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Do you have a link to the poem? I like the framing for Special Life of the children being tour guides for an alien.
How often do we have visitors ourselves and we wonder where to take them!
Nice outline Aisling — I used to have an excellent image of a bunch of aliens – many borrowed from Dr Who (although that show is too scary for small children)! or from Men in Black. I wonder what the current popular aliens are amongst younger children.
There is a nice science article on what aliens might be like – for an adult audience here: https://theconversation.com/curious-kids-what-would-aliens-be-like-127289,
and ESA’s mascot PAXI is a friendly alien: https://www.esa.int/kids/en/Multimedia/Downloads/Paxi_Posters
I like the way you have connected ideas from a previous module to this theme. Would you include videos of humans in space? Many astronauts make videos while they are aboard the ISS, and you can keep an eye on live broadcasts from astronauts on https://www.nasa.gov/nasalive and https://www.esa.int/ESA_Multimedia/ESA_Web_TV.
Aine – if you know any local patchworkers or quilters, they probably could come in and talk about how they choose fabric for quilts — almost all quilters have a “seasons” quilt in them! See for example this top – made in 1979, at the Museum of Ireland. This says spring to me — with the paler colours and that lovely blue.
Welcome Ruth, there are plenty of other Senior Infants teachers here, so please do look around the forums for lots of ideas and shared experiences.
The water in the stem of two different plants is a nice demo – how will you stretch out the children’s learning? Will they have the chance to wonder and ask their own questions about this? Could they try different lengths or widths of celery and see if the red colour moves differently?
Inquiry should give the children an opportunity to predict what might happen based on their science understanding — so I’d demo this, then let them explore further depending on the questions they have.
There is nothing worse than a class saying ” I get it, I get it” when you ask them if they have any questions — a child that has understood something really well will always have more questions.
Barbara- I like how you have adapted rocket mouse for your infant level children by focusing on the effect of bottle size.
There is lots of opportunity to look at fair testing around this — can the children push the same with a big bottle vs a little bottle? Does the material of the bottle make a difference? I have used the small water bottles with very squishy sides and they are easier to squeeze than the more rigid milk bottles. Different brands of milk bottles also have quite different plastic!
Aoife – the creative side here is just great. Would you try to include the science reasons why their aliens look like they do?
Barbara – for slightly older classes I have had lovely discussions about aliens as shown in movies/films. I ask the children to name and describe an alien that they know of from a film or television – and then I bring up a picture of that alien. We discuss if the alien was made to look that way because it really is a person in a suit — so it has a basic human shape of two arms, two legs, a head etc.
If someone else suggests an alien from an animated show, then we discuss how this lets the alien look completely different from a human – and why.
Jane is a Space Maestro! For other teachers — here is the summary of this school’s Space Week actions: https://junior.renmoreschool.com/space-week-2021/
A nice way to demonstrate how the earth rotates causing difference shadows would be to pair the class up and get the children to stand and the other outline the shadow that it casts. This activity can then be repeated in the afternoon from the exact same spot. the shadow outline or shape should have changed indicating how the earth moves and rotates
Do you have a nice area in the school grounds where you can do this? Even drawing the children’s attention to the position of the Sun at different times of day can help them to understand that the Sun appears to move across the sky.
I like to ask schools – which way do the windows in your classroom face? Do you get the Sun in the mornings? (east) in the afternoons? (west) not at all? (north).
Sharon – I had to look up the Silly Symphony.
I like matching the job title to the activities the children will be carrying out. Will you actually test the strength of the materials in a wind tunnel/ with a fan? – that would be a nice way to link to the story of the 3 Little Pigs.
Deirdre — I’d definitely show possible bridge designs from https://www.sfi.ie/site-files/primary-science/media/pdfs/col/design_a_bridge.pdf,
and an extension could ask the children to design a totally different type of bridge — and compare does it work as well as the others.
We will collect various size plastic bottles to compare and contrast the force
Karina: How will you compare the force? Will you ask each child to squeeze as hard as they can? There is scope for a great discussion with the children about comparing the force that they apply to the bottle with the force that another child uses — are they the same? how could they be measured? is there another way to squeeze the bottles that is more consistent?
I think an important part of the lesson is giving lots of opportunities for children to ask questions and also provide questions that they can explore and investigate themselves.
I 100% agree with you on this Barbara. The key focus of inquiry learning for science is for the children to wonder and question how the world works – and to test out for themselves if it does work they way they think it works.
