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I completely agree. Giving students the chance to explore aquaculture from multiple perspectives really deepens their understanding. It turns abstract concepts into real-world issues, promotes meaningful understanding and helps develop critical thinkers. This kind of immersive learning truly helps lessons stick and makes education more meaningful.
I always have classroom displays of themes being covered in class. I find them another useful teaching tool. My infants are also very proud of their work so using their work as a teaching tools I find has the additional benefit of helping maintain a happy growth mindset towards learning. As a EAL tool art is a wonderful support to those still learnign the vocabulary.
That’s great to have sun dial in the town to actually visit. Always important to use the local environment and get out of the class room on occasion to show them some real life concrete examples.
Hi Lora,
Thanks for sharing the duchas.ie website, wow what a wealth of knowledge!
My dad is a real old school, long time retired school principal I must hit him up for piseógs / tradition and ask if any of these stories have a connection with the night sky.
We must not forget that people have a lot to share (not everything is on the internet!)
Ha Katie,
I was just here and getting my husband to help me come up with song titles and we have come up with almost the same list!
To add a few more …
Wish upon a star
REM – man on the moon
S club 7 – Reach for the stars (a personal favourite!)
Super man lovers – Starlight
Kids love music and I always try to include a songs no matter what the subject so was delighted to see this as an assignment.
STARS
Countless stars in the sky, I love to see them in the night
When they twinkle in the night, They bring to my heart, delight
Our shines, while other are shooting, Everyone holds their breath while shooting
They come out in the night and bright in the day, They steal my heart and shine bright in May
They brighten up the dark sky, That is why we find them so nice
Countless stars in the sky, I love to see them in the night
I would love to have web cams to catch what goes on in our school garden, however IT is poor in my school and money would not be spared for anything remotely close to night cams! I would use you tube clips to show then how much activity goes on at night. I have never done this and think it would be very exciting for them to realise how much nature comes to life at night.
How you would engage your learners to explore biodiversity in your local area and the possible impacts of light pollution on local biodiversity.
I teach in a Junior school – we would start with introducing biodiversity by going on a walk to our green space / garden and asking the class to draw as many living things they think might live, walk through, share this space. Have children share what they think. Let roll over some sticks, logs, stones see if we can find anything else that we may not have drawn or tried to write. Think of creatures who might fly in? walk in? jump in? use this space?
The next day … produce all the sheets and make a big list of things that might use this school green space – then move onto explaining biodiversity. Having given them a concrete activity first in my opinion gives them time to think and an opportunity to chat amongst peers about their shared experience in the garden. Compare and again chat / discuss. Make posters we can share outside on our display board and encourage other classes to come look at what the Junior infants are learning (share our learning)
Next, we would go on a walk around the school adding to our biodiversity on our school grounds. We would discuss about how we can protect the living things on our school grounds. We are in charge … how can help them and what do we do as a school community that might not help them?
We have plenty of ‘corners’ of long grass in the school. These provide a great space for our living creatures that we rarely go near. We could make biodiversity signs. Get the help of our caretaker to plant them. Talk about the school as a community and that we all need to play our part. Who else might we need to talk too? I hope they would suggest the Principal and we could have her in for a biodiversity Q&A so the children know this a serious issue.
I would teach how artificial light affects biodiversity – birds who use it know when to sing, bats using it to come out at twilight. Teach the beginnings of understanding how important natural light is to our biodiversity. Make bird boxes / bat boxes / bug hotels and place them on our variety of long grass green spaces sides and again do projects that we can tell our school community about. Have Junior infants do something and tell older classes about it. This instils confidence and knowledge in these our youngest students.
Hi Christine,
Your answers are always so good and really thorough! I have seen other ones you have done and have really like your take on this course. Storytime, exploring, stations and the craft idea you have come up with are ideal for my junior school aged students.
Love the tubes idea, fun a creative and we all know they love bringing something in from home to work on!
Giving the time for them to absorb the information and learn about the planet they picked from different perspectives during the week can only serve to scaffold planet learning during the week (books, videos, posters etc… I am in a junior school to research would be more group based and I would like to use station teaching for the week. Include some literacy and have my SET teacher support this type of learning.
It’s great the small tips and tricks you can pick up on this course. I am enjoying the forums and saving all the tips and resources I see.
I have not ever (in all my years) tracked the sun light from within the classroom. I always felt this was an outdoor activity. Simple and not time consuming but keeps the children interest high doing it in the classroom! I am in a big corner room next year and I will be using this idea.
I use learning stations with my infants and can’t praise them enough for allowing the children to engage with each other. Lots of chat organically happens through this type of teaching. Having the preparation done and resources ready allows the students to chat about the same theme (space) from different perspectives and a good level of success / inclusion is almost guaranteed for all involved.
I like the idea of asking them to check the light in their house at various stages of the day during the week. This might be a nice change of pace to homework too! Instead of the same kind of homework every week it is important to have our parents see what else their child is learning about and will also inform parents and allow them to ask questions and talk about something very relevant to what is going on in school that week.
