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Some great ideas for thematic planning here I will definitely use these ideas with my classes in the future !
Space week class plan for Junior infants:
English:
Read Katie and the starry night.
Eye spy space themed oral language activity.
Space themed pencil control activities.
irish: learn 3/4 space themed words using memory games.
Maths: counting up to 10 worksheets e.g count how many astronauts there are.
Music: twinkle twinkle little star
Art: starry starry night painting activity based on Van Gogh’s art.
Aistear: play dough mats based on space, cut out your own rocket, role place astronauts and aliens, build a rocket using construction connecting blocks.
Drama: role play- teacher acts as an astronaut and the children can ask questions about what it is like in space.
PE: playground game aliens and astronauts (similar to horses and Jockeys) 4 children are astronauts in each corner of the hall and the rest of the children are aliens. The astronauts have to try and catch as many aliens and bring them back to their rocket.
I like the idea of Guess the season game. It’s an interactive way to check for understanding during the lesson.
The activity I have chosen is ESERO -where do you live?
I really liked this activity as it is a hands on learning experience for the children. It is an engaging way to further the students understanding of where they live in the world and where other peripheral live for example the other children in their class as this can be a challenging concept for children to understand. I also liked the many possibilities for integration this lesson has. This theme of where do you live could be linked across many different curricular areas for example in geography and history learning about the different types of Homes we all live in or different houses from the past.
I would begin this lesson by engaging the class in a group discussion about what their own house looks and asking questions such as what colour is your house? Does your house have a stairs ? I would also compare children’s answers for example okay so Tom’s house has an upstairs but Anna’s doesn’t etc to make the children aware of different types of houses. Then using the house worksheet in the ESERO lesson I would provide students with the different materials to create the house that looks the most like theirs on the worksheet. This activity is another great curricular link to art as the students are exploring different materials to build their house. To conclude the lesson I will ask the students to group their houses together and encourage the students to discuss what they see when all the houses are grouped together and look like where they live or is there some things missing from the village.In my classroom I would use the ESERO activity Lots and Lots of Stars. I really liked this activity as it provided different ways for the children to access the learning. There was visual learning and hands on learning incorporated within the lesson. I would begin my lesson by showing the children a video of the song twinkle twinkle little star. I would then begin a discussion based on the video asking the students if they have seen a star before and when do they see stars? This would then link nicely into the jar of marble activity outlined in the ESERO activity. I would use this activity to ask the children how many stars do they think are in the sky and compare it to the number of children in the class and school and if they think there is more. I would then move onto the hands on activity of making a starry night. This hands on activity allows the children to create their own stars and physically see how many stars they’re might be. I would then introduce the count the stars activity. Each group would get a picture and work together to count how many stars they think are in the picture. For students who have difficult counting past 10 I would encourage them to place a small cube on each star and at the end I would display the picture on the board and count with the class together. At the end of the lesson I would ask the children to answer a couple of question to check for understanding. For example give me a thumbs up or thumbs down if we see stars at nighttime ?
I like the idea of using the story night monkey day monkey, Hillary to explore the topic of night and day with the children, they would really enjoy this.
The activity set I would choose is the Sun and shadows. The focus of my lesson would be what makes shadows. I taught a similar lesson to 2nd class before where we explored how light makes shadows. To begin the lesson I would place a picture of two children on the whiteboard standing outside in the sun. I will engage the students in a discussion based on this picture. I would ask questions like what do you notice about this picture? Where are the children? How do we know they are outside? This discussion will elicit vocabulary from the students such as the sun and the shadows of the children. The main activity of the lesson would focus on the children making their own shadows. I would give each pair a torch and two cardboard shadow puppets. The students would then walk to different parts of the room and use the torch to make shadows. I would also encourage the students to make shadows or their hands or feet as well. At the end of the lesson I would create another group discussion for the children to share their findings . I would use a slideshow of shadow pictures to check for understanding of the lesson for example I would ask the children to give me a thumbs up if it was a shadow picture or not and I would encourage some students to explain their reasoning behind their decision.
Hi my name is Meadhbh and I have worked in SET for the last two years and I’m moving to junior infants in September. My fun fact about space is that there is 293 moons in our solar system.
An enquiry based lesson that I would use in the Junior infant classroom would be based on Sound – this activity is based in exploring different sounds. The children would explore and identify a range of different sounds through a sounds investigation. I would use a mystery box as a stimulus to engage the students in the lesson. The box would be wrapped like a present and I would ask one student to shake the box. the aim of the lesson would be to discover what might be in the box that would be making the noise. The students would then each get their own wrapped box to discover what sounds they hear. Then they would engage in a matching activity and match pictures of items that might be in the box. Throughout the lesson I would encourage students to use vocabulary such as rattle, swish loud and soft. The children would also identify everyday sounds in their lives making a connection between their lives and the area of different sounds.
