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Hi Laura,
Your post caught my eye because I’m a big REM fan and ‘Nightswimming’ is a fantastic tune. This is an excellent spotify playlist in the making! Could I suggest ‘Champagne Supernova’ by Oasis and Neil Young’s ‘Harvest Moon’. Enjoy the summer!
I would adapt the “Design Your Own Dark Sky Place” activity into an engaging design challenge called “Mission: Save the Stars!” for my 9-year-old pupils. This would be the last lesson/activity under this theme and I would aim to cover the topics of light pollution, biodiversity, safety and the importance of protecting the night sky in Autumn or Spring. This project would act as an assessment of what the children have learned.
Each child would be assigned the 4 roles as outlined in the Design your Own Dark Sky Place lesson plan. I would add a 5<sup>th</sup> ‘Safety Officer’ role. We would make a comprehensive list of design elements that could be included in the plan. The children will rank the list of elements according to importance High/Medium/low, making a visual representation of how important they feel each element is.
I will award each child (stakeholder) 3 design tokens that they can use to demand that a design element be included, remembering the needs of their representative group. After all tokens are used the group can chose 1 last element as long as they can all agree.
The children will then set about drawing a map of their park, making sure to label each design element they have included. They will then present their design to the class, where children will use the TAG feedback strategy, telling one thing they liked, Asking a clarifying question and giving one piece of advice.
Hi Triona, I really like how you have structured the plan around exploring, constructing and evaluating, giving pupils an active role in improving biodiversity in the school grounds. I particularly like the idea of creating a biodiversity map and then repeating the survey to measure the impact of the changes made.
- How you would engage your learners to explore biodiversity in your local area and the possible impacts of light pollution on local biodiversity.
I would engage my student in exploring biodiversity in our local area by using our class novel ‘The Owl Who Was Afraid of the Dark’. Chapter 5, ‘Dark is Fascinating’ provides an excellent opportunity to discuss nocturnal animals. We can explore how darkness is an important part of their natural environment. I would focus on bats, encouraging pupils to investigate their role in local ecosystems and why they are important for biodiversity. I would link this to report writing, using a google classroom assignment to provide links to child friendly bat websites and videos highlighted in this module.
As a class, I will pretend that the local Gaa club has successfully been granted funding to build a full sized Astroturf pitch with lights in an area outside the village which would not be very developed. I would ask the children to consider the benefits of the development for the community in small groups. I would then ask them to consider the cons, directing them towards cost, biodiversity and light pollution. To finish we would have a walking debate to decide whether the Astroturf facility should be built.
Hi Ciara, I like how you have linked the investigation of light pollution with environmental awareness throughout your teaching of this topic. The idea of using online light pollution maps alongside pupils’ own observations is an excellent way to connect local learning with a wider global issue.
1. Detail how light pollution is impacting your local area and how you would engage your learners to explore this.
Living in my home village close to a large town, I can see how light pollution has become more noticeable in recent years. The village has street lighting throughout, a brightly lit filling station, shops, floodlit playing fields, a large new housing estate and older residential areas. While these lights are important for safety and allow people to enjoy community facilities after dark, they also reduce the darkness of the night sky. On clear evenings it can be difficult to see many stars, and the glow from artificial lighting is visible across the horizon every night.
To help my students explore this topic, I would begin by asking them what they notice about the night sky from their homes. We could compare photographs of a dark sky with one affected by light pollution and discuss the differences. As a homework activity, pupils could count how many stars they can see from their garden or another safe location and record whether there are bright streetlights nearby. Back in class, we could compare results and discuss why some areas have darker skies than others.
I would also integrate the activity with Geography, Science and Mathematics by creating simple maps of areas with more or less artificial light, collecting and graphing class data, and discussing how light pollution affects wildlife, energy use and people’s ability to observe the stars. This would encourage pupils to think critically about balancing the benefits of outdoor lighting with protecting our natural environment.Timing is very important for sky observations. I really like your idea of building the moon observations into your Halloween theme and art. I have spent the last few years teaching the theme space in May when teaching it between November and March would make so musch more sense.
Create a short teaching resource using Stellarium
I would incorporate Stellarium into a literacy lesson based on a novel I read with my class ‘The Owl who was afraid of the Dark’. We would review chapter 5 – Dark is Wonderful discussing the information Plop the Owl learned about the night sky. I would record Plop’s stars, namely the constellation Orion, the pole star and Sirius and the hints the astronomer gave him to find them.
The next stage of the lesson would be to take out our chromebooks and access Stellarium web. The children’s mission is to locate Plop’s stars in the night sky at 8pm, December 11th 2025.
Mission 1: Find Orion the Hunter
1. Turn on Constellation Lines (the starry person icon at the bottom).
2. Look toward the South-East (SE) sky.
3. Find the three bright stars in a straight line (Orion’s Belt).
4. Question: What shape or object is Orion holding on your screen?Mission 2: Find Sirius (The Dog Star)
1. Follow the three stars of Orion’s Belt down and to the left.
2. Look for the brightest flashing star in the entire sky.
3. Question: Click on Sirius. Look at the left info panel. What colour is it?Mission 3: Find the Pole Star (Polaris)
1. Turn your screen completely around to face North (N).
2. Look high up for the star that sits directly above the North marker.
3. Question: Tap the time forward fast. Do the other stars move? Does the Pole Star move?We will then use Stellarium to figure out if Orion is visible tonight or when is the next night it is visible and task the children with finding it at home.
I could finish the lesson with a short Kahoot quiz asking the children to identify common constellations.Hi Ciara,
This is a practical and memorable way to demonstrate to the children the effects of gravity. They will certainly enjoy making the earth and moon tubes and turning them to see the marbles move through the liquids. Could extend it with other liquids, vegetable oil, washing up liquid etc. Thanks for the idea!
1. Gravity/Weight – Assemble an Earth Tube and one other planet tube – decorate in a suitable manner.
To engage my student on this topic I would first begin with a video of the world record high jump. We would then go outside and practice jumping for height as a PE lesson. We could use a jump height tester to see who in the class has the highest stationary vertical jump. We could talk about basketball and why the scoring rings are placed 3.05m high. We can discuss what helps our vertical jump (practice, height etc) and what hinders it (weight, gravity,etc)
On return to the classroom we can watch the video of astronauts jumping on the moon and discuss why they seem to jump easily even with 80 to 90kg spacesuits on. We will discuss gravity and moon’s gravity being 1/6 of earths. We would lean on previous knowledge of the planets in our solar system and their sizes. I would ask the children to rank the planets according which we could jump highest to lowest in groups on their whiteboards.
We would then use the ‘Planetary Picnic’ resource enjoying the art and measuring elements to explore how much a tube of crisps would weigh on each planet perhaps also including a tube for our moon.
Finally I would bring the lesson back to our PE lesson. What height would our basketball rings need to be on the moon? What other considerations need to be made to play a game of ‘Moonball’? How would the game change on Jupiter etc.