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Hi Síofra, You’ve pointed out some good native plants species for planting which would be helpful to our native animals. Our students had a visit recently from a Heritage in Schools biodiversity specialist and it was a great introduction for them to this area. We hope to do more planting of native species in our school grounds this coming year so I’ll be adding on your list! Thanks for sharing, Maria.
Hi Bríd, I enjoyed reading your post on songs for the night sky. It’s clear that the children would engage with and enjoy this activity. I can see myself delving into this list as a resource and I will share it with colleagues who are teaching infant classes. The children would be active learners in this activity and would be given the opportunity to develop their attention skills and social skills. Thank you for sharing this! Maria.
Irish stories and mythology hold a great connection to the night sky. The older generations especially, would have listened to stories about the Púca and the Banshee. From my own family, I would have heard great stories about travellers encountering strange things in the dark evenings in winter. My students could engage with this cultural aspect of the dark sky by asking their grandparents and parents if they have stories about Halloween. How people have experienced and written about the dark sky is an important element of our understanding of the night sky. Irish poetry is full of encounters with the moon, the stars, the darkness, the night, the landscape and the unseen. One of our great Irish writers W. B. Yeats’ poem “The Stolen Child” allows students to explore a nocturnal, mythic Ireland. Both Seamus Heaney’s and Patrick Kavanagh’s poems connect readers to ordinary rural landscapes and describe experiencing them under the veil of darkness. Another beautiful and engaging story is “The Children of Lir” which connects us to the constellation of Cygnus the Swan. One can draw on a wealth of traditional and contemporary songs to explore the night sky. Altan’s “Soilse na Nollag” paints a picture of lights piercing through the darkness of the winter evenings in rural Donegal. A beautiful song “Paint the Sky with Stars” by Enya, creates a magical picture of the night sky as depicted in the following lyrics- “Place a name upon the night, One to set your heart alight, And to make the darkness bright, Paint the sky with stars”.
Michael I was interested to read your post. Likewise, the majority of my students live in a rural area in the Lough Allen area and enjoy the fact that there is little light pollution in the immediate area. The pupils are however close enough to a small town which can be seen in the distance. Light pollution isn’t an immediate issue for them at present but may become a reality for them in their future. I plan to engage my students in a similar activity and introduce the Globe at Night citizen science programme to them to encourage them to reduce unnecessary light pollution.
Michael, I enjoyed reading about how you could use this great resource Stellarium to actively engage your students. They are very lucky to be situated so close to such an amazing landscape steeped in history. I’m sure it will be a very rewarding activity. I’m looking forward to using this resource with my students whose school is also situated close to a very historic site-Sliabh an Iarainn mountain.
Engage the learners to explore biodiversity in the local environment and the possible impacts of light pollution on local biodiversity.
Explore: To begin the students would establish what biodiversity is present in the school grounds. They would carry out a biodiversity study or BioBlitz, recording as many plants and animals as possible and using books and websites to identify them. An enjoyable way is to do a bug hunt. Pupils will describe any plants and animals they can’t identify. These findings can be recorded by the pupils on biodiversityireland.ie. Students will draw a biodiversity map to show what plants and animals are found in their school grounds. They can use maps and species records to find out if any nocturnal species have been found locally. Useful videos from heritage in schools’ specialists can help to guide students with their exploration. Plan: students will need to decide what improvements to make in the school. They will make a plan by adding proposed actions to the biodiversity map or create a model from waste materials. Make: establish a wildflower meadow by reducing mowing to certain months e.g. no mow May. Make bird or bat boxes and link in with a local environmental specialist for advice. Evaluate: the students will evaluate whether their action plan has helped to provide food, water and shelter for a range of species. They will be asked to consider if the plan was easy to implement. Did the action plan have any effect on reducing light pollution? If a biodiversity study is carried out each year at the same time, the pupil’s data can easily be compared.To engage my students in this learning journey, I would begin with a trigger video “Help protect NSW’s dark sky” and a starter question such as what factors contribute to light pollution? Pictures also act as good triggers to introduce the concept of light pollution. I would encourage students to contribute their own ideas of what light pollution means to them. Explain that Glare, sky glow, light trespass and clutter are all examples of light pollution. Esero 09 light and darkness module on using our senses in the dark, would be a great resource to use to explore how much light we need at night. The students would be encouraged to go outside their homes after dark and observe how many different colours and lights they can see. Questions the students may consider are is it cloudy or clear? Can they see moonlight or stars? How many stars can they observe? Considering that our local area is a rural area but we are in close proximity to a small town, can they identify any types of light pollution where they live? Students can record what they notice in terms of the brightness of the sky and where any artificial light is coming from. Pupils will be encouraged to draw and map the light sources in their local area and identify examples of poorly directed lighting. They could then compile a light pollution map showing the areas that are brightly lit and areas of natural darkness. The students would be encouraged to problem solve how to reduce light pollution and present their findings to their classmates and younger classes.
module 2
Engage students with a trigger video such as ESA’s “Paxi and our Moon” which show the phases and eclipses of the moon. A prompt question for pupils could be “can you see the full moon in the daytime”? The best Moon phase to observe in the morning is the waning crescent which is visible in the eastern sky before sunrise, and the Moon is usually high enough to observe clearly. Students could observe for several consecutive mornings to see the crescent become thinner. Using a moon observation log to record the appearance of the moon against the date and time is a valuable resource to consolidate the children’s learning. The pupils will be given a Moon observation sheet and asked to go outside shortly before sunrise. They will draw the Moon’s shape, record the time and record whether the moon is high/low and east/southeast. They will describe its brightness and take note of any clouds present and what the weather is like each morning. At the end of the observation period they will compare drawings. The students will consider if the Moon is getting bigger or smaller. The teacher would introduce the term waning of the moon. timeanddate.com is an online resource where pupils can access information on astronomical events such as eclipses and supermoons by entering their location.
reply to Eoghan Kenny
I love how this concept is presented on this course and on reading your submission, I think that your students would highly engage with this hands on activity. The KWL is an excellent way to begin the exploration of the concept of gravity. The students’ access to chromebooks would allow independent research and would provide the students with choice in their learning.
Maria Fallon
Having previously used the local environment of Lough Allen and the nearby Sliabh an Iarainn mountain for a rainfall investigation project, the senior students would engage well in observing and recording the positions of the sun when rising and setting and at different times of the day. The key idea could be can we use something in our local Lough Allen environment – the sun to solve the problem of measuring time? I would use this a sequence of lessons starting with exploring the students’ existing ideas about the sun, shadows and time. Through exploration of the school grounds, the students could find the best sunny locations, find directions using compasses and begin measuring shadows. Working in small teams, students will discover patterns in where the shadows are positioned and their lengths. The pupils could be challenged to design and construct a permanent sundial for the school grounds allowing them to decide on the most suitable materials for its construction. Following on from this, the students can test and make improvements and understand that there is a distinction between solar time and clock time. Finally, the students will present their own original sundial design and communicate their learning to their peers. Liston M (2018) writes that “STEM activities use the Engineering Design Process (EDP) as a systematic, orderly, open-ended way of approaching problems and designing solutions for those problems”. I feel that this activity incorporates design, real world applications and ideas of engineering.