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Hi Fiona,
what a lovely book – I haven’t seen it in a while, but when I checked the author’s site I recognised it.
http://www.bobcrelin.com/fotmpeek.html
There is a full teacher guide to it here.
Just note that phases of the Moon are not included in the Irish curriculum until Junior Cycle – for primary children should be aware of the Moon, but even in 5th/6th class the emphasis is
• recognise that the Earth, its moon, the sun, other planets and their satellites are separate bodies and are parts of the solar system
• develop a simple understanding of the interrelationship of these bodies, including day and night and seasonal movements
So treat the changing appearance of the Moon as shadows of itself. Misunderstandings of the phases of the Moon are common and discussion around them can be very useful for children to think of the Earth and Moon as objects in space, lit by the Sun, and day and night on the Moon causes it to change appearance for us.
Eleanor,
if you can take a picture of it and save that picture on your computer, you can upload the picture from your drive to this forum.
See this screen shot that tries to show where you can upload. ^^^^
Katie-
I hadn’t thought about sharing opinions – and it such a good way to connect space to ethics.
Science opinions should reference facts -so could you ask children to explain why they think a certain way? I’m often asked if I think aliens exist and I answer “Yes and No” Yes – there are so many stars in so many galaxies that even if the chance of life on another planet was 1 in a million, when you have 200 billion (which is 200, thousand million) in just our galaxy, then that is 200,000 possible planets with life. And there are 2 trillion galaxies.
The No is because space is big, so I don’t think the Earth has ever been visited by aliens (even though I love alien science fiction!)
Rhonda,
another historical figure to mention is Eratosthenes, who calculated the size of the Earth from shadows. He knew the Earth was round.
The Eratosthenes experiment: calculating the Earth’s circumference
has an activity for second level students – if you do the maths, you could have your class do the measurements.
and this site has the great Carl Sagan explaining what Eratosthenes did.
Rhonda,
you can find some of those constellation stories in the UNAWE material. Other cultures can be found here: https://assa.saao.ac.za/astronomy-in-south-africa/ethnoastronomy/
What is interesting is that the Irish language stories about constellations are few. See this article https://telescoper.blog/2023/08/29/celestial-echoes-the-night-sky-in-irish-folklore/
For Starry night – check out the spaceweek tv broadcast made by my colleagues Danielle and Donna.
Niamh,
an interesting prompt for further investigation linked to this is “where in the world do we find the most meteorites?”
Because many meteorites look a lot like earth rocks, we find them in deserts and the Antarctic, where they stand out.
See this article: https://askanearthspacescientist.asu.edu/finding-meteorites
So as a next step, using their knowledge of meterorites, they can look at the map on the site and consider why meteorites were seen to fall in those locations.
Aisling,
I agree with you on the utility of the ESERO activities. On the main esero.ie site you can see lots of them, sorted by strand and strand unit. Use the number of the resource to get an indication of the age level it is suitable for – 1-20 for Infants, 21-40 for 1st/2nd class, but of course, you can adapt as needed.
With regards to SSE – I think the science environmental awareness strand could be an interesting focus.
Tracy,
I think you have realistically looked at which activities could be done independently and which need adult support. For the Earth mosaics, it might be helpful to have a sample made up – when I do this with groups we get a right old mish-mash of different objects in the pictures. Helpful to tell them NOT to add the Sun – otherwise there are Suns in most pictures which makes it a bit less of a model of the Earth!
Ciara,
what a great set of stations for the children to use! It could be interesting for the children to test sunglasses for UV – if you had some of the beads, do all sunglasses block out the UV. Or, children could try different types of suncream and see do they stop UV.
This resource has a little bit more teacher background on the beads.
Aoife- you have inquiry practice perfectly described – children learning by exploring and testing and answering their own questions. As you lead discussion at the end the children can share what they have found out and you can help them to see the patterns in magnetic / non-magnetic materials and the extra feature that magnets can repel other magnets.
Ciara,
what a super way to connect an investigation to a space theme – around how sound travels through media and that vacuum stops sound!
I like this as a the prompt is clear and you have given lots of time for exploring. By sharing advice they are using their design and make skills to evaluate – great stuff.
Aoife,
I can see that as being a really nice maths activity, about order and distance and temperature.
I’d have a table up on the whiteboard with some basic planet facts — perhaps the language of near and far, hot and cold, big and small, with perhaps pictures of the colours of the planets. Just think of the sorting that could be done as well!
Can you put the planets into 2 groups — tell me what each group has in common. (could be 4 nearest the Sun vs 4 furthest from the Sun), (could be 4 smallest vs 4 biggest), could be the ones Earth temperature or warmer vs the Earth temperature or colder – this is a bit tricky, since temperature varies so much!
Rachel.
the experiment can make a good demo to prompt an inquiry, so I’s show this to a small group, let them play around (explore) with the equipment, and then see if they can devise a question that they can predict the answer to – and then try it out.
They might wonder – does it have to be a torch? could you use a laser pointer (there are often pointers in remote controls if you have an old one lying around), what happens if you change the angle of the torch -shine it in from the top, or the side, or from the bottom? etc
Rachel – thanks for sharing such a comprehensive way to explore weather with the children – Nice one.
Cliodhna, I’m glad you like the ESA education resource. There are lots of them, but unfortunately not always that easy to find on the ESA website. The ESERO Ireland site often has versions of them, so I’d check there first.
I maintain a list of all the ones I can find – and I find it easier to go to my list than to try to find them on the site.
I’ll see if I can make a shareable link to the list.