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Hi Gráinne,
We are moving onto our Biodiversity Green School Flag this year. You have given some great ideas for activities here to support initial exploration of what Biodiversity means.
Detail how light pollution is impacting your local area and how you would engage your learners to explore this.
As mentioned by another participant I would use the David Attenborough Video about sea turtles as a stimulus. We have explored noise pollution alot, but never light pollution. This will be a completely new topic for us in the classroom setting.
I would allow time for talk and discussion after watching the video.
Create a KWL on Light Pollution.
Identify sources of light pollution in our environment.
Post a task on Seesaw for children to take a video outside their house identifying sources of light pollution.
Compare sources of light pollution in urban v rural areas.
Identify the possible impacts of light pollution on Biodiversity.
Create an action plan to reduce light pollution in our local area.
Publish the action plan as part of our work towards our ‘Biodiversity’ Green School FlagHi Eleanor, I really like the idea of comparing two different demographics – rural and urban. This is definitely something we could do in my school as we are about 50:50 rural v urban interns of where the children live. It would provide an interesting link to our SSE in well-being touching on the area of quality rest and sleep quality.
Hi Nicole, yes I definitely got that sense of clarity about what STEM should look like in the classroom also.
Task 3. Plan to observe the moon – which phase of the moon is best for observing in the morning from school? What dates will that be?
This activity will be included in my thematic planning for the month of October. Our theme for the month will be Space.
I would begin this task by creating a Wordwall with the children on their iPads to assess their prior knowledge. We are very lucky to live in the hometown of Dr. Niamh Shaw (The first Irish woman in Space) so she has come to visit us and spoke to the children about her adventures. I will link her website here for others if it is of interest; https://niamhshaw.ie/journey-to-space/
I would play Paxi video explaining the lunar cycle.
We will use ‘timeanddate.com’ to find the calendar cycle of the moon and identify when there will be a full moon.
We will use the moon observation log resource to track the moon for the month, culminating on Halloween night.
We will also discuss what a ‘super moon’ is and explore some emergent questions that may come up during our investigations.
This is a really handy website, I had never heard of it before but will definitely use it going forward!
I teach in a small rural two-teacher school with 20 pupils. We have started work on our outdoor classroom and school garden. We hope to add a small greenhouse to the garden area next year. This will provide a real-world task of choosing the best location for our greenhouse to maximise sunlight.
I would focus on exploring sundials and their use throughout history with the students.
I plan to provide the children with resources such as paper plates marked with times of 3 hour intervals with a pencil in the middle. We can then go out at various intervals throughout the day and check the sundials placed in various locations around the school garden to check which area gets the most sunlight and at what times. We can record our findings using our school iPads. We can mark out the area for the new greenhouse once we have concluded our investigations.Hi Tanya, I really like the idea of posing the children with a task that requires them to be critical thinkers ‘where would you build the house and position the windows for maximum light?’. We have started our outdoor classroom and garden this year and hope to add a small greenhouse next year so this is something we could definitely explore when planning for its location.
Our school is located next to an old Estate House which was part of the Warburton Estate in the 1800’s ,which has been recently renovated and a family have moved in. We have been invited down to look around and learn more about the history of our local area. We are looking forward to working on a project about the history of our school which was built in 1908. There is alot of local knowledge about the land and the adjoining bogland which we hope to tap in to.
This sounds like a lovely project steeped in local heritage. There are so many opportunities for collaboration and creativity in what you have outlined. Best of luck with it!
I recently visited the Carrick-a-rede rope bridge and have some photos and videos of myself walking across it. I would probably use these as a stimulus to gain the children’s interest. I have multigrade class of Junior infants to 2nd class and they really enjoy practical hands on engineering tasks.
We would discuss the history, uses, and development of bridges. We would also look at a slideshow of famous bridges.
I would set the children up in small groups and give them their brief of creating a suspension bridge. I would lay out a variety of materials for them to use and conference with the groups as they work. Each group could then present their bridges to the class, explaining the key features and carrying out tests.
Hi Joan, it’s great that you can bring your class to physically see and discuss the features of the bridge – one that they probably pass most days! Small scale models of a local bridge is real world learning at its best!
Outline how you would use some of the course resources to conduct a seasonal biodiversity project to run throughout the school year. What resources and recording sheets would you need? How often would you bring learning outdoors? How would you integrate other subject areas?
This year we are moving onto our 4th Green Schools Flag ‘Biodiversity’ so this was the reason I chose this course. We are very lucky to have recently set up am outdoor classroom and we are working on our Bug Hotel. We also have a stack of branches in a corner of our pitch, where we can search for insects etc. I think a seasonal Biodiversity project where we record plant and animal life in our school grounds would be a wonderful whole school project. There are a wealth of resources here that would support such a project.
The wildflower walk and minibeast safari are lovely resources and we can use our iPads to create a digital log of our findings.
We already use our outdoor classroom daily so this is something that we could incorporate into our daily routine, as well as stand alone lessons.
This project would integrate seamlessly across the curriculum bringing in elements of literacy, SESE, Maths and STEM. It also aligns with the new PCF in terms of affording the children to be active, creative, investigative learners.Hi Lorna, I like the idea of leaf identification. I feel it is important for children to be able to identify at least native Irish trees by their leaves. We are very lucky to have a set of iPads and a local forest. We are a small rural school and I think a September trip to the woods will be lovely to collect leaves, photograph trees and return to school to create collaborative projects.