[Glen Tynan]

Hi Laura, congrats on the All Ireland, hope the celebrations are still going strong! I love this idea, it’s so easy to set up and the class would have so much fun with it. Also provides lots of room for further exploration on why the moon has so many craters in comparison to Earth.

[Glen Tynan]

Hi, my name is Glen. I am currently teaching Second Class. My favourite space fact is that the moon is slowly moving away from Earth.

An inquiry based activity I would like to explore with my class for Space Week would be to investigate how night and day occur on Earth.

Engage: Show the children images of the sun, stars, moon, clouds, etc. and have them discuss when you would expect to see these things in the sky, leading to discussion on daytime vs nighttime.

Investigate: Place children into groups. Use footballs or globes to represent Earth. If using a globe allow students to find Ireland on the globe. If using a football allow children to place sticky notes where they believe Ireland would be on Earth. Close all blinds and turn off the lights. Provide each group with a torch to represent the sun as a light source. Select one student to hold the globe/ football and another to hold the torch. As one student shines the torch toward the globe/ football, another child will spin it slowly. Encourage groups to observe when light and darkness is effecting Ireland.

Next steps: Students can explore the globe to find countries they are familiar with and conduct the investigation again noting how day/ night compares or differs to Ireland.

Reflect: The children would come together for a whole class discussion on what has been discovered. Discuss what causes daylight, darkness at night, which countries experience daylight at the same time as Ireland, which countries experience night when we have daylight. Possibly identify new areas of investigation such as ‘How do we know that it was the Earth that rotates while the sun stays stationary and not the other way around.’

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