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Hi Sonali, thanks for that lesson outline. Lots of cross-curriculum ideas and important also that assessment includes how the children work as a team, how they participate, alongside how they use an inquiry-based framework such as ESERO to guide their approach to experiments and new learnings.
Hi Annemarie, welcome and thanks for your fun space fact. Venus has many strange characteristics and maybe you could set up a chart which compares those with Earth’s equivalent. For example, spin direction, temperature, size, length of day, length of year, type of rainfall, strength of gravity, etc. And even extend the table to other planets!! Or even make imaginary planets!
Welcome to the forum Pearl and thanks for sharing the lesson. It’s a variation on some of the ideas already on the forum, which is great. Good to see a large degree of interactivity.
Hi Kathryn, welcome to the forum and thanks for the fun space fact which we were just discussing! The float/sink lesson is highly interactive. You can also change the shape of an object and see if it still floats. For example, a flat tinfoil piece will float. Crunch it up tightly and it sinks. Same material, different outcome. Is this surprising? Was it predicted? Why did it happen? And I’m always conscious that huge metal ships float, when a small lump of iron does not. This allows one to think about the density of materials, even in a very introductory way.
Hi Dean, welcome to the forum and thanks for the popular space fact. It’s good to explore gravity in a hands on way as Annemarie points out. A key objective is always to give the children the confidence to ask questions, often when they aren’t sure of the best questions to ask. All questions are useful. They all enrich the conversation and add to the sense of teamwork and team building. And the teacher doesn’t need to know all the answers – more importantly, you guide the discussion and experimentation, etc.
Welcome Natasha. Thanks for the fun space fact. It does provide some perspective on the size of the Sun relative to the Earth. It also allows one to ask why the Sun appears small if it’s so big, and why the planets and stars at night seem tiny. It demonstrates how an observation can be misleading – just because something appears small doesn’t mean it is – and this reinforces the importance of designing experiments appropriately. Thanks also for the mind map. And in terms of your lesson plan have a look back at how rain can be in the form of diamonds on neptune and sulphuric acid on venus. Does that means different materials to protect Peppa?
Hi Rachel, thankyou for the fun fact and the lesson outline. You’ve described the approach very well, giving the children ample opportunity to enagage with each other and the problem at challenge of understanding floating and sinking. There’s some additional ideas on this in the forum, so collectively a lot of practical experiences are helping to design exciting inquiry-based classes.
Hi Mairead, thankyou for the interesting space fact. Another linked fact is that Dan is a Patron of Blackrock Castle Observatory and we were fortunate to speak to him directly when he was on the International Space Station. He’s a fabulous ambassador for what it means to be a true astronaut. Very humble and self-effacing, but a real astronaut who has travelled the globe thousands of times on the ISS.
Hi Aideen, welcome to the forum. The Bunny Hopping lesson sounds like a lot of fun. If you do the same lesson on the Moon, Mars and Venus, what would you expect. Do the children think that less gravity means the hop will be smaller, the same or larger. If they arrange the gravity on different planets in order, they can imagine what might happen on each and discuss. If they were trying to set a record for the biggest bunny hop, which planet would they choose? (The Moon is, strictly speaking, a satellite and not a planet, so you could extend this to satellites of Jupiter and Saturn as the gravity for all is well known.)
Hi Aoife, that’s a nice lesson and i think it would be perfect for imagining what might happen on other planets. Gravity is something that we find everywhere in the Universe, which is actually quite a remarkable fact. It differs in strength, depending on the mass of the objects, but it’s always there, big, small or tiny!
Hi Sarah, welcome to the forum. You have lots of great ideas to choose from already. The parachute lesson always gets a great reaction. You can extend it by asking what the children think would happen if the parachute was dropped on the Moon (where there’s no air, but one sixth gravity) and on Mars (where there is a very thin atmosphere and half the gravity on Earth). What would they expect? Would the lack of air on the Moon stop the parachute from working altogether (which explores how a parachute works)? Would the smaller gravity make it fall less quickly (which explores gravity)?
Hi Barry, thanks for those observations. Involving the classes in wondering, predicting, observing, refining, reflecting, is such an important part of the inquiry-based approach. And there’s so many options once you start to ask what might happen with gravity and floating/sinking on other planets.
Hi Aoife, delighted you’re getting some great ideas from the forum. I like the flexibility of the approaches you refer to with the magnets and how it’s cross curricular and involves oral and maths skills. Neither the Moon nor Mars posess a magnetic field, so does your class think a compass would work well there and can they think of other ways to navigate (e.g., by the stars).
Hi Aishling, I hope that you’ve found a few interesting facts by now that are additional to those you’ve seen on the forum. And I hope you’re getting lots of ideas for lesson plans and a better understanding of inquiry-based approaches to working with your children.
Hi Orla, welcome to the forum. The number of stars in the Universe is truly mind boggling. With recent advances we now now that the number of PLANETS is also mind boggling. There may well be more planets than stars in the Universe! What do your children think that means for the possibility of life elsewhere. Does more planets mean a greater likelihood? And what sort of conditions might those planets need to have to support life as we know it on earth? Lots of opportunities for some creative thinking supported by observations of what supports life on earth.