Forum Replies Created
-
Posts
-
Hi Nell – welcome to the course. There are plenty of 1st class teachers here, so please do check over the forum posts for lots of ideas and suggestions for books/videos and great activities.
I tidied up the formatting in your post – to avoid carrying it over if you have written your post in another document, right click in the forum response box and then choose paste as text.
Your inquiry activity touches on a few areas of science — the idea of light travelling in a straight line, of objects that are opaque vs translucent vs transparent, as well as moving the Sun/light source.
You might want to spread these out over a few lessons and let the children really play with the torches and shadows.
Eilis – you have a lot of concepts in this activity set – how much time do you think this will take? Will you split it across a few weeks?
I have done the modelling the earth-moon-sun with adults and second level students – and it is quite complicated. How would you simplify it for young children, particularly with respect to axial tilt?
I do like the inclusion of the polar day and night – I think that is essential for children to appreciate how the Earth actually does move around the Sun.
Keith – how will you draw out the children’s thinking about the sun and shadows? Would you ask the children to try to model the path of the Sun as they make shadows in the classroom?
Alexandra — by changing ordering the planets you are actually hitting on one of the newer theories about how the solar system formed. Known as the Nice model (for the city in France) it suggest that the outer planets changed positions in the early solar system. It’s just a theory, widely accepted, but with some issues.
Here is the story, read by the author. Planets are an interesting topic for children (and for this astronomy-space mad adult!), but don’t worry if they don’t learn the names of the planets. Knowing that they are different from stars is important, and they only show up as a curriculum learning outcome for 5th and 6th class in Geography.
Eilis – I am sure the idea of teddy weather will be ‘borrowed’ by every teacher on this course — it’s super!
You could explore the clothing range in class to make sure it really is suitable for the weather — does the raincoat keep Teddy dry? Does the sun-hat keep the sun out of Teddy’s eyes….
Georgia – what a lovely maths-centred activity set. Is this the book? https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/20359195-adams-amazing-space-adventure
not the book by our own Adam from the Toy Show who wants to be a CapCom?
Fiona – we look at rockets in more detail in module 5 – but I love how you have planned to engage the children, and concentrated on forces as the science topic.
I have given children a toy car and asked them to make it move in as many different ways as possible that they can think of — this is very open ended and the children can discuss and play as they learn.
There are pictures of a rocket launch that can be sequenced in the ISS Primary Education Kit from ESA – you can find it on page 54 here.
Eilis – my colleague was a volunteer at Dunsink at the time, and says that the fire left precious little whole, and there was no way that they could have located the tiny bit of Moon rock! The Independent has an article about it.
This video? https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gdj8lPvW0rc
Cute characters- but it builds on the misconception that the Moon can only be seen at night! When they are arguing about the crescent Moon – they should have just looked up and seen it in the morning sky!
How would you help the children explore the reasons for the different phases of the Moon? – remembering that phases of the Moon are not part of the primary curriculum, so the emphasis should be on what is lighting up the Moon and how we can only see something that is lit up or gives out its own light.
Marie – I like how you have started with cold objects that have warmed up – and then extended the thinking to a room temperature chocolate that needs to be melted. This will really pull out the children’s thinking about heat and how it affects everyday materials.
This is a lovely way to access: explore the effects of heating and cooling on everyday objects, materials and substances.
For infants this could be a complete investigation — they could explore lots of different items to see if warming them up makes them liquid.
I see that you have planned to explore removing heat from a liquid to make it solid –but is there a way to that easily other than put it in a freezer? – which isn’t particularly visual and obvious – compared to holding onto a bit of butter or chocolate until it goes melty!
Hi Keith – can you check permissions on the mind map please, I’m getting a “not found”.
Keeping food hot and cold for a picnic is a lovely engaging scenario. The children can consider what they already know and there is a nicely inexpensive set of materials that they might use to test out if the hot chocolate stays hot, and if the icecream stays iced.
Aisling – in your outline about the differences between day and night, you have included
- day vs night activities
- how we see objects (light travels from the object to our eyes),
- sources of light,
- and formation of shadows.
- extension: Sun in the sky.
That strikes me as an ambitious plan. Would you be guided by your class and what they are most interested in? Would you have a range of small torches and opaque objects to let them play with shadows?
Michael – I like the emphasis on the dangers of sunlight for young children, I don’t quite understand why it only shows in SESE Geography for 3rd and 4th class.
Alexandra – do you use them in a very general way to capture all ideas that the children have about a theme? How do you narrow down the W to create a streamlined inquiry question?
Inquiry in science is about letting the children predict what they think will happen based on their understanding – and allowing the activity to verify or challenge their models and assumptions.