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The Rockets lesson would definitelt be a fun and engaging lesson to plan for during Space Week.
As we are a two-classroom school I would look at pairing the Senior room children with the Junior room children to design and build their rockets.
We would use NASA videos as a stimulus and talk and discussion about success criteria.
We would plan a whole-school launch outside and video it to use for peer-assessment afterwards.
For a whole school craft activity during Space Week we could also plan for the following activities;
Use our sensory tray with sand, stars, and toy rockets.
Make moon craters using playdough.
Paint a whole -school galaxy wall outside using black paintand white paint splatter.
Sing space songs such as “Zoom, Zoom, Zoom, We’re Going to the Moon.”We are also very lucky that Dr. Niamh Shaw is originally from our school locality and she calls to visit us or does video calls with us a couple of times a year.
Science skills and School Self Evaluation
I am currently leading our SSE and our focus is on enhancing playful learning activities in STEM lessons.
The resources from this course will be shared in a Drive folder with our staff and will support our goals of enquiry based, playful learning activities.
The ‘Too Young to Learn’ document and resources will be shared at our first SSE Staff meeting and staff will work in pairs using the PPDS ‘Glance Cards’ to plan a playful learning experience to support one lesson from each Strand.
The PDST resource of linking Maths Skills to Science Skills will also be helpful in developing our focus on science skills.The Arctic and Antarctic animals are something I struggled with even as an adult! It was only when I worked on the topic with my class that I fully gained understanding of both regions. This is an excellent way for children to compare and contrast animals in different regions.
Lesson: Stars and Constellations
Stimulus: How to Catch a Star – Oliver Jeffers
Talk and Discussion: The Constellations – Video of the different Constellations
Link with our trip to Birr Castle Observatory
Resources: Classroom binoculars and rotating star projector.
I would use the Esero resources for this topic – I especially liked the resource that was shown in this module where the Plough was represented using join the dots ‘This used to be a saucepan – now its a _____’ This is a great way to encourage the children to be creative and make their own visualisations and communicate their own interpretations of the constellations.
We could also use playdough and string to create alternative star formations in small groups.
Activity: The Spherical Earth
I would use the Esero resources to enhance my lesson. I like the idea of the Polar Bear and the Penguin standing on opposite Poles and asking the question – why don’t they fall off?
I would use the Oliver Jeffers Books as a stimulus and definetly the resource of the 16 individual drawings that piece together to create a spherial piece.
Visualising is so important when teaching such an abstract topic to young children.
We would also make use of our classroom globes. This would link nicely into our work on 3D Shapes, creating an opportunity for cross curriculum integration.Yes I agree – and much tastier than Jaffa Cakes – who remembers the ad ‘Full moon, half-moon, total eclipse’ 🙂
Inquiry Based Lesson: Make TPeppa’s Boots Waterproof
Stimulus: Peppa Pig / Muddy Puddles Song
Learning Outcome: Identify materials that are waterproof.
Lesson: The children will work in pairs to explore a range of materials and predict/test what makes Peppa’s Boots waterproof. Wew will test their theories by going outside and testing out their creations in actual puddles on the yard.
Assessment: Take a video/picture using their iPads and do a voiceover afterwards explaining their work and reasoning. What would you do diiferently next time?
Hi Esther, I love the idea of ‘science-detectives’ – how fun for the younger classes. I will definitely use this idea.
Hi, I teach a multigrade of infants to 2nd class. They have a huge interest in Space and we have participated in the Curious Minds Programme in the past. I would like to extend our STEM work into more enquiry based learning this year. My fun space fact is that 1 million planet earths would fit inside the sun. Its such an abstract topic its nice to be able to give the children some facts that help them visualise the size of planets etc.
Describe how you could implement a version of “Design Your own Dark Sky place” in your school/classroom?
As I teach junior infants to 2nd class I would probably use a book/e-story as a stimulus. One that comes to mind is Chris Hadfield’s ‘The Darkest Dark’. It explores a common childhood fear of the dark and I think it could lead nicely into discussion around why the dark is important for human and animal life.
We have a calm corner in the classroom which would provide a nice setting for designing our own ‘dark sky place’. We could use resources such as material, card, markers.
It would be lovely whole class collaborative project.Hi Irene, I really like your lesson plan – definitely one I could use in my infants-2nd class multigrade.
How you would engage your learners to explore biodiversity in your local area and
the possible impacts of light pollution on local biodiversity.
We will be starting our work towards our 4th Green School Flag ‘Biodiversity’ this coming school year.
We are a small two-teacher rural school with ample opportunity and resources available to us for exploring Biodiversity. We plan to conduct a seasonal Biodiversity study where we will assess, photograph, and log Biodiversity in our school environment using photography, video, and graphs as means of data collection.
We also plan to host a visit from one of the Heritage in Schools tutors to help us maximise our potential in supporting biodiversity in our school grounds.
We will include light pollution as one of the risk factors when we are doing an assessment of our environment.
The students will identify the affects of the street lights outside our school, passing low flying planes from a local airfield, alert lights in the local windfarm etc.