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Online Tools:
I’m a bit embarrassed to say that most of the online tools shared in this course I have never seen before. They are going to add so much to my teaching and ultimately the learning of the children.
I spent a long time exploring this. It is an amazing online tool. I personally learnt a great deal from it so I know the children will be mesmerised by it. It definitely requires teacher led work, but there is great scope of investigation and exploring and ultimately learning by doing.
https://spark.iop.org/collections/marvin-and-milo
Milo and Marvin I adore this idea. I think the do this at home concept sparks the children’s imagination straight away. I know many of the children I taught last year would have been obsessed with these tasks. They are child friendly with so much scientific skills learning embedded.https://www.esa.int/kids/en/home
https://www.esa.int/Education/Teachers_Corner/Primary_classroom_resourcesThere are an abundance of space related art and crafts lesson ideas on the esa kids page. I will be encouraging my children to partake in the ‘A Ride to Space’ art competition. There is so much content on these websites.
Curious Minds: I cannot wait to spend time exploring this website in detail and planning learning for the next academic year.
UNAWE:
The pdf and education material available to download on this website is enormous. There is so much good content and I will be sharing the universe in a box download with my colleagues.
Space Olympics is such a cool idea and would capture the children’s attention especially as this is an olympics year and most of the children will have watched over the summer. Definitely going to incorporate this into my planning.
I am choosing the rocket mouse activity. As a teacher this activity does not require a lot of resourcing. It can be linked to recycling and caring for the environment.
To start the lesson we will read “The way back home” by Oliver Jeffers. I would pose the question how could we travel from space to home. We will thought shower our ideas on the interactive board.
We will then progress onto discussing rockets and spaceships. We will watch a rocket ship launch to spark curiosity.
The children will then be shown the carton and asked how we could make this into a rocket. In groups allow the children to explore and examine how it could be a rocket. Discuss and share ideas. Then introduce the mouse and let the children again experiment with how to move the mouse without touching their hands off the mouse. Allow children again to experiment, investigate and explore. Talk about fair testing and how we can apply it to our experiment.
When the children have had time to investigate, I would move to the P.E. hall where the children have space to test their predictions and observe what is happening when they apply different types of forces to the carton. What happens the mouse
We will bring a meter stick and observe distance the mouse moves before falling.
Next steps I would ask the children to think about sports that involve similar actions.
I teach a lot of children with English as an additional language so this is a great suggestion that they can view in their native tongue. This would assist adults at home too who have no English.
I love the linking to drama with the hotspot. Children would adore this and get very creative with it.
I would choose the topic of Space and Aliens. I have often veered from teaching about aliens but this module has shown how fun it can be done and how to leads to lots of questions.
I would start with a KWL to see what they know about aliens and Martians and what they would like to find out. Then I would read the story Martian Rock by Carol Diggory Shields.
I loved the Martian activity shared in the module. I would then pose the question what does a Martian look like. I would give the children some time to think, pair and share their ideas. I would select some children to come and draw on the whiteboard. This always assists this who struggle with idea generation.
The children will then all set off to predict what a Martian would look like to them. They would sketch their Martian. We would do a mini plenary here and share some of their sketches on the visualiser. We would discuss similarities and differences, talk about shapes and sizes of their Martians.
The children would then conduct the experiment by making their Martian out of plasticine using their sketches as a guide. When they have made their Martians they would then create a short animation using stop go motion. I used this a lot with my First Class Children last year and they loved it. So I believe it work very well with the Martians. Stop go motion makes it look as if the small plasticine models are moving by themselves. Ideally I would like to incorporate a space background and this could be made prior in a different lesson to be used in this.
Again at the end the stop go animations would be shared with the class or viewed in a silent walking tour.
Stations are great way to expose children to the science learning in many different contexts. Children love the variety too.
I would choose an activity on shadows.
Ideally I would start this lesson outdoors to spark inquiry. Ask children to stand in different positions and to ask what they notice around them. Is there anything happening when you move. What do you see. Then pair the children up to further encourage discussion. Have the children walk from one place to another. Ask the, what they observe when doing this. Children could record there observations in diagram/sentences based on ability.
We would return indoors and discuss our observations and thought shower all of our findings on an anchor chart.
I really enjoyed the 3D activity and torch. There is so much scope with that so I’d like to try that out. I’d like to encourage a collaborative approach to this so as to optimise observational talk and trialling and testing.
At the end of the lesson I would address any misconceptions that have arisen. After that each group could share their findings and answer questions from their peers.
Thanks for sharing this. Love all the ueseful resources the course is providing us with. Also feeling bad that I didn’t know these existed as I trained overseas.
I posted about in another comment, but can’t find it.
Personally I think I have always managed to apply inquiry based learning to sinking and floating with good outcomes. There is so much scope for this topic and children always love it because what they deem as playing with water is actually embedded in so much learning opportunities. To start we would identify items we would like to test out and have a discussion around whether they will float or sink. Including lots of related vocabulary to build understanding and drawing on their prior knowledge. I like to link it into swimming as the children I teach go swimming for the first time in first class. Within the learning the children explore, wonder, predict and reason what will happen to each object. I love the discussions the children engage in with each other and how they communicate their understanding to each other. The children love to then test out and draw conclusions. I often find children will go home and test further items out and will be so excited to share with their peers the next day.
