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SEN class plan for space week
Sensory activities
- Sensory exploration: Feel textured ‘moon’ rocks – rough / smooth, smelling moon dust (glitter)
- Galaxy slime: Make slime with blue, purple, and black colors, adding glitter and star confetti for a visually appealing and tactile activity.
- Create planets using playdough. Put them on lollipop sticks putting them in order from distance from the sun
Craft activity
Building a Space Station:
Provide various construction materials (cardboard boxes, building blocks, playdough, etc.) and encourage students to build their own space stations.
Offer visual prompts and step-by-step instructions for students who need them.
Focus on fine motor skills, spatial reasoning, and collaborative play.Maths
- Shapes and the solar system:
- Sort a variety of 2d shapes for their use in rockets / planets/stars.
- Build a simple rocket with 2d shapes (alternatively introduce a fine motor activity by cutting out 2d shapes).
Online resources
- Spaceweek.ie – Watch space week tv shows / get resources by topic
- twinkl.ie – lots of fun lesson ideas and displays
- https://spaceplace.nasa.gov/ Explore Nasa’s Space place
- Kahoot quizzes
I really like all the activities you have outlined here. The rocket mice activity is simple yet fun for kids in senior infants. Using the story at the start helps to engage them. They also love to design their own rockets using as much glitter and messy art as possible! I like your ipad idea and having a 6th class buddy to make an imovie with.
STEM in SSE. The SSE approach allows schools to see what they are doing well already, what they could improve on and it gives a clear focus / objective for what they would like to achieve in the future. It allows for more concise and relevant planning, giving guidance to teachers that might feel overwhelmed by STEM. It also allows schools to highlight their performances and achievements in STEM including participation in the Curious Minds STEM awards programme. I find this programme very useful in guiding the school in a variety of STEM activities ensuring that all the children access a variety of learning experiences each year. The gathering of evidence, within the SSE, from the whole school community is a very worthwhile thing to do as it takes into account a variety of views and experiences that help shape a school STEM improvement plan. Within the plan the targets, actions, responsibilities and timeframe for achieving these targets are all clearly set out allowing teaching and learning to improve. The curious minds website is a great resource when planning science, space and engineers week which would all be part of our school’s STEM plan.
I agree the children love looking at animals in the arctic and antartic. BBC Earth is great to show short videos of the animals and it gives the children a great visual of what they look like in their habitat. The ESRO and ESA have great resources. I like your idea of freezing small animals and trying to ‘rescue’ them.
In order to help develop the children’s understanding of the number of stars in the sky the activity using marbles is very useful as it engages the children in a hands-on learning activity and it is very visual. It could be altered to use grains of rice in the 3rd jar to show them that there are so many stars we couldn’t possibly count them.
The stars art activity is a fun way to complete the lesson, it is a simple way for the children to paint lots of stars in the sky!
The seeing stars 3d activity is a really effective way for older children to see the outline of the plough. The integration with maths is very good. A printable star map could be given to them showing simple constellations such as the big dipper and the plough, they could try and look for them at night as a homework assignment, taking a photo to bring in and show the class.
Some great ideas for younger classes. Lots of opportunities for integration including drama (martians on Mars) and music on Mars. Children could come up with their own ideas of what Mars ‘sounds’ like.
How to use the planets activity in the classroom
Ask the children, do any of them know the names of any planets?
Introduce the planets using the planets song. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mQrlgH97v94&list=RDmQrlgH97v94&start_radio=1 Talk about their location in relations to the earth and the sun.
Identify key characteristics of each planet.
Planet walk activity:
Set up a simple scale model:using hoops to represent each planet.
Position them around the sun . Children hop around the “solar system” landing on different planets (hoops) and learn fun facts as they go.Planet dance activity using hoops. Assign each child / small group of children a planet and they must follow the instructions of the dance on their planet. They then roll their hoop around the sun using the vocabulary of ‘orbit’ to demonstrate the planets moving in the solar system.
Build a tactile moon in groups, identifying the properties of the moon and how they are represented on the tactile moon. https://astroedu.iau.org/en/activities/meet-our-neighbours-moon/
Kahoot have some good quizzes on the planets which is always a fun way to end a lesson.
How to use the planets activity in the classroom
Ask the children, do any of them know the names of any planets?
Introduce the planets using the planets song. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mQrlgH97v94&list=RDmQrlgH97v94&start_radio=1 Talk about their location in relations to the earth and the sun.
Identify key characteristics of each planet.
Planet walk activity:
Set up a simple scale model:using hoops to represent each planet.
Position them around the sun . Children hop around the “solar system” landing on different planets (hoops) and learn fun facts as they go.Planet dance activity using hoops. Assign each child / small group of children a planet and they must follow the instructions of the dance on their planet. They then roll their hoop around the sun using the vocabulary of ‘orbit’ to demonstrate the planets moving in the solar system.
Build a tactile moon in groups, identifying the properties of the moon and how they are represented on the tactile moon.
Kahoot also have some quizzes aboout space which are a fun way to finish a lesson.
I like the idea of reading a story to the children and introducing fun facts about space to them. Children love fun facts! It’s amazing how much they already know when you introduce a lesson about space. They love to sing songs about space when doing space art. Sometimes they even make up their own planet and space songs.
Hi Orla,
The children always love to explore seeds and how they grow. It is a simple way for them to observe growth, especially if you use see through containers for them to grow in as they can see the roots. Schemes like the incredible edibles are great as they supply everything you need and there is always great excitement when the box arrives in the classroom!
Inquiry based activity: Exploring on the moon.
Trigger question – What would it be like to live on the moon? How would you get around?
Watch a video about moon buggies.
Investigate: Design and make a moon buggy.
In groups children design a moon buggy that
- has to be stable and not easy to blow over
- has to be able to move forwards
- has to be able to move over obstacles
Predict what materials would be most suitable, focusing on size for wheels etc. and what might happen if they use different materials.
Create their moon buggy with assistance if required.
Reflect
What do the buggies look like? Does each buggy look like its design?
Encourage the children to test their space buggy.
Is it strong? Encourage the children to blow against their buggy to see if it falls over.
Can it move over obstacles? Challenge the children to move their buggy through the container with sand and stones.
Encourage the children to adapt their space buggies so that they are better able to meet the requirements.
