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Many thanks Rachel,
the songs could be put into a playlist and played in the background as the class did one of the art activities. Very nice.
A project to collect piseogs and traditions and stories of the night would be a wonderful activity for the children to connect with their local area and with the past. It is also a great link with history. My father used to tell a story about a man coming home late one night and spotted two groups of fairies from local townlands playing football in a field. He shone the light of his bike in to get a better view and the fairies all dispersed – an early effect of light pollution maybe! Some of the stories from the collection could be a great way to act as a stimulus along with a discussion and questions as to what we might find out, particularly from our students’ families.
As well as collecting piseogs and stories from home and from older relatives, the class could explored the schools heritage collection on duchas.ie. The stories contained in the schools heritage collection are a great link between the ancient past and our modern day. Stories of traditions, piseogs and superstitions about full moons, shooting stars, eclipses can be found as well as getting an understanding of life in Ireland long ago. I would love for the class to collect these piseogs as part of a project and present them to be made available to the wider community, it would be a very beneficial experience for all.
Sarah this is great you are located next to a national park. We had badgers coming into the school grounds at night a few years back. There is so much we don’t see.
To explore biodiversity we would start by looking at one of the stimulus videos such as the one from Laois heritage to introduce the topic and then brainstorm as to what we might find if we get out around our school grounds to look for different species. We have areas of the school which are let grow wild and this would be a great place to explore particularly at late spring or coming into the summer as per the Backyard Blitz video – it would be fascinating for the children to see what is in the trees around the school. In our science journals we can record and draw what species we discovered and use ICT to add some simple facts.
As a follow on we will plan as to how we can improve biodiversity as part of a biodiversity plan and look at installing bug hotels made from various materials. We can also look to acquire a bat box and place in a location with little light pollution following on from our last study. Finally we can explore beyond the school grounds and look at biodiversity around our local river or bog as part of a field tripSome great ideas here Sinead, particularly the focus on wildlife which is a great angle to approach the issue. Many thanks
Hi,
I note a lot of lights around the school area with it being in the town; lighting from businesses and street lights. In my own rural area some farms have bright lighting around shed areas and there are sensor lights at gates on the lane. On a dark night there is a good visibility of the night sky even allowing for distant street lights on the horizon.
The Inquiry Framework would be a good model to follow to allow for enquiry into this issue.
I notice there are some engaging looking picture books on the darksky.org site. I will try to get my hands on these as they could be a great stimulus to engage children about the issue of light pollution. https://darksky.org/news/childrens-books-about-light-pollution-giveaway/
We would have a good discussion about the issue with the use of some of the photos used in the slides there. We can investigate lighting around the school to see what sort of lights are in use and whether they are dark sky friendly. A survey and creating a map is a great link to develop geographical and mapping skills too. The dark sky assessment guide for lights is a great resource to show which sort of lights are dark friendly or not.
Finally we would extend the survey to the street area outside our school and to see what is in use in the town. There are opportunities to develop the key competency of being an active citizen by following up the results of the survey with local representatives to highlight issues found.
Hi Caitriona, this is a great idea to get the class outside in the morning and the list of dates is so useful. Thanks very much for sharing this. The moon diary is a lovely idea.
Hello,
Stellarium is a super resource that can be used to develop understanding of space and to help plan real viewing experiences for children.
I would use it first by demoing to the class on the whiteboard and to show about setting up our location and how to find objects in the sky. I would also use the feature to set the time so that children can see what is in the sky at different times. The class could then work in small groups on the devices to find various objects such as the planets and different constellations such as the moon, Venus, Mars, Jupiter, moons of Jupiter, Polaris etc. They can find the distance and also the magnitude is interesting.
I note that in the installed version of stellarium you can set your location to be on other planets/moons and then see different views of space so they could see the earth from the moon which would be engaging.
Based on the planets tonight option in stellarium we could plan to observe Venus as the sun sets in the evening in Autumn/winter. This would promote good knowledge of the children’s local area and learning about the sun setting, east and west etc.and promote a link to learning at home with family.
Hi Siobhan,
some great ideas here to get the class outside. The classes will gain so much from being outside and learning which direction is north, south, sunrise, sunset etc about their own environment and place in earth. The Liston article has some good food for thought and the importance of enquiry and investigation. Many thanks.
Hi all
I would like to do the Gravity/Weight activity as I think it would be very engaging for the children. I would start by using the excellent Cosmic High Jump site as a stimulus to show that different planets have a stronger or weaker gravitational force depending on their size/mass.
We would then look at the sizes of the plants in the solar system before introducing the crisp tube for Earth which I think is 240g. Then the children would work in groups to predict how much sand or rice would be added to each empty tube for each planet. Each group could add the correct amount of sand and decorate their tube – nice integration with art activity – before the solar system of crisp tubes are brought together for each group to compare to show how heavy the crisp packet would feel on different planets.
Lastly to finish we would look what the surface gravity of the sun would be and what the tube of crisps would weigh on the sun – I think it would be 7kg approx. – we would brainstorm things that weigh 7kg – maybe a chair, a cat or they could find and weigh objects. Nice activity to carry out some practical maths measuring skills, and the differences in the planets etc