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As an infant and special education teacher, I think investigating light pollution in the local area and exploring this with the pupils would be an interesting activity to complete. The school I teach in is in a very built-up urban area. In the local area there are a large number of high-rise apartments that are regularly lit up in the afternoon and evening. There is also a brightly lit train station and a GAA and soccer pitch that regularly uses floodlights close by. Even our own school has some very bright security lights that are on for a large portion of the evening in winter. Using a basic map of the local area and pictures of the area at night, a lesson could be conducted as to how the light pollution impacts the local community and wildlife. We could discuss how we might try to reduce light pollution as a class and the small changes we could make such as turning off lights in our own houses or apartments when not un use, setting our school security lights on timers etc.
Hi Irene,
This sounds like such a lovely idea. I think that the idea that the moon is only visible at night is a misconception that many children have so showing the children photographs of the moon visible during the day is a really great starting point. I think the children will love being moon detectives and making recordings and sketches will really help develop the skills working as scientists. Having an activity like this throughout the year as you planned would be so lovely and I’ll be sure to take note of the dates you have suggested to do something similar with my class. Thanks for the idea!An activity that would work well in my infant and special education class would be teaching about the nights sky using the web version of Stellarium. The children in my class are so enthusiastic about space and learning about the constellations and stars visible in the night sky would be a wonderful way to connect learning in school with parents and guardians at home possibly using seesaw or Aladdin to communicate. We often begin our lessons with a song to catch the attention of the young learners so I would start by using the stroybots videos about the moon and sun https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=i235Y2HRksA . Using stellarium we could observe what will be visible in the night sky that evening with a particular focus on the moon, the planets or recognisable constellations such as Ursa Major. It would also be a lovely way for the children to see how the night sky changes depending on location, we have a very international population in the school so it would be lovely to show children the night sky of their birth country too.
Hi Monica,
I also chose the Gravity/Weight – assemble an Earth Tube and one other planet tube activity, however I work in an infant and special education setting. It is really interesting to see how the activity could be extended so much further in the older classes such as your 4th class. The idea of having science journals is so lovely and such a nice way of keeping all their ideas and learning together in their own words. I also thought of bringing the children around the school to discuss their activity. Through working in special ed I have seen the importance of encouraging children to share ideas and achievements and how much it can improve their confidence and encourage communication.As an infant and special education teacher, I feel like the children would really enjoy the activity Gravity/Weight – Assemble an Earth Tube and one other planet tube. This activity would be a lovely way to engage the children in a multitude of different ways and would integrate a number of subjects such as science, maths, art and wellbeing. The children could first be introduced to the concept of the different planets and discuss their characteristics using the ESA Paxi videos and introduced to the concept of weight and gravity on different planets. Talk and discussion could be used to hypothesise what a tube of pringles would weigh on different planets. The children could pick two planets they would like to compare. The children could decorate the tubes to represent the planets based on the Paxi video and description of its features. With teacher support, they could fill the two empty tubes with the correct amount of rice to mimic what the tube of crisps would weigh on the different planets. As the school completes thematic teaching as a whole school, they children could visit other classes to demonstrate the concept and show their learning.
Hi John, that’s a really good idea having a rockets theme running through the school for space week. I think the children would love it especially if they had time to show some of the other classes how successful their rockets are. It would probably build excitement for the next year too when the kids see the more advanced experiments in advance.
The books mentioned in the presentation are lovely and I have regularly used Aliens love underpants. I also have used a fantastic book by astronaut Chris Hadfield called ‘The Darkest Dark’ which we use alongside learning about Space and the international space station in my school. The children love that they can watch him in action in space on the Canadian Space Agency Youtube page and then hear about what he was like as a child watching the first moon landing in the book. Another fantastic book is ‘Whatever Next’ by Jill Murphy to encourage children’s imaginations when learning about space travel.
The rocket mice experiment would be a fantastic experiment to use in junior infants after teaching children about rockets, watching videos of rockets launches and reading both ‘The Darkest Dark’ and ‘Whatever next’. It would be a lovely opportunity for children to experiment and hypothesis how speed and pressure exerted on the bottle will change how high their rocket mouse will travel.
Hi Sinead, I am really looking forward to using the Marvin and Milo collection too and I was thinking the same thing, its so lovely that the children are exposed to comics again. It is often rare to see a comic these days! The Paxi videos on the ESA kids website are also really good as they are a mixture of animation and real life. I found some other lovely videos from Chris Hadfield that are amazing when teaching children about life in space. They are fantastic as he shows how to brush your teeth in space, make a sandwich and sleep in space. In case you are interested for your 1st class. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3bCoGC532p8
I would really like to try the online resources covered in this module in my own school. The Stellarium app and website are such a great resources and I’m already hooked on using the stellarium app myself at night! I think it would be a really useful tool during winter. By changing the time on the app or webpage, you could give the children an idea of what they might be able to see in the evening before bed. I have used the ESA websites a lot with the children in my school and even have my own Paxi teddy that comes to visit each class when learning about space. The infants particularly love watching the Paxi videos. I have never used the Marvin and Milo activities and I would love to try some of their experiments with the children. The images are really lovely and would be lovely to try with parents who may come in to help during science week or space week.
I would really like to use the Space and Aliens activity set with the pupils in my school as it is something that as teachers, we often spend less time on because of the lack of evidence. The special life lesson where children draw something special, they would like to show an alien is a really unique idea and could be linked to other areas of the curriculum nicely. Informing children that they will have to act out the ‘special drawing’ would definitely help the children be more careful with their thought process and ideas especially in infants. The follow on activity of drawing an alien is a nice precursor to creating their own Alien using mala or clay. I think the activities overall are something the children would really enjoy and would allow them to become really creative in their design as well as using their own knowledge of plants and animals on Earth and how climate and certain conditions can effect an animals appearance or special features.
Hi Sarah, I’ve used this story with my infants too and they absolutely loved it. I did a very similar art lesson and also made some space ships from a paper plate and a paper bowl stuck together. We added paper windows and the children drew their idea of Aliens looking out. We hung them all in a line across the classroom alongside some underpants and a big Earth cut out at the end. They loved it.
Hi Ciara, this sounds like a really lovely lesson. The children would have such a fun time making the different planets using balloons. A few years ago, I did a similar lesson with 1st class about planets. We, as first class teachers, decided to link a lot of our literacy and art activities with our science lessons that month and as part of this the children designed their own planet, its composition, its inhabitants or lack there of and its orbit. I was amazed at how much they had picked up from the lessons and included in their designs and their writing. They had planets lying on their side like Uranus and planets spinning the opposite way like Venus. Space really is such a great way to inspire their love of science.
As a learning support teacher that works with infant classes, I would really like to use the ‘Up or down’ activity from the spherical Earth lessons from the Universe in a box activities when supporting the class teachers. As a school with children from all over the world, it would be a wonderful way to show how the Earth has no up or down. Using a globe the children could find their families home countries and mark them on the globe, similar to the polar bear and penguin idea from the lesson plan. This could be particularly nice to use during our schools multicultural week where we celebrate all nationalities. The ‘Earth Mosaic’ could be used and the children could draw features from their own families country. Through putting the mosaic together, the children could really see the idea of perspective and how up or down is relative to the observer.
Hi Aoife, this is such a lovely idea. I love working with shadows with the pupils in my school too. We recently had lots of fun in our Junior infant classes working with shadows when one of the children used a dinosaur toy to create a shadow and we realised we could make a somewhat life sized dinosaur in the classroom using distance from the light source. We have also played guess the object based on the shadow and on very sunny days we give children chalk to trace each other’s shadows in the yard. It is such a lovely activity and the children really understand how what they learn in the classroom can be transferred to real life as they realise that shadows come and go based on the light source (which can be frustrating if a cloud passes in front of the sun while in the middle of tracing a classmates shadow).
One inquiry-based activity that I would like to use and have used in my classroom is growing beans while reading Jack and the Beanstalk. This is similar to the growing tomatoes experiment from the curious minds teacher guidelines however we often hypothesise and experiment with what might happen to the beans under a variety of different conditions such as no water, no light or no oxygen and of course the children’s own beans have access all three. The children love watching the progress and keeping an eye on their experiments.
In previous years this experiment has also led to a further inquiry led experiment as the bean without light grew to huge heights but was white due to a lack of chlorophyl. The children (and staff) all guessed or hypothesised if the plant would turn green if allowed in the sunlight and how long it would take. There was great excitement monitoring the plant each day when it was placed in the sunlight with surprising results.
