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I definitely agree that this lesson is more suited to the upper end of primary school. I liked the way you planned to integrate the drama and art into the STEM core of the lesson. It has great scope for engaging the kids and great cross curricular links can be made.
Describe how you could implement a version of ‘Design your own Dark Skies Place’ in your school/classroom.
I would begin by revising topics previously visited regarding light pollution and biodiversity. I would ask the child to tell me what a dark sky is and have they ever seen one. We would then look at various online resources such as Dark sky reserves such as Kerry international dark sky reserve, Mayo and Davagh Forest Park. We would together brainstorm reasons why these areas make good dark sky areas. We would then consider light pollution and the effects it has on our night sky. We would discuss the factors affecting light pollution and ways we could combat this such as using warm light, angle light downwards, use only when needed and direct light to be used only when needed. I would then use the worksheet guidelines from ‘The Dark Skies Assessment Guide'(module 3) to help direct our plan. We would choose an area of the school by surveying and mapping the area around the school and doing an inventory of how many street light, lights from the school building, outside sensor lights, cars etc are around. We would then choose a space that we think has the least amount of lighting. We could then brainstorm ways to improve this area so it creates a more dark sky friendly approach. We could look at things such as wattage of bulbs, quality of fixtures, turning off lights when not needed. When we have our research complete and have decided on a plan of action we would set about putting it into place. The children could be divided into groups and have responsibility for things like making posters and sharing awareness, speaking to the school and getting everyone on board, involving parents and the wider community. A night time camera could be used to test the results of our work and we could use it to monitor the sky at various times of the year.
I think bringing a guest speaker in to talk to the children is a great idea. It nice for them to learn from the experts and it gives the children a deeper understanding of these topics.
How would you engage learners to explore biodiversity in your local area and possible impacts of light pollution on local biodiversity?
This is a vast topic to teach in a classroom. Firstly the children would need an understanding of light pollution and what that it and its negative effects. This should be done by watching videos, discussion and surveys that the children can do at home when it is dark. I would then introduce the theme of biodiversity. We would discuss what this means and watch some videos to explain the concept. We are lucky in our school, although it is located in Dublin, we have lots of green areas on the school grounds and we are near to parks and in particular the Botanic Gardens in Glasnevin. In order to engage the pupils, we would do a study of the different bird, animal and insect species we have around the school and local areas. I would give the children ipads to take photos of creatures/animals we find, they can make drawings and we would collect some specimens of minibeasts to look at and examine. We would then discuss what nocturnal animals are and I would use the ESERO lesson 30 to assist my teaching of this. Using native irish creatures such as bats, we would explore the impact that light pollution could have on these creatures and we could come up with ideas on how we could help to reduce light pollution in our home/school environment. There is a multitude of resources available online and at local level to support the children discovery of this theme. We could also try to include ways to encourage biodiversity around our school by creating a wildflower area, bug hotel, bat boxes and bird boxes to name just a few.
I think your idea of engaging with a rural school is fantastic. You could take photos of your local areas and compare them by looking at them on the interactive whiteboard. Students from both areas could collect data by doing questionnaires about light pollution in their areas and also compare the findings.
Detail how light pollution is impacting your local area and how you would engage your learners to explore this.
This is a very interesting and topical theme to explore in the classroom. My school is located in Dublin and as with all city areas, there is a lot of light pollution. In particular with street light, cars, building being lit up at night time and domestically too. This module provided lots of wonderful websites for introducing this topic to your students.The dark sky planning tool is a lovely tool to use in the classroom, as is the video ‘what is light pollution/ from planning.nsw.gov.au. I spent some time in Australia and I remember one of myost precious and awe inspiring memories was the time I spent at Fraser Island off the coast of eastern Australia. I lay on the beach and the stars looked so close to my face that I felt you could almost reach out and touch them. I had never seen a night sky like this in my life and I was amazed. I think I would engage my learners by showing them the video mentioned above, then putting the question to them ‘what does our night sky look like?’ We would discuss this and chat about what it looks like and possible reasons why. I would assign an activity for when they are at home after dark. I would create a questionnaire with questions such as :’How many types of colours of lights can you see? Can you see the moon/stars? Is your area urban or rural? Can you identify different types of light pollution in your area. From here we would discuss our findings and come up with ways to reduce light pollution in our area. There are many activities we could do from here, such as design a shade for street lights, design an awareness poster. You could even try and get the whole school community involved in trying to cut down on our imprint on light pollution.
i think that the use of stellarium is an amazing tool for the classroom. I have been to a planetarium a few times and it is such an immersive experience. Its a great way to get the children interested in the planets and stars. I think this topic also naturally lends itself to the use of ICT in the classroom which I can see you have incorporated in your lesson. Its nice to give them the chance to become researchers on topics such as space.
I would chose to do the activity on observing the moon. I would use the ESERO 62 lesson as a framework to teach this topic. Using online tools and timeanddate.com it would seem that the best time for morning observations of the moon would be when it is in its third quarter and this would be happening around the end of September. I would begin by showing the children some videos about this, in particular the video of Pax and our moon. I think that the worksheet from ESERO on recording the moon is excellent and so we would record what we see as well as the date and time. We could come back to these record sheets at another sage during the year and compare what we see then to what we found back in September. This is a tricky topic so I would take my time teaching and exploring this topic and I would revisit whenever I get an opportunity. In would also make use of ICT for this topic, allowing children to do some online research themselves using websites such as heavensabove.com, worldwidetelescope and dateandtime.com. I would also make sure to have diagrams and vocabulary associated with this topic displayed in the classroom.
Hi Amy. I think that using oranges and torches is a great way to investigate this topic with a younger class. I would place the in pairs so each child has an important role and they got lots of time to engage with the resources to further deepen their understanding.
I have chosen the lesson Esero 30 Day and Night. I would engage my students in this lesson as follows:
Engage- I would begin by opening the conversation about day and night by showing them a picture of the earth, with half the earth in light and half in darkness. I would ask them what they see and what they think is happening. Why is part of the earth in darkness? This will lend itself to great discussion where I can elicit what the children already know and understand.
Investigate- at this stage I would pose the question ‘does the sun stay in the same place all day?’ We would then go outside to the yard and the children can draw or write a description of exactly where the sun is in the sky. We will plan to come back out to the yard before the end of the school track and map where the sun is now.
Next steps- looking at the information we gathered as the children why the sun moved? Put it to them that could it be us moving instead. Once the children have the understanding that it is the earth rotating, use models to demonstrate this to them. We need to support them to understand that it is the earth rotating that is causing day and night. how the children the Paxi video explaining this concept in order to further help their understanding.
Reflect-the children can write in their learning journal, what they have learned and understood about day and night.
The children could make their own models of the sun and earth as an art activity and this could be used to help teach the concept with the use of torches also.I agree with you about creating home school link’s especially during science week. I think the Marvin and Milo set of experiments look ideal for this and I’m definitely going to try this out in my school in the coming year.
I love teaching about space and rockets in my classroom. Most of my teaching experience has been in junior classes so from my experience, I would start with showing my class videos of rockets being launched. We would discuss what’s happening, what the rocket looks like, shape, materials etc. I would then introduce the rocket mice activity. This activity would need a lot of advance preparation in terms of collecting empty milk cartons but the children could work in pairs on this activity, make logistics a bit easier. We would create our rocket mice and then have a countdown and all launch our rockets at the same time. I would then question the children about what happened, what they observed and what made the mice move. I would then extend the activity by asking can they predict what might happen if we use a larger or smaller container. We could then try this out and compare our findings. There is so much scope for discussion with this activity and it is a lovely way to introduce rockets and forces at infant level. I always enjoy showing the children videos on YouTube of astronaut Chris Hadfield. He posts lots of short videos about life in space and how astronauts eat, sleep exercise and so on. It’s an excellent resource and a lovely addition to any lesson on space.
I like the idea of the children in role being a weather presenter. This is a great idea and makes it a more interesting and engaging way to teach about weather. They would need lots of preparation for this, in terms of acquiring the appropriate vocabulary but you could watch videos of the weather forecast on television and gather some pointers.
This module has been great for providing excellent online resources for teaching about space. I look forward to using the stellarium app, astronomy picture of the day and Marvin and Milo resources. Marvin and Milo would be particularly good for building home school links and encouraging families to engage in science activities together. The activity set I would choose would be on weather and the lesson on what clothes to wear. I would begin the lesson with a visual presentation of pictures on the interactive whiteboard. We would discuss the different types of weather we see and introduce vocabulary surrounding weather. We would then chat about the seasons and briefly discuss the weather we would expect. I would then use the colouring pictures from the lesson, I would distribute them and tell the children to see if they can identify the season from the activity and weather. We would discuss our findings. From this I would choose one season to focus on, either summer or winter and have a bag of clothes ready to sort together. I would set the scene and tell them that I have to pack for my holiday to a very warm place, what would I need? The children then help to pack appropriate clothing and discuss why. As an extension of this lesson over the following days, we could discuss materials suitable for warm weather clothing and the children could design an outfit they would like to wear on holidays. You could teach about each season in turn in this way. The children could also do a weather study and each day you could record the weather for a week. I would use lots of songs and stories to support my teaching if this topic also.
