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I had never heard of Peter Rice. The connection to Sydney is very interesting. Even though I am not from Dundalk, I would love to do that lesson. There are lots of opportunities for playful learning which sounds great. It would be fantastic if doing a unit on Australia as well. Great crossover with art too.
- Research a famous scientist or engineer associated with your local area and describe how you would use that person as inspiration for classroom science investigations
I researched about the Grand Canal in Tullamore as this is local to me. However, lots of counites are touched by canals so I thought it would be relevant to many school in many areas. I found a person who I thought was little known John Killaly. I was surprised to find lots of information from many sources including wikipedia, Offaly History Blog, Waterways Ireland Archive and others.
To encourage playful exploration of canal locks, I would ask the children to investigate how locks work using lego, play doh, sticky tape, containers, plastics to see if they recreate a lock.
Furthermore, I think it would be interesting to use Geo Hive map resources to look how Tullamore and other areas developed around the canal and look at how buildings have changed. They children would be interested to see that the old canal warehouse now operates as Shane Lowry’s restaurant.
Other opportunities for learning might include building hump back bridges over a canal (last module) and looking at the role of canals today from leisure/ecological viewpoints but also how they may be used in the future for transporting goods.
There is a canal house and lock key that would be excellent location for a school visit. To reinforce the concept of the canal as an ecological haven, you could also have a recording worksheet to tick as you saw different wildlife.
Playfully exploring is such another important step which is so under utilised. I would definitely like to use lego more in my classroom. Bringing in materials from is always such a fun thing to do.
Using the suspension bridge in Birr Castle Demesne or a bridge in your local area as inspiration, describe how you would plan a class or whole school challenge to design and make a bridge. How would you integrate mathematical thinking and incorporate the maths skills appropriate to your class level
I have done the build a bridge task before but I really thought about from an engineering perspective whilst completing this module. I did it once in Scotland as a peer teaching lesson and once using Minecraft during the planning process.
My school is situated close to the river Suck so I would be very excited to use the story of the famer as a prompt. I love the wondering questions to develop further thinking.
I have never heard of Tinkercad before but I think it would be even better than Minecraft for planning. I think the mathematical skills that could be developed is measuring, reasoning, estimating. I am two in two minds about setting criteria or allowing children to set their own. I would love to set it outdoors and set a height related criteria. If I was really brave, I would love to progress to another lesson about passing a boat/floating object under the bridge.
It sounds great. Promoting no mow May across the school community is a great initiative. I think the identification guides are a great resource too.
- Register your garden with the All Ireland Pollinator Plan and record your actions for pollinators, then outline how you would register your school and what actions you could take to help pollinators
I registered the the garden with the All Ireland Pollinator Plan and wasn’t surprised to see that I am doing lots already. We have areas that are good for pollinators. mow less (although we could probably mow even less), have a wildflower meadow and leave some areas undisturbed. The real motivation will be to engage with the website with my young children which will be a great project. I do like the garden bird resources too and the video from Laois Co. Council.
I would be very happy to register my school. I think looking at the map at all the areas registered as part of the All Ireland Pollinator Plan is very interesting. I think it would be a great project for a Green Schools Committee to engage with too. Whole school measures could include organising for the grass to be mowed less. For a class, they could identify areas of good pollinator, short flowers for short and/or long meadows and identify and develop areas that could be left alone. I really enjoyed the resources on the website and plan to use the Bumble bee identification course next year.
I like the idea using pre cut areas or rooms on to a blank map as a prompt or starter idea. It engages the pupils and makes the lesson very accessible. It is an ideal opportunity to teach important key vocabulary in a cross curricular manner.
- Explore some of the online tools to gather information about land use, soil types, plants and animals, weather etc. in the area around your home or school and outline how you would integrate this information into local studies linking various curriculum areas
The online tools are vast and complicated. I would definitely take my time and commit to doing one new ‘project’ per term. I really like the Climate from Space data sets and stories. I think they are very informative for the senior classes.
We work very hard in school to be proactive around the Climate. The parish in which I work have developed a Climate Action Park beisde our school. The goal is to return the land to it’s original use. I think it would be beneficial for the children to make a map indicating how the land is used in their local area. I would hope to look at the Land use data set in the Climate from Space app. I think it can be hard for children to grasp that school buildings, housing developments, shopping complexes have not always been there and in fact before the land was farmed, it was covered in trees. I think to examine this idea and how that leads to the carbonisation of the planet would be quite ambitious. Again I would use the stories on the Climate from Space app to teach this. I would hope that using resource in this way would emable to teach curricular areas of Maths, geography, science and history.
Finally I would love to make a time lapse video and show how the Climate Action Park changes as we return it to it’s natural use.
- I agree a garden project/green house/polytunnel is a great way to achieve STEM outcomes. In our school, we made a school plan of the outcomes we wanting each class to achieve to ensure progression as they went from Junior Infants to 6th Class.
- Describe how you could apply some of the concepts and skills you have learned in this module to your own teaching practice in line with the STEM Education policy statement
I enjoy science and get great satisfaction out of watching pupils design and make things. I think I do a good job at teaching different aspects of STEM but I definitely could improve. I never really feel like I achieved my potential in science at secondary school.
Doing the course definitely gave me a buzz of excitement to be back in the classroom and I have a couple of takeaways I want to use in September. They are probably simple ideas in a way but I think with time pressures and busy classrooms, they can be forgotten easily.
1. Prompts/starters- I thought this was shown really well in Module 1. Getting the children to wonder and explore is great way to start a STEM block. There was a slide about not focusing of science vocabulary at the start and to focus in lesson on vocabulary. I feel it is important to do teach vocabulary at the start and something the inspectorate always highlight.
2. Resist stepping in and giving too much help. I am guilty of this. Obviously you can assist and give little prompts but I probably control too much as I am conscious of the outcome to get achieved. My 3 year old daughter wants to objects with Duplo as shown on the box. While helping her, I upset her as I am trying to show how to make it ‘perfectly’. I am probably taking away from her learning.
3. Reflection
I spend a lot of time of reflection and recognize it’s important. The question What are you happiest with? is a very effective way to ellicit constructive dialogue.