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Irene – I like how you have identified vocabulary needs and planned to support that. SFI created a template for new words, it can be printed as large as you can!
Irene, where you have said:
The teacher could weigh the raisins before infront of the class, then each group with the help of an assistant weigh the raisins after the experiment and compare results.
What would you expect?
The language in the guide refers to the raisins with bubbles being lighter than the drink — but this is actually a reference to density and that when the bubbles stick to the raisin, the mass per volume is lower. The actual mass of the raisins doesn’t change.
Teresa – you might also look at the whole school CPD that is offered by SFI, schools that take on this CPD are asked to work towards the DPSM Awards.
Creating a log of activities can be linked into a school’s website- see this example from one of the teachers who has taken this course: http://junior.renmoreschool.com/discover-primary/
Sarah – are there any particular Marvin and Milo cartoon topics that caught your eye?
Stellarium is a powerful too – to make it even more impressive, find a large dark room, and point your projector at a blank wall — even without a screen, Stellarium on a large surface is super.
Shirley – what a lovely trigger and context to explore floating and sinking. And so many opportunities to discuss the waterproof-ness of the materials, their weight, their flexibility etc.
Eimear – magnetism is definitely one of those topics that lends itself to discovery by exploration. I’ve noticed that some rectangular fridge magnets are made with north/south on the sides that make contact with the fridge – so a rectangular magnet that you might expect to have N-S at the ends (like the image),
actually has the poles along the faces.
This is something that the children should have the chance to explore.
Thanks for sharing the book link Lisa. Can you describe:
I’ve seen another lovely idea where the children work in threes to create portraits of their face.
a little more?
Emma – with a 2nd class would you want to extend the music to include a bit of Holtz? https://www.classicfm.com/composers/holst/pictures/holsts-planets-guide/
When the children make a physical model of the solar system, would you ask them to have the planets at the appropriate relative distances? You could use the solar system walk to get the distances.
Irene – the Universe in Box booklet has many super activities, and the Spherical Earth set is one of my favourite.
Do you have an Earth Ball or will you use a ‘regular Earth globe’?
Observing the Moon is great– it can tie into weather observations – as in — “if it is cloudy in the day, we won’t be able to see the Moon.”
Sarah – Special Life makes a great trigger, and lets the children think about our own planet and what makes it special. “How might other planets be different” – would you look at planets in the solar system? or consider exoplanets? Exoplanets are so far away, that we know very little about most of them. For some, we know their mass, and their distance from their star. This can give us the barest idea if a planet might support life.
The study of exoplanets is still very new — when I was in college, no exoplanets were known – the first one was only discovered in 1992, and the people who discovered the one in 1995 won a Nobel Prize for it in 2019.
Sarah – I like they way you have planned a great trigger – the Sun ball – and how you will use it to get the children to wonder and question. Most children will tell you that you shouldn’t look at the Sun, but this activity with uv beads could leads to the children checking how well the “items would you need for a day in the sun?” actually protect from uv. They might ask and then check: does my T-shirt protect me from the uv? Do my sunglasses protect me from uv …
Irene – in the Materials>Materials and Change strand and strand units, children should
“– explore the effects of heating and cooling on everyday objects, materials and substances (Infants)
— explore the effects of heating and cooling on a range of liquids and solids (1st and 2nd)”I think adding in particle theory for children in junior classes is expecting too much. The animation from https://www.acs.org/content/acs/en/education/resources/k-8/inquiryinaction/second-grade/heating-and-cooling.html refers to molecules and uses quite advanced language. This is something I would have used with students in second level.
There are some nice ideas in the activity, but they need to be adapted for the junior classes.
Sarah – instead of clay, I have used tin foil to make aliens with children. There is a guide here (for Giacometti foil figures) and it is pretty easy to adapt to make into any number of legs/ arms / heads. A 1st class would be well capable of these, and can even start on simple number patterns — 1 rip in the foil makes 2 legs, 2 rips make 3 legs, how many rips make 4 legs?
Great song choice there Sarah – I just played it out loud and got a “what on earth is that?” from the other side of the room!
Research tasks, like finding out about planets, can be inquiry based, particularly if the children choose a question that they would like to answer. Astronomy has always been an observational science. We can look at distant objects, and in the last 50 years have sent spacecraft to have closer looks at some of the nearer objects in our solar system, but we can’t ‘do an experiment’ on a planet! Instead, we ask questions and look for patterns in what we see and try to make predictions about what else we might see.
Hi Ciara – welcome to the course. Please do check the forums – they are rich with shared experiences of the Junior end of the school.
Magnets is a great inquiry topic – since simple ideas can easily be tested — ie “I think all metals are magnetic” – and if the children have a range of metals to test, they very quickly find out that only some metals are attracted to magnets! The trick is then getting them to work that into their own science thinking. I once did this activity with an informal group, and one of the leaders (an adult!) told the children that all metals were magnetic, and then made up some very odd explanation as to why the tinfoil didn’t stick to the magnets.