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Definitely love the idea of relating it back to your own locality. Would make it feel more true to life and engaging for the children.
A research question I would use is how has the number of heavy rain days in Clonakilty changed over the last ten years and how this has affected local flooding. This is something the children can relate to because it is about their own community.
I would start by explaining the difference between weather and climate in a way they understand using examples from around them. Then we could set up a simple weather station at school to measure rainfall. This hands-on work makes it more real and interesting for the children.
I would also show them satellite images from the Climate Detectives project to help them see the bigger picture. We could visit local places where flooding happens so they can see the effects for themselves. Working in groups would help them share ideas and present their findings to the rest of the school.
At the end I would ask the children to think about what we could do as a school or community to help reduce flooding or protect the environment. This helps them feel they can do something about the problem and not just learn facts.
I did the same. I’ll definitely be introducing a weather diary, maybe not all year around just to be realistic but I’ll implement it to some degree.
I thought ‘Nose High Up in the Sky’ was a really good and interesting resource for teachers and pupils. The activities focus on important topics like air pollution, weather, and climate change. They get kids to explore weather using their senses and simple tools. The children look at weather sayings, make their own observations, and build a simple weather station to measure rain, wind, and temperature. This helps connect what they see every day with science and helps them understand weather better.
I tried the activities myself and found them hands-on and easy to follow. They encourage children to watch carefully, ask questions, and make sense of the information by drawing and talking. This makes tricky ideas about space science easier to understand.
The resource also shows how space technology connects to the environment and how satellites help protect the Earth. It fits well with other subjects like geography and helps build STEM skills, thinking skills, and care for the environment. It’s a great resource to use in class.
The video ‘HOME’ by Yann Arthus Bertrand was very powerful but also quite hard to watch at times. It showed clearly how much damage humans have done to the planet. The narrator’s first line “the story is yours” really made it personal for me. It reminded me that this is something we all have to take responsibility for now and for the future. The video is quite long so I would split it into parts and show it over a few lessons. I would use it with older classes because some scenes like the digger cutting down trees, oil spills, and the injured whale might be too much for younger children.
I would begin by asking the children what they already know about climate change and what they want to learn. Then we could talk about it in groups, watch parts of the video, and let the children research their own projects in small groups. This way they can learn in different ways and get involved.
Activity 3 is a great way to get children thinking about the future and what we can do now to make it better. The Paxi Video would be perfect to start the lesson and get the discussion going about greenhouse gases and how they affect the climate. Using data from our own weather station and the TEAL tool the children could work in groups to create fact-based reports. If technology allows each group might have an iPad or laptop to check the temperature rain and wind data on the TEAL tool. I would use these reports for a Climate Awareness Day where the children present their weather station findings to the whole school and talk about how we can all work together to reduce our climate impact. For improvements I would add a practical element where the children come up with simple actions they can do at school or home to help the environment.
The way to teach the difference between weather and climate was really clear. Talking about the weather, looking outside, and using our senses to explore it would be great for the children. The videos, visuals, and especially the hands-on activities to help kids understand weather and climate are really valuable. This would help build their STEM skills and encourage them to be creative, solve problems, communicate, measure, predict, use the internet to check sites like met.ie, and record the weather. Activities like making a weather vane or rain gauge and using a thermometer to track temperature every day would be very hands-on. This would get the children asking questions and noticing patterns, which could lead to setting up a small weather station at school with support from parents and the school community. I would also get the children to choose a country with a different climate than Ireland to study their weather and compare it with ours. This would add even more STEM learning.