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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.
I think teacher in role is a great way to get the children thinking while making it very fun and engaging. It’s a great way to encourage deeper thinking on the topic.
I would choose to teach the lesson set about alien life. This set of lessons lends itself to cross curricular integration through art, drama, SPHE and religion. I would begin by doing a circle time and pose the question “What makes earth so wonderful?” We would discuss the fact that earth is a planet and I would have images on the interactive whiteboard to show planet earth in space. I would ask the children to think about this and then we would discuss as a whole class. I would go on to say that as far as we know, there are no other living things on other planets. If we were to have a visitor from space, what amazing things from earth would you like to show them. I would then ask the children in pairs to act out their response to this. The other children could guess what it is they are imitating. At the end of the lesson they would then be given materials for drawing and I would ask them to draw what they think an alien visitor would look like. This lesson had lots of scope for further extension. I would read books such as “We’re off to look for aliens” by Colin McNaughton. We could hone our thoughts and think about how they might be different from us. The children could then go on to create a 3D model of their alien using playdough or clay.
I like the idea of extending this lesson to include information on uv light. I thought that the uv light beads were an excellent resource that I haven’t seen before. It could be a resource worth buying for future lessons.
I would choose the lesson about the sun and shadows. I have taught this lesson many times before but I find it such a real and engaging way to learn about shadows. Children form their own ideas about what shadows are so it’s interesting for them to go outside and rest their theories. We would previously have been learning about the sun so I would begin with questioning the children and trying to get them to draw on their prior knowledge. I would bring them outside and discuss where the light is coming from. We would observe our shadows, trace them with chalk and then I would bring the children back together to discuss our findings. I would put new questions to them such as are all shadows the same size? What would happen on a cloudy day etc. We could bring other items from the classroom to test their shadows such as a school bag, football etc. Back in the classroom I would give the children the worksheet that accompanies this lesson, where they must predict the shadows that would form for certain objects in order to check for understanding and consolidate the learning. Over the course of the next week I would complete further investigations such ad using torches to investigate shadows and I would bring the children out on a cloudy day to see if we observe shadows. I would incorporate some songs and stories about the moon to supplement our learning.
