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This activity would be set in an urban area, it would be designed as an in-class role playing activity. children can research and put the resources together and then role play a visit to a dark sky Place.
The children can explore what kind of information would be useful and what can the visitors see.
The children can plan what they need to consider, light pollution, viewing sights, biodiversity at night information on astronomy and star hgazing tips. The children can be split into groups and some can gather photo’s or create drawings to create a collage and others can create a brochure for the visitors.
Other children can make an audio on the information about the night skies, light pollution and nocturnal animals and biodiversity, also looking at space and showing pictures of some of the constellations.
Children can look at how they will advertise their dark sky place around the school and through drama play out the experience from the resources they have made. when confident they can take groups from other classes in to give them a presentation of their work.
Eimear, it sounds like a beautiful part of the world you live in!
It’s hard for children who live in the towns and cities to engage with nature as they are not use to it so its important that we provide exciting lessons and give time to biodiversity
We have a green schools committee in school and it would be a good idea for them to explore an area within the school grounds and do a biodiversity survey, looking at the animals they can find, native plants and talk about the nocturnal animals could be there. They could draw a base map of the school area with buildings, grass, trees, plants, insects birds and the type of lights used near or in the area. Children could research nocturnal animals, likes bats, hedgehogs, insects, moths. They could make a paln to establish if our biodiversity area in the school can be developed to establish how we can help nocturnal species. children could establish a wildflower area for pollinators, plant trees and native hedgerows for birds and bats or solitary bee mounds, bird boxes and reduce the lighting in the area. The import thing is to explore how light pollution affects bats and other nocturnal animals as it can reduce foraging time, impacts navigation and feeding. Light pollution can also increase Predation. This would help children make a connection to nature and have a deeper understanding.
Some great ideas there Ciaran! especially investigating impacts on wild life, portfolio’s are great to show what the kids have learn’t, lots of stem skills supporting the children!
To explore how light is impacting their local area, they could do a design challenge – improve the quality of night skies in their home. Starter question: are lights on our home dark sky friendly? Can we make a plan to reduce this?
Predicting: what difference could be made by using different colour light, would shielding make a difference?
Conducting the Investigation: Survey the building with a daytime walk around and create a birds eye map of lighting positions along with what type of light is there.
Children can then consider the area for example are there trees, or hedges near by, would there be animals or birds. Would the lights disturb wildlife after dark, is it an Urban area or rural? are other lights nearby? Children will count the number of lights, types and purpose of lights,
Sharing results: Children can create a map providing light sources from their investigations, they can provide an inventory with the number of light fixtures and the types of lights, they can provide a display and a presentation of their findings. As a class group they can help suggest ways to reduce the lights and to make the building more dark sky friendly.
Some lovely ideas Aoife, I like to see stellorium downloaded onto our chrome books it would be good for the children to use it when they want.
teaching children about the moon I would use esero 62 to help guide me, at the start of the lesson I could let them watch Paxi observing the moon which would give a good explanation of the different phrases of the moon.
Prompt: Is it possible to see the full moon in the daytime?
Starter question: How is the appearance of the moon related to the time of day?
Prediction: Children can justify what they think with an explanation
Investigation: Use a model of the moon with a ball and lamp- How is this related to the time of day? which phases of the moon can the observer see when they are also facing the sun? where is the light source relative to the earth observer.
Taking the next step: Use Stellorium to observe the appearance of the moon
Children could use the moon observation log to observe each phase of the moon over a month and they could log what they see each week and discuss it at the end of the month, perhaps make a display or give a presentation of what they observed.
Paxi and the solar system is a good video to demonstrate day and night, and esero 30 day and night in the world can also be a good resource.
Planning a lesson on how to observe and record the positions of the sun when rising and setting at different times of the day, I would first look at the inquiry based framework for guidance on the sun and shadows.
A trigger would be a few pictures of a cloudy and a sunny day with shadows, Wondering question could be why is it darker on a cloudy day?
Exploring: I would then take the children outside on a sunny day in the morning time and get them to use chalk to mark where their shadow on the ground.
I would repeat this between the two breaks and again before the children go home for the day.
Starter question could be what other shadows can you see on a sunny day in the school yard?
Prediction: children could predict what shape, size and colour the shadows could be.
Then conduct the investigation- let the children play outside and note the position of the sun, then mark where their shadows are.
children could measure the shape and length of their shadows and record them using cm.
Inside the classroom they can discuss and share their findings of the size, shape and length and we could put a display together of what the children found out about shadows at different times of the day depending on where the sun is positioned in the sky.