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Hi Geraldine. It sounds like your school is already streets ahead of many others with regards to incorporating light pollution into your biodiversity plan. Swift boxes with cameras is really a wonderful addition and I can imagine the excitement from the children during nesting season.
Describe how you could implement a version of “Design Your own
Dark Sky place” in your school/classroom?This lesson is ideal to use as a theme for our STEM ‘Lego League’ style projects we complete each year in 5th Class in my school.
The children would begin by investigating the impact of light pollution on humans and wildlife and the environment.
We would complete a light pollution survey on our school and surrounding areas with some activities to be completed with parents/ guardians after dark in their local areas.
We would research dark skies places in Ireland using Mayo darks kies website to learn about what is required for a real dark skies area. We would also research the stakeholders that will need to be involved.
The children will then work in groups playing the role of lighting planners, visiting stargazers, conservation rangers and local residents and discuss how to care for the needs of the groups that will benefit most: wildlife, scientists, visitors
The children would create a collage of ideas for their Lego designs for the park.
Once all ideas have been agreed upon the children will then decide which elements will be coded and motorised for the Lego STEM project.
Once all Lego projects are completed and coded the children will present their projects and design/ reseach boards to parents at a Showcase Day. This serves the purpose not only for allowing the children to show off their hard work but also as a way of raising awareness of the need for Dark Sky areas within our locality .
We could go one step further again and invite our local newspaper photographers to highlight our concerns and ideas caring for our locality to the wider community.
That’s a gorgeous connection to My Granda is a star. Really demonstrates to scope to discussions that are possible when planning a Dark Skies / Space theme.
How you would incorporate the needs of nocturnal species, especially those that rely on dark skies into school biodiversity plans.
Having recapped the definition of nocturnal animals and as a follow on from our light pollution surveys, we would consider how light pollution may have an impact on wildlife around our school grounds and local area.
We would request for an adjustment to unnecessary lights around our school at night , with the introduction of sensor, or warm white/ amber LED bulbs in favour of whiter lights.
We would discuss the benefits of bat boxes in the trees around our school.
We would carry out a survey of our pond area to ensure it meets the conditions to promote biodiversity- quiet area, dark corridors.
The children could design dark corridors within our grounds, among our existing hedges with the addition of log piles.
We would allocate areas around the school to other classes to plant up night scented flowers such as honeysuckle and night scented stock to increase/ introduce new insects, ensuring that the wildflower seeds chosen are native to Ireland.
We would take photos on our i-pads of the flowers already growing in our school garden with the goal of identifying them and assessing their impact on biodiversity and nocturnal insects.
Hi Caroline. Encouraging the children to create their own presentations is an excellent idea to allow for further independent research and as an assessment tool.
- Detail how light pollution is impacting your local area and how you would engage your learners to explore this.
This would be an excellent lesson to do with Science Week while exploring famous inventors. As we focus on Thomas Edison we could bedin to examine the pros and cons of electricity and lights in our world and lives today.
I would use the ‘Time to protect the night’ youtube video as it explains the impact of ligt pollution clearly.
We would then use lightpollutionmap.info to explore how light pollution is distributed around the world and in particular in our own area. We would discuss what factors do they think contribute to light pollution.
We would carry out a survey of the area around our school to record the types / number of lights used. Using the language of ‘shielded lights’ to emphasis the importance of different types of lights and the impact they have on our environment.
I would encourage an after dark walk with parents as a home activity to record the colours of lights in the area, on a simple ariel view map.
As a plenary we would investigate the dark sky places in Ireland and compare the pros and cons of these special areas to our own.
I really like the idea of keeping a journal at home about the night- sky. This is a great way to include parents and families in the learning and fun!
Create a short teaching resource using Stellarium/ WorldWide Telescope:
For 5th Class pupils
To begin the lesson I would set out the learning objective:( to explore the night sky , famous constellations and planets within our solar system using our new digital tools ), we would draw up a KWL chart to allow the children to recall prior learning and to spark questions and curiosity for the lesson ahead.
Using the IWB I would demonstrate for the class how to get started on Stellarium , ensuring the location is set to Ireland and we would set a time to explore constellations using’constellation art. The children would record what we found.
Once Worldwide Web has been explained to the class, going into ‘explore’, ‘look at: planet’ and ‘Imagery- I would give a prompt sheet to send the children on a ‘scavenger hunt’ of our solar system to allow for practise using the site, exporing each planet and recording any interesting details they find, colour, size, craters, moons, mountains
The children would record findings into the KWL chart
To incorporate STEM into our lesson I would encourage the children to recreate a constellation on choice using a pin-star light box.
Hi Christine .
I really like the distribution of clear roles in the groups to ensure there is full inclusion.
Plan how your students could “observe and record the positions of the sun when rising and setting and at different times of the day”
From this module , I can see that for my 5th Class pupils, it would be an ideal lesson to integrate with Ancient Egypt ( history). This would be an ideal way to hook the children for this lesson.
I was impressed by the sun and earth youtube video. It explains and illustrates the process very clearly. I will pause the video at certain points to recap what the children have been shown and to ask them to predict what will happen next.
We will then move onto a discussion of how we could create our own system for recording the shadows / positions of the sun throughout the day. I can see from this module that I have overcomplicated sundials I have made in the past with my pupils, so this time I would love to use the stick and flower pot method! The use of stones to mark the shadows is lovely and simple too.
The children will investigate the sunniest areas of the school grounds to place our sundial. They will have recording sheets as we visit the area throughout the day. We will contimue to use our predicting skills as the day goes on.
I would encourage this activity to be carried out at home through the week also with links for parents. And there is certainly the scope for further integration with Maths to plot our recordings on charts to give us a further/ deeper understanding of the movement of earth and the positions of the sun.