Forum Replies Created
-
Posts
-
Great suggestions Niall, thanks so much for sharing. Will be saving these for cross curricular links and more creative ways to look at this topic. I’m sure the children would enjoy sharing songs, art, poems etc that they know themselves with similar connections.
The ‘Design your own Dark Sky Park’ activity is one I know my students will love! They are eager and enthusiastic to participate in role play activities and I think this will be a great motivation for engagement and to dig deeper into this topic. Before introducing the role play, we would discuss light pollution and its effects on the night sky. Showing images from Ireland’s three Dark Sky Parks will highlight the importance of these areas.
I would then have the children work in small groups to design their own Dark Sky Park. I like the idea of each group containing a mix of ‘visitors’, ‘stakeholders’ and ‘local residents’ so all perspectives are discussed in the group stages. Children will be encouraged to focus on a local area in the locality and to choose a location, consider how to reduce light pollution and how to engage the community.
Each group will then present to the class with ‘visitors’, ‘stakeholders’ or ‘residents’ from other groups taking notes to encourage a debate/discussion at the end.
I would also link this to real world benefits of protecting night skies and encourage the children to research the effects of light pollution on a selection of insect, animal or plant life.Great idea about the night vision camera to allow the children to get a glimpse (hopefully) of the nocturnal creatures we are learning about! I think mapping out the area is beneficial too, it would be interesting for the children to see (as well as management!) what % of the school grounds promote biodiversity.
How you would incorporate the needs of nocturnal species, especially those that rely on dark skies into school biodiversity plans?
I know in the past, we have had bats inside the school roof, so the introduction of bat boxes would be helpful to provide safe shelter for them. The fact that the children could be involved in the making of them would be a bonus! We are lucky to have many trees on the school grounds, and therefore, many locations to place these bat boxes.
I would encourage our school to increase the amount of outside meadow space by reducing mowing in areas which are not used for any specific purpose. I remember during the school closures during the pandemic, it was wonderful to see such growth happening on the school grounds! The meadow space would encourage insects and other invertebrates to inhabit the area, thus providing food sources for the bats and other nocturnal creatures.
Part of our school grounds incorporate a public walkway, which is lit by street lights, I would encourage engagement with the local council to reduce the time these lights are switched on. All lights in the school building are switched off at night but it is important for everyone to be reminded of same. This ensures natural behaviour of insect, which benefits the bats.Your mention of the sky being dark on one side and polluted by light on the other really struck me. A photo of this would be a great stimulus for the children to explore the impact of light pollution even on this small scale, in their local community.
Detail how light pollution is impacting your local area and how you would engage your learners to explore this:
I live and work in North County Dublin. Light pollution has impacted local bat populations, I attended a talk and walking tour about this earlier in the year. I would share this information with the children and encourage them to do some problem solving – how can the public lighting provide safety for people in the local park, but also protect biodiversity by ensuring the dark night sky is minimally impacted by this lighting.
The children will be able to carry out experiments to see the effects of glare and light trespass using various colours of lights and experimenting with angling lights different ways or using shades to ensure the light only reaches desired areas.
We would then walk in the local park, photograph the current lighting and plan a way of reduces glare and light trespass, in particular for the bats, but also the other insects and animals who live there.
I would reach out to the expert I have already mentioned to see if they were available to come to the school and talk to the class – or even if they could correspond via email. It’s important to empower the children to see that their voices will be heard and they can make a difference.I answered this question too and have just read your response. I spent far too long looking at lunar charts to figure out dates – what a great example of using ChatGPT appropriately in teaching preparation. This is a very handy guide of dates, thanks for sharing.
My understanding from lunar charts that I have Googled, is that the moon will be visible in the morning from 1st October to 20th October this year. It will begin as a sliver which gets smaller each morning as it will be in its waning crescent phase. Visibility will be dependent on cloud coverage so it might be the case that we will choose a time – 9.30am would work in our school – each day for a few days throughout this time period to check. The children could sketch what they see, so they have a comparison during this time. It would provide plenty of opportunities to talk about moonrise and moonset as I’m sure many children would have the question about why we can sometimes see the moon in the morning. I would extend this activity to introduce the idea of perspectives, the view of the moon from Earth and the view of the moon from the sun. This would then lead to explorations of the moon’s orbit as well as eclipses, which all provide children with an opportunity to physically move and learn.
Rephrasing the question is a great idea. Allowing the children to investigate, using the scientific method, with guidance, is a great way to promote independent learning and to build their confidence as learners. I will be taking this idea to my classroom in September!
I will be teaching 5th class this year and am looking forward to teaching STEM subjects in a cross curricular way. The sundial activity would be great for this. Hopefully we will be treated to some September sun to enable good conditions for this activity. We have a lot of open space on our school grounds, away from buildings and trees so I would be confident in choosing an area to create a basic sundial firstly, which we could monitor every hour. I like how this would be a productive movement break for all.
The obvious links between geography, science, maths would be explored throughout the day. I would extend this theme to allow for creativity in art lessons (designing a face for an analogue clock) and literacy/drama (process drama – based on the problem ‘what if all the clocks in the world stopped working’).
The opportunities for learning across many, if not all curricular areas, will ensure highly engaging lessons and enable the children to gain a deeper understanding and appreciation of the topic.