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Hi Orla I really enjoyed these ideas and will definitely be using them in ym classroom next year especially like the idea of a food drive!
Gender stereotypes are visible even from the early stages of infant classes, they are shaping students’ beliefs about what they can or should do. In my infant classroom, I observed a moment during a group ‘play’ activity where students were choosing roles for the role play area of doctor surgery. One boy said, “Let the boys be the doctors; the girls can be the nurses” While said casually, it reflected a gender stereotype!!
Development Education methods and lessons can provide a valuable way to challenge these stereotypes.They promote critical thinking and inclusive dialogue. In developmental education lessons we can explicitly create opportunities for students to question the stereotypes and dig deeper and most importantly challenge them to take action. For example, using real life examples that feature female doctors or male nurses from around the world broaden their minds! Group work is important in this case to to rotate roles. Through all of the this, the children can learn that ability and job roles is not determined by the gender.
Hi Shane, you have made some interesting points here which I can relate to! I’ve had a similar experience in recent years while teaching infants that the boys are taking on the construction and building while the girls are going for the dolls and colouring! I always try to encourage classroom discussion too around inequality and norms!
I really enjoyed reading Eric Ehigie’s paper and found it extremely thought provoking and left me with many insights and that I was left deeply reflecting on. It truly never dawned on me as an educator the profound impact I have on the students to encourage their global consciousness and develop their critical thinking. Development Education is important for shaping students into informed, empathetic, and proactive citizens in today’s world. I would use many ways to teach development education such as through cross-curricular links and project-based teaching. I would encourage critical inquiry in lessons, use real-world links, and reflective assessment. I think it’s important that as educators we embed global citizenship into daily learning in the classroom and school.
Here as some specific things I would implement in my school
Organise a “Global Citizenship Week” with debates, film screenings, guest speakers, art displays. Trips- organise trips to local services that let children experience developmental education.Hi Claire! I agree as educators we have a massive privilege in educating our children about inclusion, empathy and understanding! We have a major role in modelling this to the children and giving them confidence to take action!
We have never celebrated space week in our school before, so I look forward to starting it up in my school next year after seeing these abundance of ideas!
Here’s some ideas that I will use for my class plan!English – I would use lots of space stories such as – ‘how to catch a star’ , ‘when the sun goes home’, and ‘the kid who came from space’. we would write a whole class letter to an astronaut(maybe Chris Hadfield!) with any questions that we have about space. we will have oral language discussions on photos of space- such as photos of the planets, sunsets, stars etc.
Maths- we would integrate our maths lessons with space- by doing shape and space and discovering star constellations and use ‘Stellarium’ website. we will work on 3d shapes aswell. We will do data surveys on our favourite planets and make bar charts.
Irish- I will have an Irish ‘stasiun spais’ station in the classroom which can be used for play and children will be pre taught the Irish vocabulary for space words in Irish lessons. we would do some bingo in Irish with the new space words.
Science- we will do many space experiments- such as ‘dancing raisins’ , ‘fizzing and foaming’ and ‘messy mixtures’ for some ‘alien chemistry’.
History- I would focus on reading stories about the man on the moon and learning about the first dog to space and looking at people who have travelled to space.
Drama- this would be our Aistear theme of space – with a role play station of space!
Music- we would do many space songs- such as ‘reach for the stars’ , ‘space man’ , ‘ rocket man’
Art – We would do a class project and create a solar system. Also, we would make a space craft and launch them off!
I’m so excited to do these activities this year!
Tracy I love how fun and interactive your ideas are here, I love the use of music such as s club 7! so playful and fun for the children to sing along to! lots of hands on activities too! Thanks for sharing.
Online resources and tools
I really found this module of the course super interesting and beneficial for my teaching in the future, I honestly have never heard of these activities and resources- so I am excited to use them next year!
For this assignment I will talk about the online resourcesMilo and Marvin I will a hundred percent use these characters next year in my classroom, they are child friendly and it also includes a home concept which will be very beneficial In my deis school to increase parental involvement!
I really loved the https://stellarium-web.org resource! It will definitely increase their scientific investigation skills. We can discover together the different constellations and stars, I would integrate this into maths too for shape and space.
The ESA kids website is incredible, I would like to try the ‘could we live on mars lesson’ with first class students. I was also intrigued by the ‘A Ride to Space’ art competition. We would do this as a whole class competition, we would firstly explore rockets, sketch them , talk about their features before designing and making them!I look forward to using these online resources this school year.
Great photos thanks for sharing! I will definitely use this idea of a themed space corner for my Aistear there- love it!
For this assignment I have chosen the Activity Set: Space and Aliens
I was fascinated by this module and really found the lesson on life in space appropriate and adaptable for use in my classroom first class. I particularly liked the ideas in ESERO lesson 19.
To introduce the lesson and integrate with literacy I would read “The Smeds and The Smoos’ – Julia Donaldson as a stimulus
I would firstly make a KWL chart with my class about aliens and life in space. Then we will discuss life on earth and what is so special about this, in groups I will let the children make their own mind maps about special things on earth to them- I will encourage drawing these and writing (art and literacy integration), we will share these as a whole class- including allowing children to act this out (drama integration) if they wish.
Then we will continue onto life on other planets and aliens and ask the children to describe and design their own alien using a range of materials- junk art, clay or drawing/paiont and then we will have a whole class discussion about these. (ESERO 19)Activity set chosen: The planets
I would 100% use this activity set in my classroomI would start by playing the planets song for the children to engage the children- it is fun and playful and also integrates well with music too!
I would then have a whole class discussion on planets gather prior knowledge and see what planets we already know.For my first lesson I would focus on earth and day by day would focus on a different planet each day.
Whilst focusing on earth- I would definitely use the many activities I have learnt in this module such as the earth mosaic and carry out the whole class experiment about day and night on earth and how it changes by having a giant earth and sticking two figures on earth side on the earth and shine a light on the earth to show the different times of the day on each side of the world! I absolutely LOVE this idea- it issue practical and visual for the children.As my lessons developed throughout the week (focusing on new planets through the weeks) – I would start each lesson with inquiry based learning and investigations on each planet, by for example starting by playing some games such as the planet game (ESERO 1). And continue on during the week to make fact files of each planet, and some clay figurines of the planets so we could have a whole class solar system with fact files to display!
I love the sundial idea- a great hands on activity for the children and would also link in nicely with the activity I used for shadows as discussed in previous module 1 forum! Thanks Laura!
Hi Rohana! I love this idea- the infants would love this! Sounds like a great experiment with lots of fun involved for the children. It would encourage great oral language too with lots of new movement and positional language vocabulary too! Also, love this video Frances would be super to use in the lesson to evoke interest in the children and get their attention!
Hi my name is Harriet I am a infant school teacher in deis school. I am excited to be apart of this course about space. My favourite fact is that space is silent- I would love a few days up there!!
I was teaching my first class about shadows and used inquiry-based activities to investigate shadows. We conducted a fun and interactive shadow exploration experiment.
I introduced the lesson with an open ended question about shadows and made a whole class mind map about what we already knew about shadows. I set up a simple experiment area in the classroom with a light sources (e.g a torch or a lamp) and various objects of different shapes and sizes for the children to investigate. The children explored the experiment area and manipulated the objects to observe how their shadows changed in size, shape, and position based on the light source’s direction. Afterwards we joined for reflection and discussion! By engaging infants in hands-on inquiry-based activities like investigating shadows, we as teachers can foster their natural curiosity and scientific thinking.
