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Hi Siobhan, it is such a good point about sports and girls not wanting to play due to gender stereotypes. It something I have seen myself too on the school yard and something we all need to work on to help children feel they can participate and enjoy sport no matter what their gender is.
Gender stereotypes definitely impact children from a young age. I have noticed in my own teaching that many of the SESE books have stereotypes and are biased. For example, we tend to focus on men in history, in STEM etc. When teaching children about gender stereotypes, I asked the children to all draw a picture of a scientist. In a class of 28 where 14 girls and 14 were boys, most of the class drew a male scientist. I found this incredibly sad and disheartening but it was an excellent starting point for my lesson to teach children about gender stereotypes and introduce them to lots of females working in STEM. Development Education offers really useful ways to challenge these stereotypes. Using discussion, stories, role play, projects, videos and cooperative learning gives children the chance to question their assumptions and hear different viewpoints. An excellent video to show the class is the NIKE ad “run like a girl”, it is a great starting point for talking about stereotypes and how they influence the way we think.
Reading Ehigie’s paper‘The Role of Global Citizens in Today’s World (2021) reinforces the importance Development Education has in helping children understand the wider world and their place in it. It shouldn’t be looked at as stand alone subject, but rather by using an integrated approach through the use of stories, discussions, geography, and SPHE. By integrating it into my teaching through big projects, stories or small discussions, I find that it gives children the chance to think about fairness, diversity, sustainability, and how their actions can make a difference. Classrooms today are a lot more multicultural than they used to be and our teaching needs to reflect that. Having a whole school approach to Development Education and sharing of resources and ideas with colleagues would help to incorporate it into the everyday teaching across the entire school. This could be facilitated through workshops, staff meetings, Croke Park hours and shared drives.
Hi Jonathan, I love your idea of having a shared drive to work collaboratively and have everyone easily able to access resources.
As part of space week, I would use the story “If I were an astronaut” by Eric Braun to introduce space week. I would show the class a video of it being read on the international space station by astronaut Serena Auñón-Chancellor to spark a discussion about space and rockets. I would ask the class how we would get to the space station (answer: a rocket). As a class, we would discuss what we need to build a rocket. I would then distribute materials and get the children to work in pairs to make their own rocket. These rockets would then be used to investigate the impact of force and depending on the force used to throw them impacts how far they travel. After we have explored force, we would then try and throw our rocket as far as possible. This would integrate with maths and the topic measurements. I would get the class to record how far their rocket travelled and we would compare them as a class to see which one travelled the furthest.
Hi Elaine, I loved your potions idea! The children would love that, I also love the scope for integrating it with measures in Maths.
I would choose the “Where do you live?” activity as it has a lot of scope for cross-curriculum integration e.g. Mé féin agus mo theach, developing oral language and vocabulary, role-plays. I would use the book Home by Carson Ellis as a prompt for the lesson and get the class to discuss the types of homes in the story before discussing their homes and different types of homes that people and animals live in as a pair work and whole class discussion. We would compare and contrast the different types of homes we live in. Next, I would get the children to design and make their own home using a variety of different materials providing them with a hands-on, fun activity. At the end of the lesson, I would get the class to look at their own and other’s creations. The homes could then be used for future lessons such as roleplays in Aistear.
Hi Sharon, I love your ideas and how they can be integrated across the curriculum. The class would really enjoy this lesson.
Hi Miriam, I love your lesson. I think the children would really like your hands on approach to learning about the stars and creating their own night sky picture!
Activity Set: Aliens
I love how you could incorporate this lesson with art and oral language. Firstly, I would talk to the class and get them to brainstorm what an alien might look like. I would use different questions as prompt to create a giant mind map of what aliens may look like e.g. how many arms/eyes do they have? I would then explain to the class that we are going to use different materials to create our own aliens. I think the class would have a lot of fun making their own aliens. At the end of the lesson, I would get them to have a walk around and look at their own and other’s aliens before sitting in a circle to compare and contrast the different aliens they have all created. The lesson could be extended in a variety of ways such as to create homes for the aliens, role-plays or using them for maths activities e.g. sorting, ordering.Hi Meabh, I really like how you use the the story as the prompt for your lesson. I hadn’t heard of this book before doing this course. The children will really enjoy it!
Activity set: The Spherical Earth
I loved the mosaic template and would like to use this with my class. I think it would be a great collaborative activity for the class and would make a great display at the end of the lesson to show what we have learnt. Following the activity presented in the module, I would role-play with animals and people ask how they don’t fall off the earth when they are opposite ends e.g. people from Australia and people from Ireland, polar bears and penguins. After a discussion about this, we would move onto the mosaic template in pairs. I love how this could also be incorporated into learning about the structure of the earth for a slightly older class. You could discuss the crust, mantle and core of the earth while creating the mosaics. When the children have finished their mosaics, I would get them to stand in a circle so we can see our earth mosaic as a whole class to help them understand the spherical earth.One inquiry based activity I would use in my class is the “What does gravity do?” I would use the international space station tour video with the astronaut Suni Williams as a prompt to begin the lesson. Any time I have shown this or sections of the ISS tour to my class they love it, whether it is the toilet, brushing her teeth or her just floating through the station! I would use this video to spark a dialogue about gravity and what it is. I would then move onto an inquiry based activity with class where they work in pairs and take turns to choose, predict, observe and record objects that fall. After the activity, we would evaluate and reflect on the objects and whether any didn’t fall. I think the children would have a lot of fun engaging with the lesson and conducting the investigation while also learning about gravity.
