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Research Question: Is climate change having a direct impact on our local beach environment?
In our junior school we often take our students to the local beach. We arrange beach safaris, litter picking on the beach, beach art and observation of local marine plant and animal life. This environment would be an ideal area in which to try and answer our research question.
After brainstorming together, some of the areas in which we may take an interest could be:
Is our beach changing in any way (more/less sand, more/fewer stones, movement of stones, more/less seaweed, more/fewer different types of plants, seaweeds, crabs, small fish, shells)? (use EO Browser or Google Maps to help identify geographical features and habitats)
Is there any change of tides in recent years? (consult local tide tables)
Are the species of plants, fish, seaweeds etc. changing? (consult with Galway Atlantaquaria and ATU for information regarding marine biodiversity)
Is there any change in the amount or types of litter being washed ashore or in the water? (collect, sort, record in pictures/photos/charts)
Decide on practical solutions to keep our local beach as clean as we can.This project is likely to involve multiple trips to the beach, hopefully in different seasons. As we track changes on our beach, we also will hope to monitor local weather and to keep learning about climate, climate change, and our part in reducing the impact of climate change in our locality.
Hi Padraic. I really like the practical “can do” aspect to your question. Your focus seems to be on the solution to the problem of climate change. This should encourage your students to take an interest in, and some responsibility for their actions to help prevent climate change in any way they can. I also like the opportunities you list for your class to present their findings to the Green Schools Committee and to other classes. Lots of practical ideas for getting all involved!
I think the EO Browser can be an amazing tool for use in the classroom. I think that for the younger students the making and then using a weather station is a much more relevant activity, especially when combined with the understand of the information we can get from a weather forecast. I too found the ESA resources very well structured and accessible and look forward to using them again in class.
Having downloaded the Teacher Guide & Pupil Activities for the ESA Resource ‘ Nose High Up in The Sky, I carried out the pupil activities myself. Talking to family and friends about weather proverbs is fascinating. I was familiar with few (red sky at night, seagulls on land, ring around the moon), and it wonderful to see some explanations for those proverbs. I think my students would really enjoy the challenge of trying to find as many weather proverbs as they could, hopefully with the help of older family members.
I think that my students will be really engaged in analysing a weather forecast. Weather forecasts are shown every day on TV, decoding these forecasts can be very interesting, especially in advance of our school tour, our sports day etc. Recording our own weather forecast, either in English or in Irish, would be a lovely extension activity here.
I have made weather stations with my students. A lesson in reading the thermometer and the rain gauge overlaps nicely with mathematical learning, as does the recording of anemometer data, taken within short periods of time. I found the home-made anemometers to be rather unreliable, but it might be nice to compare readings from a home-made anemometer with a commercial one. Designing and making a rain gauge is a great way to practise engineering skills, while using data from satellites incorporates IT learning.
Designing, making and using a weather station is a true STEM activity for students of all ages.
I also really like that this resource also helps differentiate for younger students. As a teacher in a junior school, it can often be difficult to find suitable resources for our very youngest students.Hi Emma, I too look foreward to using the carbon footprint calculator with my class. While engaging with the questions on the calculator I can see many opportunities to talk about good and bad choices, and also choices over which our students have some control (like whether to take a car or bus to school, or maybe to walk instead). It is a great tool to raise awareness of the impact each of us has on our climate and on our planet.
The HOME video is truly stunning. It is a captivating video showing the progression of life through time. It is beautifully thought provoking and will be very useful in class. I think with students in a junior school it could be easily broken up into manageable segments:- what our planet was like in the very beginning, what it was like as the first humans lived on earth, the way in which the world changed with the industrial revolution, what the world is like now and what it could be like on in to the future, if we take good care of our planet. Along with ongoing discussion I think my students would very much enjoy making a pictorial timeline showing images from the video.
Regarding the other videos: I doubt I will show the Climate Aid 2020 video in my junior class. I think the images are just too shocking for younger students, though I think the short Climate Action 2019 video and the TED talk from Greta Thunberg are very suitable and they offer hope to our students. It is very encouraging to listen to Greta Thunberg and for our students to realize that children DO have a voice, their individual actions can and will make a difference to the future of our planet.I really like your idea of using a Kahoot quiz to gauge prior knowledge. Our students love engaging with IT in their lessons and the importance of gauging prior knowledge should never be underestimated. Much of our learning happens incidentally between students.
As a teacher in a junior school, I think using the Paxi video to introduce our students to the topic of Greenhouse Effect is excellent. This video is very clear, uses engaging illustrations and will be a really useful tool in beginning discussions about the greenhouse effect and climate change. I am also very impressed with the Teal tool as a very visual and very effective tool to be used in these lessons. With students so young, I think we will engage with this together as a class, and be more focused on the variations of colour to show change over time, rather than on data readings. This too will be a valuable learning experience for the students. Watching projected readings is fascinating, and should lead nicely to discussions on how each of us can have actions that can change not only what is happening now in the world, but into the future as well.
Like you Padraic, I found the ESA resources to be extremely valuable. I think the Weather vs Climate resource from ESA is excellent. It is probably to difficult to use in our junior school, but the focus on weather vs climate is very interesting for students of all ages. I think our students will enjoy seeing the world map and trying to identify which climate relates to which area of the map.
I really like the Nose High in the Sky resource. It is a very good starting point to find out what weather sayings our students may already know, and then to deal with weather related vocabulary and finally to move on to making a small weather station with the students. The making of rain gauges and the anemometers become an engineering task for the students, maths skills are honed in the recording of data and in the use of thermometers, science and technology skills are honed in the finding of information relating to weather and climate. For many years I have used a small weather station in my school, complete with rain gauge, thermometer and home-made anemometer. A challenge in our school is to leave these outside over night without being vandalized. We tend to put them outside in the morning and collect them at home time (meaning our information is very limited). Not ideal, but a very good taster of what a real weather station might look like. When one class in the school begins to take an interest in the weather station, I have found that students from other classes also begin to take an interest in our weather station and that this spreads the interest in weather recordings across the whole school in general.
Having read Dr. Maeve Liston’s article on Unravelling STEM: Beyond the acronym of Science, Technology, Engineering, and Mathematics, I am interested to see that the focus of STEM teaching is not on the subject matter relating to science, technology, engineering and maths, but on the skills, strategies and connections between students, parents, teachers and the community. STEM teaching is about working collaboratively to solve problems in the world around us. It is a practical way in which we can interpret the world and deal with issues that are relevant in our lives. In teaching STEM we remove the traditional barriers between science, technology, engineering and maths, and work within all these overlapping areas to facilitate real world learning experiences for our students. In my classroom it is the challenges that are incorporated in critical thinking, in using practical skills in a challenging and useful way and in working together that inspire my students to become immersed in STEM learning. The collaborative solving of practical problems, the push to discover solutions in many different ways and cooperation of all (students, parents, teachers, other outside agencies) increases the students’ feeling of ownership of solutions found.
I have submitted this already, but as it doesn’t show up I will submit again.
I think the activity set: The sun and shadows is likely to really appeal to my students. Making a sun dial out of bamboo and a plant pot seems like a very simple but effective way to get my students interested in telling time. I like the overlap of history (time before watches), geography (day and night in different parts of the world) and science in this activity set. I like this activity because it gives my class a set of very valuable outdoor learning experiences. We will spend time outside looking at our shadows, drawing our shadows in chalk, comparing our shadows at different times of the day, making and calibrating our sundial, checking the accuracy of our sundial, integrating these lessons with telling the time in maths. I am hoping to easily get some solar beads for the students. I think that the lesson using the beads is a fantastic way to show the students that the sun’s rays in general (and UV light in particular) reaches all the way down to us on Earth, and that we need to do our best to protect ourselves from the (invisible) harmful rays of the sun, while we can still be outside enjoying the sun’s light and heat. I look forward to trying out many of these activities with my students in the coming year.