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Amy,
Forces are used in the second of the investigations in this module, and are a powerful theme to engage young children via play. My colleague Frances pretends to be a shortsighted very-literal robot with young classes, and asks them to tell her how to move a wheely chair from one side of the room to another. She tells them that the robot can’t see very well, so they will have to tell her how to make the chair move.
She claims that she doesn’t understand the word “push” so that they have to tell how to make a “push”.
Aaron,
At BCO we have used water rockets for a number of years, I wasn’t aware that the water was optional in this high pressure rocket set up.
One requirement of these is to use carbonated drinks bottles, since they have the strength required to stay whole under pressure.
We use a commercial kit – the Rokit kit, and find it really good, the kit comes with an education supports – at https://waterrokit.com/learning-zone/
Claire,
magnetism is one of those topics that absolutely lends itself to exploration in an inquiry style. Since the metals that are often found in a classroom contain iron, do try to have a range of non-magnetic metals to hand. Aluminium (in the form of tin foil or drinks cans) and the jewellry metals of gold and silver are good choices. If you have any coins, they can also be tested.
Once they children have explored which materials are attracted to the magnets, they might look at ideas around “do magnets have to touch a material to pull it?” This can lead to one of BCO’s favourite fun activities – bug races, with the bugs made from twists of pipecleaners, the magnets are under the table and the bugs have to race from one side of a table to another. An extension can be to make a bug path, and the magnet has to pull the bug along the path.
Eimear,
Do you have link to that game that you can share? A google search hasn’t identified it for me.
You have identified a wide range of activities around weather and a good choice of “take the next steps” that will permit the children to extend their understanding. Nice work.
Eimear,
dice for traits is a lovely addition to this, and could even be used for a younger class. One table can make a family of aliens that another table could use to sort and classify.
Eveleen,
rockets are such a great theme for a Space Week activity, and by offering multiple types of rockets in stations the children are sure to find one that they can ‘connect’ with. You’ve given them opportunities to predict and then investigate and then reflect, all of which are key components of Inquiry based learning. Well done.
Fiona,
you have shared a comprehensive plan for a classroom week, please do let us know how it works out for you. We encourage you to register as an “event” with spaceweek.ie, and you might find the SpaceWeek TV episodes that are hosted on YouTube useful:
Rachel,
You’ve described a variety of activities to engage children across space week, and I like that you have considered integration across many subjects.
This year Space Week starts on a Saturday, so you might want to prepare the Moon journals to start then, since the Moon will be full on 7 October, rising at sunset just before 7pm, and rising later each day after that. By the end of the Space Week on October 10 I’d suggest looking for the Moon in the morning sky as it will set at 1 pm in the afternoon.
Emma,
this activity set strikes me as quite challenging for a very young class, but very doable with 4th or up. It is similar to this Curious Minds activity, suggested for 5th and 6th: https://www.sfi.ie/site-files/primary-science/media/pdfs/col/keeping_warm_activity.pdf
The rather prescriptive style of the activities suggests to to me that they could be used as the prompt – and then the children can design their own experiment to further investigate some aspect of the fabric that interests them.
I’m unsure about Activity 2, it has a title of breathability, but seems to be about how fast clothing dries. I know that man-made sports shirts dry much faster than cotton t-shirts, but am less sure of how that is related to breathability.
This article goes into it in more detail: https://www.rei.com/learn/expert-advice/how-to-pick-the-most-breathable-fabrics.html
Rachael,
in Module 4 we share the “Stellarium” software, which has multiple different cultural constellation drawings available. We find at the Observatory that visitors know of constellations if they are particularly interested in astronomy, but the majority of our visitors might know the names of one or two stars and know very little of the 88 constellations in the sky.
Aaron,
it is remarkable how quickly the shadows do change. We did this activity with teachers when we offered this as a face to face course. We were all surprised that in the time it took one person to draw another’s shadow, their own shadow can changed.
A teachers shared that they asked their class to “fit into someone else’s shadow”, and found this to be both fun and full of learning as the children really had to think how their own shadow was being formed.
Niamh,
thanks for sharing the Saturn Moon fact- I had somehow missed the number increasing so dramatically. This was announced in March of this year:
https://science.nasa.gov/saturn/moons/
When I was in college Saturn had 15 moons, only 11 of which were known prior to the Pioneer 11 spacecraft visit in 1979.
Megan,
what class are you likely to be teaching next year? The falling things inquiry from this module is really suitable for infants, who are likely to need help in ” Students would record their predictions” – since their writing skills will be very much under development. This is why the ESERO source materials suggests using picture cards that can be placed where they predict each object will go, and an oral explanation of their prediction can be used.
The inquiry process is designed so that “Why do you think this object fell faster?” isn’t actually needed – the children will have made a prediction with a reason, then they will check that their ideas are correct or not. So the teacher discussion would be guiding the children to determine if their predictions (and hence their scientific reasoning) is correct or not. They will have already stated why they think one object will fall faster than the other.
Niamh,
comparing Mars to the Earth is great idea. Children may not have too much idea of what Mars is like to begin with, but by looking at images or Google Mars from Google Earth they can describe what they see that is different to what they can see out the window of the school.
A nice way to develop their descriptive geographic language, and accesses the geographic skill:
“A sense of place
• become aware of, explore and discuss some of the distinctive human and
natural features of the locality”Michelle,
you can add a deeper layer of inquiry to the vaseline activity by treating it as the “engage” section of the Inquiry Framework.
Once children are familiar with the demonstration they will have their own questions. They might wonder if more Vaseline makes your hand ‘more waterproof.’ Or, they could consider if there is a minimum amount of Vaseline and adding more makes no difference.
For each prediction, they can then carry out a simple investigation to confirm their thoughts.
They might need to re-design the activity to be able to measure “waterproof-ness” – perhaps by having something that changes colour when it gets wet (sugar paper perhaps?).