Forum Replies Created
-
Posts
-
Niamh,
have you a particular clip you would use? We use a very simple one in module 2 – a song called “The Family of the Sun” I’d be interested to collect suggestions for other suitable material that we can share as part of Space Week this year.
Thanks for sharing your detailed thoughts and I’m very impressed with the connections you have made to the SSE process.
The Inquiry framework is designed to help children to “plan, test, and modify their ideas” and to help them improve their content knowledge and personal understanding of the broad field of science.
Patrick,
this would work nicely with some of the simpler constellations as you have said.
Good choices would be Cassiopeia (a W), Pegasus (a square with some tail and leg bits),
This could be extended slightly by asking the children to pick out the ‘simpler’ ones and to justify why they consider one simple or not.
https://noirlab.edu/public/education/constellations/
or you could look at different culture’s star charts, such as this one:
Detail of the Dunhuang Star Chart showing the North Polar region (British Library Or.8210/S.3326) from wikipedia: https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Dunhuang_star_map.jpg#file
Sorcha,
is there an inquiry investigation that you think could support this? This would be based on the children’s own wondering, and might be answered by research rather than a practical investigation.
A possible way to do this could be by asking children to look for the first star on a particular night, and then to go back outside after an hour and see if there are more stars (and roughly how many more). They could then explore in class the effect of having a dim light in a bright room, vs how easy it is to see the same light in a much darker cupboard.
In the winter months in Ireland it gets dark so early that even young children could try this.
Grace,
day and night seems like such a simple concept – until you ask infants “why do we have day and night” and you get answers such as “so we can have darkness when we sleep”.
Using globes and torches lets young children see for themselves that only one side of a three dimensional shape can be light up at a time from a single light source.
Of course, you can bring in Maths: Time as a child “Describes and sequences events in their daily routine ” linked to the hours of daylight vs the hours of night-time.
Elizabeth – if you’re interested in “Should we protect our view of the stars by reducing light pollution? Discuss” – we have another course on offer that explicitly looks at light pollution and its effects. https://teachnet.ie/courses/steaming-through-dark-skies-and-biodiversity/
With BCO I contributed the first two modules and there are 2 modules on biodiversity and a final module that pulls it together with dark sky awareness in Ireland.
Dee,
lovely sequence of activities, and if you start this in December, it is dark so early that even the youngest children will be able to see stars before they have to go bed.
Siobhan,
Stellarium is a fabulous tool, and on an ipad you can use the webversion that has very similar functionality.
For an extra with Stellarium, find the largest room in the school that you can make completely dark and shine a projector onto the biggest clear wall – it isn’t a planetarium, but for those children who haven’t experienced one, it will come close!
Caoimhe,
I see this as being a “design and make” version of the Inquiry Framework.
You have the engage section beautifully started with hangman and constellation (I also love hangman when introducing a new topic – for aliens I use “Doctor Who”), then wondering and exploring from discussion and inspecting images.
The investigation is then
Explore | Plan | Make | Evaluate as a variant to
Starter Question | Predicting | Conducting the Investigation | Sharing: Interpreting the data / results
with marshmallow constellations the effect of the viewer’s direction of view on how the object looks becomes so clear – and this links to Maths : Shape.
Kerri – you can also use google Mars (accessible from the downloaded version of Google Earth Pro) and zoom into some of the panoramas taken by the rovers. The Spirit and Opportunity rovers took panoramas, and there is a little photo icon that lets you zoom in and be surrounded by the landscape that the rovers saw.
If you don’t have Google Earth Pro, use https://www.google.com/maps/space/mars to show Mars from space.
We have a new European project that is going to look at how to use satellite images of Earth, Moon and Mars with schools – it should have outlines of useful material, although likely for older primary children. You can follow it at https://stemmos.eu/
Niamh, thanks for sharing this detailed look at inquiry in your classroom.
You have captured the essence of the framework that was shared in Module 1 – an engaging context that promotes wondering and exploration, followed by a discrete starter question “which way of melting is fastest”, and a simple but clear investigation to let children find out.
Did the children refer to their own understanding when making predictions? ie the hairdryer will be fastest because it is hotter. Warm water will melt faster than cold water because it warms up the ice….
Were there any unexpected results? They can be a rich source of discussion – perhaps the ice was uneven, or an air bubble was caught by one toy, so that the ice didn’t surround it etc.
Hi Sean,
have you found that your classes do perceive the Earth as flat? Studies on this with children (such as this one) point out that the way that we ask children about the Earth has an effect on how they present their understanding. If asked to draw the Earth from space, many know that it is round, but can’t draw it clearly.
I think offering models that are spheres and other 3-D shapes and asking children to choose which one is like the Earth may be clearer for the children – or you might share the Powers of 10 film that zooms out from the Earth, clearly showing that the flat picnic area is a tiny bit of the whole planet.
Darcera – I used to ask children “have you ever been woken up by a phone call from a relative in another country” – but mobile phones and video calls have stopped that!
It can be nice to refer to a sporting event that is taking place in another country, and how if you want to watch it you have to allow for the time difference.
Of course, you are preparing them for the end of the progression continua “Explains how and why time zones change with references to lines of latitude.”
Kerri,
I like your plan of starting the observations on a full Moon, but be aware that the Moon rises a bit later each night.
Use something like timeanddate.com for your location to check the times of moonrise and you might plan to look for the Moon in the daytime morning when it is in 3rd quarter.
Many years ago I had a child complete a moon observation sheet for me – and for the 3rd quarter moon she had drawn a pie shape, with 1/4 cut out! ◔
