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The ARC’s lesson plans and resources are a great way to bring local environmental issues into STEM education. They’re especially relevant for Irish students because they let them get hands-on with topics like marine ecosystems, sustainability, food production, and climate challenges. As mentioned before, it is especially important for children that don’t have access to the coast particularly those in city or town schools.
The lessons focus on inquiry-based and project-based learning, which is at the heart of good STEM teaching. Students can ‘dive’ into how fish farms work, how water quality is tested, or how technology supports sustainability in aquaculture.
It also fits perfectly with the STEM Education Policy Statement—offering engaging, real-world content that sparks collaboration, like group data collection projects, while highlighting Ireland’s unique marine environment. From an SSE point of view, ARC can help set a cross-curricular STEM theme, support whole-school CPD using its content, and even provide examples of student feedback and project work as evidence for SSE.I completely agree with Andrea—the ARC’s online lessons are a fantastic, future-focused STEM resource that really tie in with our School Self-Evaluation goals. The modules are cross-curricular and inquiry-based, so they keep students engaged while making the learning relevant. And the addition of VR? That’s going to grab their attention straight away.
It’s such a powerful way to build real-world skills, encourage critical thinking, and promote collaboration right across the school.
Thats a really good point Emily. The knock on effect down to even such basic things as the GAA teams is a really good point to make. You are so right in the importance of Aquaculture keeping all culture alive.
In Ireland, most aquaculture farms are dotted along the west coast and other coastal areas, where the clean, sheltered waters and rich marine life make perfect conditions for growing things like Atlantic salmon, mussels, and oysters. Their locations aren’t chosen at random—it’s all about finding the right balance between the environment, access to infrastructure, and working with local communities.
From a social and economic point of view, aquaculture is a real lifeline for rural coastal areas that often face depopulation and a lack of jobs. These farms offer steady local work, from hatchery technicians and farmhands to logistics and quality control roles, and they also boost other sectors like processing, transport, and even tourism.
On top of that, aquaculture gives younger people a reason to stay in—or come back to—their hometowns, which helps keep cultural traditions alive and communities strong. And with the right environmental safeguards in place, it’s something that can benefit both the economy and the health of our marine environment
Learning about aquaculture in class is a great way for students to see where their food comes from and why keeping our environment healthy matters. Aquaculture is expanding worldwide, and when we use things like videos, virtual farm tours, and class discussions, it becomes much more engaging and easier to grasp. Having access to resources like the Aquaculture Remote Classroom is a huge bonus. It’s not something most teachers can easily recreate, but I can see how kids would be thrilled to step into such a beautiful, modern space. I think it is probably a topic that a lot of teachers would also shy away from so to have these learning aids at your disposal would be great.
My understanding of social licence from this module is an industries ability to operate while making sure different stakeholders are engaged and their opinions are considered on all kinds of issues. So, when we look at social license in aquaculture during class, it’s a great way for students to connect with what’s going on in their local communities and actually feel like they’re part of the conversation.As former teacher in a Deis Band 1 area, I have to say I totally agree with these comments. I think its much easier for children who have access to coastlines to become more enthused and involved with aquaculture. I think the ARC teaching and learning tool would be fantastic in this instance as it would capture the imagination from the get go.
Try out some of the referenced classroom investigations for yourself or look at other resources and describe how you would conduct a lesson on mirrors, lenses and telescopes or looking out at the night sky for your class.
Looking at the night sky.
We would start the class, finding out about the children’s prior knowledge. I like to start lessons with a picture book to stimulate questioning, I would use ‘The Sun and Moon have Tea Party’. We would use ipad time and videos to research the topics and create a KWL chart. We would then do some group work.Do-It-Yourself Solar Eclipse.
You could create and explain a solar eclipse in a few seconds using material found around the home.
Experiment, you will need:
a torch
an orange
a pingpong ball
blu tack
kebab stick.
Experiment
First secure the ping-pong ball to the end of the kebab stick with a large piece of blu tack.
Place the torch on a surface your hand with the torch facing it.
Turn out the lights for this bit and close all the curtains for it to be effective.
Using the other hand, pass the ping-pong ball between the orange, blocking out the light from the torch. Explain to your child that the torch is the Sun, the orange is the Earth and the ping-pong ball is the Moon.
Result
What do they notice when the ball passes in front of the orange? They should notice the shadow of the ping-pong ball falling onto the orange. If a tiny human lived on the orange, it would appear the light source had been blocked out by the ping-pong ball. This is what happens during a solar eclipse.
You could extend this experiment again but swap the orange and ping-pong ball to recreate a lunar eclipse.
Scientific Explanation
This experiment demonstrates how a small, celestial body like the moon can block out light form a much larger one like the Sun. There are two types of eclipses that we can see from Earth – a solar eclipse and a lunar eclipse. A solar eclipse is when the Moon blocks the light from the Sun reaching Earth so that it appears to block out the Sun. A lunar eclipse is when the Earth blocks the Sun’s light reaching the Moon so it is in total darkness.Our school is not far from Navan. This provides the ideal opportunity to discuss and study Admiral Sir Francis Beaufort. He was born in Navan, Co. Meath in 1774. He left school when he was only thirteen years old to start his life at sea. He eventually became a commander in the British Navy and is famous for inventing the Wind Force Scale.
Beaufort always kept a journal of short notes on the weather at sea. In 1805 he was asked to do a survey of the waters around an area of South America. It was during this voyage that he developed the first Wind Force Scale.
The Beaufort Wind Force Scale is a way to measure and describe the wind speed at sea. His scale had thirteen points e.g. calm = (0); storm = (13). In 1838 the British Navy made Beaufort’s Wind Force Scale the standard way to measure wind at sea.
His Wind Force Scale was altered when steam ships became more popular than sailing ships. However, when there are very severe weather conditions, the weathermen today still used the Beaufort Wind Force Scale to measure the wind.In 1829, Beaufort became the head of the Hydrographic Office of the British Admiralty and planned many voyages to charter, or map, areas all around the world. e.g. Robert Fitzroy and Charles Darwin on the ship Beagle.
Many places on the world’s oceans have been named after him e.g. Beaufort Sea (part of Arctic Oceans), Beaufort Island (Antarctic) and Beaufort Inlet ( North Atlantic Ocean ). He died in 1857.The study of Francis Beaufort would lend itself to integration with Art – wind and blow painting, Science – Making our own weather vanes, Maths – measuring wind speed, English – Research project on Sir Francis Beaufort, History – studying people and places.
Dr. Patten is such a great idea for exploration and so topical. This could be easily integrated letter writing and project work
Catherine, I love the idea of using your locality to foster engagement in a topic. It would also be a great idea to use local enterprises, particularly Intel in this case. It shows the children the real life transferrable skills they could learn and use in later life.
Using the suspension bridge in Birr Castle Demesne or a bridge in your local area as inspiration, describe how you would plan a class or whole school challenge to design and make a bridge. How would you integrate mathematical thinking and incorporate the maths skills appropriate to your class level.
We have many bridges close to our school due to our proximity to the train station and the canal. As they are a constant source of curiosity for the children they are a great starting point and great topic for differentiation and expansion of STEM ideas.
I love to anchor each lesson with a story. There are two wonderful picture books called ‘Rosie Revere Engineer’ and ‘Iggy Peck Architect’. These highlight the real life transferrable skills that the children are learning also. We could extend this and pose the question, ’How did the 3 Billy Goats get across the river?’
We can move on to building a bridge!
We can use toy animals and discuss the type of bridge we need.
We can discuss types of bridges, truss, suspension, wooden bridges and cement bridges ect.
The children should work together to do research on types of bridges before they start their building. Perhaps even lending itself to a research project during ipad time.
We will then discuss how we can make our own bridge which must be strong enough to carry the toy goats over.
There is ample opportunity for discussion about constructing of these bridges. How much will we need /how many pillars do we need. Around what length/height /width etc.
Estimation and guessing will play a big role here as will be applying and problem solving.
Reasoning and explaining will be how they formulate their plan
Implementing and carrying out their plan will be the final result,They can then present their plan to the class.
I know already they will have so much fun!Module 3 Bird Survey
I would use ‘Birds in our Garden’ as a seasonal biodiversity project and a starting point.
We would first observe birds in the school garden. Our scholl garden is just being set up at the moment but we are lucky enough be adjacent to an expansive piece of land. We would use the Birds of Ireland website as a stimulus. Create a checklist of birds in the school garden.
After that, the class could brainstorm ideas for the creation of bird feeders and determine the appropriate feed to use depending on size and materials.
I would organise the children into small groups.
Each group would design their respective feeders, decorate and present their feeder to the class. During this stage the children will assess the suitability of their feeders, e.g. using recycled materials, access to the feed for the birds etc.
We would place the feeders in the garden and monitor it throughout the day. Children from each group would be allocated a role within the group, they would check on the feeders daily to access the level of feed taken from the feeders, ensuring that the feeders are remaining intact etc.
This project could continue throughout the school year and could also encourage the children to create a similar feeder at home and monitor the number/ type of birds coming to their feeders.I think it is so important for the children to use their own local area as a starting point. It also assures immediate buy in from the children. The Wildflower walk challenge is a great idea. I loved the idea on the video of throwing in some flowers that could not be found to assess participation.
There is so much opportunity for integration with other areas of the curriculum as you alluded to.
As a teacher in the junior end of the school, I can see lots of opportunities for development of key skills such as creativity, problem solving and critical thinking in this activity. It provides children with a great opportunity for team work and investigation
I would begin the lesson with a trigger to find out the children’s knowledge about maps. Oliver Jeffers has a wonderful book called ‘Here we are’ and it is also a short movie, this could peak the childrens interest in their own understanding of maps. I would provide the children with different maps, a globe and google maps on the interactive whiteboard that they could explore. We could use google maps to find our school and talk about where our classroom is on the map.
We are very lucky to have a brand new school building, which I think would provide ample opportunity for the children to create their own map.
We will first talk about the school focusing on the language of location and directions. There are so many opportunities for team work and collaboration while doing a walk of the school plotting important features. There are also so many opportunities for differentiation.
In their groups I will get them first to draw a plan of theschool . They will then make a 3D map of the classroom. Each group will be assigned different materials to work with..natural materials from outside, lego and playdough.
When the children create their map, we could introduce the ‘bee bots’. We can program the bee bots to go to particular areas of the school map.
To finish the lesson, the children will look and respond at the other maps and reflect on their own maps and how they could improve on them and what they would do differently next time
