to the classroom the class will discuss trigger questions such as what is a bridge? What types of materials are bridges made from? • What makes a good bridge? • What types of bridges are there? Can you name any? • Do you know of any famous bridges around the world? What type of bridges are they? • Are there any bridges near where you live or go to school? • What shapes are used in bridge construction?
Children will look at pictures of different bridges – especially local and international ones – Ward River Valley Bridge, Swords Estuary Bridge, O’Connell Bridge, Golden Gate Bridge, carrick-a-rede bridge.
Children should then be allowed to playfully explore using lego, stickle bricks, wooden blocks, straws and jaggo blocks to create bridges for lego people. The class should reflect/present on this process.
During the next lesson – we will reflect on what we learned during playful experience. Then we will discuss/reflect on Does the design of the bridge affect its strength? Discuss with the class how they might test the strength of a paper bridge.
The class will break into groups and use boxes to create a ‘bank’ for a river – then they will use a4 pieces of paper to create a bridge. When the bridges are created we will test them to see how many lego people the bridge can hold. The results will be recorded with the group name and a bar chart.
In the 3rd lesson the class will review what they have learned so far. They will then design the bridge they will create on paper. The bridge may be any size but must hold 2 hot wheel cars. Children will conference with teacher and present design to the class.
In the 4h-5th lesson children will bring in materials from home to create the bridge. Bridges will be tested and readjusted if necessary. Bridges will be demonstrated and displayed for younger classes.
Taking next step – the class can look at what impact climate change has had on bridges – flooding and wildfires.
Hi Emma and Caitriona,
I completly agree with you – data is an area that a teacher can struggle to be authentic with but making bar chards and even venn diagrams of bugs makes it a real life practical activity. Thanks for the idea.
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 could take to help pollinators
Firstly we would involve the Green School Team in registering for the All Ireland pollinator portal on the website by creating an account. We will then map the school by identifying the boundaries of the school grounds. We will then explore the website to find the best actions to take.
Our actions will have 2 focuses:
-New learning for the children – we will use the 16 page school guide to support our children to identify actions.
-New learning for the children- we will encourage our fantastic caretaker ad cleaners to attend online webinars about taking care of biodiversity on school grounds.We will then log on our actions. I was shocked to learn that wildlife seeds are actually not a help but I will be spreading that message throughout our school community!
Actions to help pollinators:
No mow May with signs to spread the word among our school community.
Planting – increase planting of spring flowers, vegetables, strawberries and perennial flowers across the school grounds.
Share our learning in school assemblies, with the Board of Management and with the wider school community and encourage our other local schools to collaborate with us also.Hi Eimear,
I really love your idea of encouraging the children to compare their maps as they are all working on mapping the same area. This would lend itself wonderfully for some self assessment and perhaps with some modelling some peer assessment – such as 2 stars and a wish.
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.
In Senior Infants I would begin with a visual stimulus – a picture book – ‘We’re going on a Picnic! I would use the book to ensure the children understand the language of mapping. On a 2nd reading of the book I would encourage the children to recreate the scene using real life objects – 3D map – using lego, jaggo blocks, stones & twigs etc. (outdoor learning) children can take turns being the birds going on the picnic and the animals following.
Teacher then asks the children how could I mark this journey so I could bring it with me – discuss options with children – photos, voice note, map! Invite the children to work together to create a map to represent the journey.
In further lessons children can learn about really simple map symbols and create some for their map. On the whiteboard they can locate the school on Google maps. Teacher tells them they will be writing letters to post home. They need to map their route to the post box. The class can look at this route on aerial view and street view. They can work in groups to create a 2d map on paper. Teacher can also print out the street view, cut the route into squares and place them in the bee bot laminated squares resources. Children can collaborate to bring the bee bot from the school to the post box.
Describe how you could apply some of the concepts and skills you have learned in this module to your own teaching practice in line with the STEM Education policy statement. In my own teaching practice it will be important that I remain aware that I should be thinking and planning for integrated STEM learning not isolated subjects and that the focus should be solidly on child-led inquiry, with hands on investigative learning and a focus on process over product.
The helicopter propeller lesson would be a good lesson to try with the children. I would allow them to do their own research on helicopters – child led investigation and to look at examine some toy helicopters and then give them the template from the curious minds website and allow them to collaborate to create their propellers – collaboration and hands on investigation, encourage them to test their propellers and collaborate to improve them, We could introduce a maths component by discussing the shapes of the propellers, experimenting with different shapes and then timing how long the propellers take to hit the floor, we could try different heights etc. We would also discuss creating a fair test. This type of lesson used the engage-investigate – next steps and reflect framework for inquiry.
Hi Sharon, I also am guilty of overthinking STEM – we are a Junior School and I was so concerned that we would be left behind. It is so reassuring to see that there is so much support out there such as the curious minds website to support quality STEM lessons. I am really excited about the investigative framework as I think it will help to keeep us focussed and not just stick the label STEM on any lesson.