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you’ve got to include the classic cartoon/show ‘The Clangers’ as a springboard for some lessons 🙂
Classroom Activity
Rocket Building:
I would focus on doing the mouse rocket activity with my class and allow each child to make their own mouse top that could be attached to various types of bottles that we’ve brought in and gathered in our Friday box.The children would work in pairs (for peer feedback and idea development) but they would each be using their own mouse.
We could integrate other stem topics by taking our mouse rockets outside and measuring which one travels the furthest or which mouse shoots the highest etc.
We would also try to make various adjustments to our rockets in order to get them to work better and might also modify the mouse design on another occasion to see if that has any impact or improvement to offer on how far or how high the mouse rocket could travel.Prompts and Conclusions:
As a lesson prompt I would read the book ‘Mouse And The Moon’ by Christina Butler. We would come to the conclusion that we want to make a rocket to help mouse get to the moon.Along with the obvious link to arts subjects such as creating/ making Art and English literacy, I would also conclude the activity by integrating PE and Music through having a simple game of freeze dance to Moon themed songs.
I would integrate Drama by doing a mime activity along to the sounds of, and based around the old song by The Police ‘Walking On The Moon’.
This is a great idea. Even though I teach 2nd class, the mouse rockets will be perfect as I have a high level of SEN integration in my room.
I have no idea why the material posts like this? It just looks like a normal link when I hit submit. I had also tried submitting a QR code to link to the toggle but that wouldn’t work either…
coggle link – the coggle includes a very cool link (just one!) that has sent me down rabbit hole…
I hope that these links are going to each stage of the coggle’s development. Anyway – it is an exceptional tool and I am looking froward to using it in all kinds of ways now on.
Hands On Lesson Plan: Modelling Our Connected Community
The pupils will have already finished ESERO Lesson 5 and built their own little houses out of recycled paper and cardboard. This project uses these little homes to help from the greater Carrigaline area.
I will split the class into 4/5 groups. Each group will look at a key local area and arrange their model houses around it. Bearing in mind the age group of my 2nd class (about 8 yrs old), I would use the following ideas as flexibly as possible to cater to children with various learning differences and styles and needs!
Group 1 Our School,- looking at green energy and community learning.
Group 2 The Playground & Drake’s Pool Tidal Pond, – looking at nature, playtime, and water.
Group 3 Carrigaline Library & Dunnes Stores Hub, – looking at the shared car park, community data, and shopping.
Group 4 Owenabue River & Estuary, – looking at how our water flows out to Crosshaven Harbour.
Group 5 Local Amenities – looking at landmarks like the church or local hotel.Step 1: The groups build their landmarks using clay/play dough and place their ESERO houses nearby. We will have a chat about whether each landmark is a “necessity” (things we really need, like a school or grocery store) or a “commodity” (things that make life fun, like a playground or a hotel).
Step 2: Children do a ‘Friday Box Bridge Challenge’. Using cardboard, straws, and lolly sticks etc from home, they will engineer working bridges to physically connect the different neighbourhoods across the river.
Step 3: We add some Future Tech to upgrade the town. The kids will use shiny foil wrappers for solar panels on the school roof, bottle caps for electric vehicle charging stations in the Dunnes/Library car park, and toothpicks to design delivery drones, or whatever they come up with themselves…
Step 4: Looking at Weather, Tides, and Space. We will talk about how the changing seasons affect what the community needs and why our lives and activities in the community change according to weather events/ seasonal shifts as influenced by space. We will also look at how the playground tidal pool connects to the river and changes with the gravitational pull of the Sun and Moon.
STEM Integration
For Science, we will look at solar energy, water flowing to the sea, and how the moon’s phases control our local tides.
For Technology & Engineering, the kids get to test out bridge structures and plan out future ideas like EV charging grids and drone flight paths.
For Maths, we will practice estimating travel times between different places and survey the class to gather data on weekly library and shopping trips.S.S.E. links
Lessons would be mapped to SSE domains for example:
Learner Outcomes (e.g. problem-solving, collaborative learning)
Teaching & Learning (e.g. active methodologies, use of questioning)
Learner Experiences (e.g. engagement, relevance to real life)I would also suggest a whole school approach to these lessons, following a similar style of work…
2nd class focus on Carrigaline (our village)
3rd class focus on Cork County
4th class focus on Munster
5th class focus on Ireland
6th class focus on EuropeThat’s a really practical and fun idea! It’s also worth nothing that animals slow down their heart rates to help survive the cold while burning less energy. Fish and rabbits do this for example. For rabbits in winter especially the cost of periodic waking to feed is lessened this way.
I wonder could the children test this by jogging on the spot for 60 seconds, or do jumping jacks to get their hearts racing and blood pressure going before dipping hands in the water! Then they could repeat after calm long deep breaths, and try to slow their heart rates as much as possible – just to test for any difference in their temperature perceptions…
Thanks for your cerebrally stimulating idea 🙂
That reminds me of a gorgeous little book (and it was a tv show too) that I used to read to my eldest in the early 2,000’s. It was called Laura’s Star! It’s a great story about friendship and loneliness and would make a great link for SPHE and English.
My coggle by module 3 https://coggle.it/diagram/am2tE6asr6otYAgT/t/what-is-space
I would do Activity 19 ‘Special Life’ with my class.
I think it would be useful in exploring the conditions for life as met by planet Earth, and also note the differences between Earth and the other planets that we know about. At this age, children can either believe that aliens are, or aren’t real. Others can be quite scared by the idea.I will also do the ‘Seeing Star’ activity (looking at The Plough In Different Ways) **yes I am super excited and motivated about this one!!!**
Step 1:
The Plough activity will be made with class assistance and observation, – largely led and modelled by myself but with much child-input.
Step 2:
I plan to split the children into groups and use constellations that allow me to tailor the activity for different abilities, due to the requirements of different constellations.
I would help the children to use Cassiopeia and Southern Cross for the abilities needing to focus on simpler shapes with fewer stars to be made: a ‘W'(5stars) and a ‘Cross'(4 stars) respectively.
I would help other groups benefiting from a more challenging/time consuming activity, to use Orion and Leo – this range covers 7-9 stars).
Step 3:
We can keep the display active under a few tables/ or share along the corridor/ other display area and invite different classes to view and talk about our work!The chalk drawing comparison is a lovely idea. The children could also play ‘tag’ with their shadows every so often – noticing how the shadows change depending on the time of day or month of the year! They could photograph them and build a visual timeline/stick them onto a large calendar…
I would plan on at looking international stories about the moon considering I will have quite a few nationalities represented in my room next year. I would research with the children during school and also ask them to bring from home, any stories and legends that they would know about the moon and any characters or concepts from various cultures, (their own and others that they’ve ever heard about in any context), and discuss them. At the end of the session come up with our own story about the moon.
We would examine/chat about cultural stories of the moon, to see if there are any science facts integrated into any of the stories/ideas that we have encountered. Maybe side by side look at what we know is represented in stories from factual evidence that we have gathered since the stories & ideas have been made. It would be fun to represent the differences through art, sculpture with clay, lego building and their own writing samples. We could also create a kahoot quiz based on true or false questions about the moon.
Copy and paste this for a fun teacher research-resource: https://www.mythfolks.com/moon-folklore
Here is a great resource to look at with the children:
https://www.bing.com/videos/riverview/relatedvideo?q=moon+myths+for+kids&&mid=050AD82F326FF2CEE4DA050AD82F326FF2CEE4DA&churl=https%3a%2f%2fwww.youtube.com%2fchannel%2fUCe7hAwdXhSCM34ozdNuhGSQ&FORM=VCGVRPHi. These are great questions relating to the moon! I’m definitely going to include your ideas when teaching my next class about the moon – thanks 😉
Hello everyone my name is Frances I will be teaching second class next year.
I’m doing this course because my other half got a very cool ‘smart telescope’ recently and I am along for the ride! I always liked space facts and science fiction (and facts!) anyway…
My favorite fact about space has to do with butterfly galaxies. When I came across butterfly galaxies, I learned how galaxies can pass through one another and eventually change each other as they go their separate ways, by absorbing bits and leave pieces behind (*the bits and pieces being planets, moons etc.), as they continue on their journey through the universe. I thought that was very cool especially relating to what I used to believe and people commonly believe I guess that the Andromeda Galaxy is on a collision course with our Galaxy! I didn’t realize that we might actually have our galaxies pass through one another and change each other ultimately. I guess I’ll never find out what actually, but happens maybe somewhere there’s a maths model that can predict for us? I just think butterfly galaxies are pretty, cool and super fascinating.
My 4th class from last year had fun learning about this in real time with me, as I had seen some on a telescope image taken on a SeeStar S30 Pro telescope at home here. I regularly brought in cool images. The class and I had to find out what they were together!
An inquiry based activity I would do in class is gravity based. Give ‘floating egg inertia trick’ a quick search online you’ll find all varieties of ways to approach this. In simple terms, you need a glass of water, a plastic plate, empty toilet paper tube and a boiled (or raw!!) egg. You ¾ fill the glass with water and balance the egg vertically on top of the tube. The you give a very swift whack to the plate. HOPEFULLY the tube and plate will fly sideways and the egg should drop into the water. You can base all sorts of lessons about gravity on this. I would use all the ESERO Inquiry frameworks and ideas to make this a meaningful and productive learning experience for the children, so that it is more than ‘a bit of fun’ and a properly scientific investigation, with plenty of predicting and investigating etc.
I think it will be a perfect activity for our 2nd day of school, which will also be a Friday. I hope they will all be more excited about getting up on Monday for a full week of school after that! Maybe as a scheme of lessons we will try developing egg parachutes later on ? I did that with a class during lock down and there were some fabulous efforts, successes and failures!
MODULE 5 ASSIGNMENT:
Consider how many Songs / Poems /Art can you think of to connect us with the Night Sky? For example: Look up President Michael D Higgins’ “Stardust”Based on this module, I would prepare a scheme encompassing the arts & humanities subjects to explore the treatment of the Northern Lights. The topic can really cross over into any subject you would like though, with just a little flexible thinking!
• Music: Beginning with an article from The Guardian, where scientists recorded the true music of the Northern Lights!
https://www.theguardian.com/news/2023/jan/05/noises-of-the-northern-lights-weatherwatch?CMP=share_btn_url
• In groups, the children could take a few minutes to discuss/predict/perform what the sounds might be like, noting any ideas on their mini whiteboards.
• We would then watch the following brief YouTube video which plays the actual music of the Aurora. Afterwards the children would be given time to share responses etc
• Children prepare & perform a ‘soundscape’ or ‘sound poem’ or ‘piece of music’ that they compose with their groups, reflective of what they have learnt. They could use any found materials or instruments available in the classroom. Guidance towards music curriculum needed ie.: sense of rhythm, pitch & form etc
• Finish by hearing 2 contrasting examples of music inspired by the Northern Lights
1. A gorgeous Scandinavian choral piece – lyrics and music are stunning! https://youtu.be/rXKJCdGMUas?si=4pqW5pakoGyUP6QZ
2. A lovely sing-a-long-able pop/soft rock/folky song, which is a tribute to the native people of Northern Canada. The chorus repeats the native phrase: ‘Nalligilaurakku’, which means “I remember.”
The perfect lead into looking at Indigenous stories and tales centred around the Northern Lights internationally, and their importance in folklore/mythology.
So from this you get the general idea. I have compiled lots of resources to support the following very vaguely described areas:
• Art – responding to areas listed for Drama below; particularly Finland’s ‘Foxfire’ tales. Use of paint, print, construction – ideas from the children’s inspiration please 😉
• Drama –acting in role of story tellers, passing on the mythology of northern lights throughout history using resources, poems & stories we have explored in English & SESE, from Scandinavia, Scotland and China.
• Poetry – Alaska: Night Lights by Laura Salas Acrostic & very child friendly https://laurasalas.com/poems-for-teachers/alaska/
• Dance – responding to all of the above (including our music examples) via dance, using colourful sheets and scarves to represent the colours and flow of the northern lights.Hope people can use these ideas and links etc. Have a great year with your classes everyone 😊