Forum Replies Created
-
Posts
-
Space Week plan
Morning activity: Look at a photo from Astronomy picture of the day every morning and discuss what we see.Lego Challenge: Build a rocket ship
Literacy: Older classes report writing on Space. Space themed books all classes: Field Trip to the Moon – wordless picture books children can create their own script to accompany the story. The Big Beyond, How to Catch a Star, The Way Back home, Adams Amazing Space Adventure.
Art: Night sky painting using a toothbrush to create the stars, younger classes design and make an alien.
PE: Younger classes can play The Planet game and The Planet Dance from ‘Journey through the Solar system’. Older classes children can look at projectiles and link this to building a rocket ship.
History: The space race/ animals and people in space. Varying detail depending on class level.
Science: Build and test a rocket. (Younger classes rocket mice). In groups children come up with a question to investigate relating to their rockets.
SPHE: Daily stargazing meditation using Stellarium. Followed by discussion where children are encouraged to notice changes across the week and discuss constellations.
The blubber gloves sound really interesting and I am sure would make the lesson much more memorable for the children.
I have chosen to look at the online tools I was particularly interested in Stellarium. It can be hard to ask children to stargaze because not everyone will be able to do it, in my class last year a stargazing event had been on in the town but only one child was able to attend. Stellarium makes stargazing accessible for all during the school day. I also like that it could be used at all class levels. The children could be asked to note the changes in the stars based on time or location. When the planets are visible could be investigated and constellations could also be examined along with the stories that accompany these. I also loved the Astronomy picture of the day. One of these could be used to engage children in conversations on astronomy at the beginning of a lesson. For space week one photo could be looked at and discussed every day and would be a great way to spark children’s interest and curiosity in astronomy.
It is a great idea to use the read aloud stories from youtube so that all of the class can see the pictures better. This sounds like a great lesson.
I have chosen the activity set ‘Stars’. I would introduce the topic by reading ‘How to Catch a Star’ by Oliver Jeffers. I would then ask the children to describe a previous occasion where they saw the stars. We would discuss what they know about stars already. I would play the first minute and a half of the video ‘What are Stars?’ (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZrS3Ye8p61Y). I would ask them in pairs to guess how many stars they think there are. I would then give the children a photo of the night sky and ask them to count how many stars there are by separating the photo into sections and counting each section. We will discuss this and I will tell the class that there are so many stars that we need computers to count them for us and that in just our galaxy there are 100 billion stars.
I love the idea of using shadow tag to make the lesson more fun. Something I have done before with older classes to explore shadows is to make a film on the Ipads using shadow puppets.
I have chosen the activity set The Planets. I would begin by asking the children what town we are in, then what county, country and continent. I would then ask them to describe the size of each of these i.e town = small, continent = large. We would then discuss what planet we live on and in what galaxy and we would think of words to describe the sizes of these. I would then play a planets song such as ‘Friends of the Sun’ or ‘The Planets’ (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mQrlgH97v94). We could then look at pictures of the planets and the children could brainstorm what they think each planets surface would be like based the images and on its order from the sun. Then we could play the planet game where hula hoops are placed around the room to represent each planet and one yellow one in the middle to be the sun. The children run around as rocket ships and then when I call a planet name they go to that planet. To conclude we would sing the song again and name the planets.
Hi, my name is Muireann. My favourite space fact is that sunsets on Mars are blue.
An inquiry based lesson I have done before is making parachutes. We looked at a video of someone parachuting and examined photos of parachutes. I elicited the children’s thoughts on what makes a good parachute and they concluded it needed to slow a person’s fall. The class were then given a variety of materials (fabrics, newspaper, tin foil etc) to test. They also had string and a clothes peg to act as the person. I questioned the children on how we would test the best material and they decided they would use a timer and the best parachute would be the one that took the longest to fall. The children worked in groups to make their parachutes and test them out by standing on a chair and dropping them. They were encouraged to test all of the materials. Once every group had finished testing we had a class discussion on what worked the best and why they think that might be.
