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I love the idea of the food tasting and cooking lessons which could also be a great way to get parents involved. A bit of work would have to go into checking for food allergies beforehand!
Applying lessons about aquaculture in the primary classroom can be a great opportunity to engage students in STEM learning. STEM emphasises real-world, inquiry-based, integrated, and collaborative learning, all of which can be achieved using the online lessons and resources provided by the ARC. Promoting real-world, relevant contexts to make STEM meaningful can be done in many ways e.g. discussing local or national aquaculture industries such as, salmon farming in Ireland; inviting a guest speaker into the classroom; arranging a virtual tour of a fish farm etc. There’s huge scope for cross-curricular integration aside from Maths, Science and SESE. For Literacy, children could engage in essay writing and poetry; for Art the options are endless and for Gaeilge, children could learn an abundance of new vocabulary. Schools can identify STEM integration and real-world sustainability education as a key area for development as part of the SSE process. Aquaculture should be an area of focus due to its relevance to environmental education and food sustainability. Integrating aquaculture would provide an engaging, real-world context for improving inquiry-based STEM learning and supporting sustainability goals.
I really like the idea of the quizzes at the end of each lesson. I do a weekly quiz with my class based on what has been learned throughout the week and the children absolutely love this! It has made a difference in their listening and attention during lessons and it’s one of their favourite activities to do on a Friday!
I love the idea of Designing and Building a Floating Fish Farm! This would really appeal to children and they could be as creative and artistic as they want to be. For younger classes, a diorama of “Under the Sea” could be another option.
Hi Mark,
It would be great to see our younger generations availing of these employment opportunities. Hopefully, going forward, we will see more of this in the future, given the abundance of job opportunities available here.
Hi Dolores,
I love the idea of inviting a local fisherman or marine expert into the classroom. We regularly invite parents in to talk about their jobs/careers and provide the children with the opportunity to explore different careers. I live in a coastal area and it has never occurred to me to do this! Definitely on my “to do” list next year in school.
As we have seen in this module, the West coast of Ireland is best suited to aquaculture and seafood farming. The strategic placement of aquaculture farms such as salmon, mussels and oysters, along Ireland’s coastline is an opportunity for economic growth and employment for local communities. With a growing global demand for seafood and the need for sustainable food production systems, aquaculture has a significant role to play. It not only meets these demands but it also contributes to the socio-economic development of coastal communities in Ireland. The location of aquaculture farms within Ireland, however, is not just a matter of geographical convenience. It is intrinsically linked to environmental factors, community well-being, and economic stability. Ireland is lucky in that it is located in an area with a temperate climate/ Goldilocks climate which is ideal for both the agricultural sector and the aquaculture sector.
There is huge potential to use the resources provided to us in this module. Everyone in Ireland should have some awareness about where seafood comes from, how it is farmed and the health benefits – we live on an island after all!I had never heard about the ARC before now and I would love to avail of a visit. I live in a coastal area where the beach is a 20 minute walk from our school. Our students really should have the opportunity to explore aquaculture more frequently and to be armed with facts and figures that they may not be aware of. It was very interesting to learn about BIMs social licence projects through links in the lessons. These projects could be used cross-curricular to help broaden the understanding of aquaculture in Ireland. It could also support other areas of learning in Science, Maths, Literacy etc. I really love the idea of the “Young Chef Ambassador Programme.” It’s more relevant to secondary school students but something that a younger child could aspire to accomplish.
I agree with you on that Marie – what a great range of resources available for teachers to access! I imagine the waiting lists for some of them will be even longer than stated in the module once this summer course is completed!
Yes Michelle, I completely agree with you. Many children would not have the luxury of living beside a coastal area and may be unaware of the many hidden treasures on offer! I would imagine that some children may never have eaten a mussel or an oyster or even handled one – even children that do live near coastal areas! Exploring aquaculture in the classroom is a fantastic opportunity to educate children and provide a multi-sensory experience.
Everyone’s local area is being impacted by climate changes, including warming temperatures, changes in the amount of rainfall and extreme weather events. Rising sea levels is one that impacts on my local area as I live in a coastal area in North County Dublin. Rising sea levels threaten coastal communities and ecosystems and I have seen, over the last number of years, the devastating impact of coastal erosion. People in our community have lost their homes due to coastal erosion. Other changes in climate that impact locally would be the decline in yields of crops for our local farmers. This in turn, results in higher food prices for the consumer. It’s extremely important that the children in our classrooms are aware of this – the impact of climate change globally, locally. This can be incorporated in many areas of the curriculum. It would be beneficial to bring the class to visit these areas and to see, first-hand, the impact e.g. coastal erosion in our community. A maths lesson could analyse food prices of today compared to 5 years ago and examine the reasons for this. This would pave the way for discussion about what we can do to help and how we can do it.
There are several actions that can be taken to make the world a better place and to slow down climate change. For example, leave the car at home more often when possible; reduce energy use (and bills!); throw away less food; reduce, reuse, repair and recycle!
The Development Education modules in this course can easily feed into any school’s Self-Evaluation. Staff can collaboratively identify areas for improvement and take action that leads to improved learning. A Green Schools committee, for example, could be. This would include staff, pupils and the wider community.
Through doing research for this module I discovered that we have 47 Direct Provision centres in Ireland. There is one not too far away from my locality which was established a number of years ago. There are more than 7,000 asylum seekers in Direct Provision centres including over 2,ooo children. It’s not something that I have really explored in the classroom and I would really like to raise an awareness of this among the school/classroom. Our local hotel also accommodates a number of Ukrainian refugees. One of the teenage girls is in my daughter’s year, 4th year. They were organising their TY Ball this year and they were so inclusive – explaining what the event was, inviting her to the invent etc My daughter and her friends even pooled together and purchased a dress for the student. They pretended that they had enough “points” on their account to get a free dress because they didn’t want her to feel embarrassed. She had a wonderful time with the girls that night and it was so lovely to see inclusion among the children. At primary school level, we work hard to include children from different cultures, countries and situations (refugees). Our Educate Together ethos promotes this where we strive for inclusivity and a child-cantered approach.
The buddy system is a wonderful idea and I’m going to suggest it for our school when I go back in September!
For me, SDG 4 “Quality Education” is one of the most important goals. I grew up in a disadvantaged area and I encountered poverty on a daily basis. I always remember my grandmother telling me that education was the way out! She was right! I was determined to get a good education and to go to college – I was the first in my family to do this! It’s such a wonderful sense of accomplishment and I am lucky that, in Ireland, this was achievable for me – education was/is free! I don’t think children really understand how fortunate we are in this country to be able to go to school, receive books, lunches etc; apply to an abundance of colleges/plc courses etc. We really can be anything we put our minds to in Ireland. I would teach this to my students. I would tell them about my own personal journey. We would explore education in other countries and compare what we have to them e.g. Cambodia. Our school is in a partnership with an organisation that supports the education of children/young adults in Cambodia. I would hope that this would help the children to feel empowered to help accomplish the global goal of quality education and to make the world a better place for all. Continuing our partnership with Cambodia and becoming actively involved, engaging the local community, creating an awareness around the differences between education in different countries would contribute to the development of SG4.