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Hi Caitriona, that’s a really important fun fact. Venus is an example of just how hot a planet can get with too much greenhouse gases in its atmosphere. We worry, rightly, about 1.5 – 3 degrees of warming, but as you say Venus has reached 467 degrees C.
In terms of the importance of senses, the surface of the moon has more craters on the far side and less on the near side. Perhaps an opportunity to make surfaces of different roughnesses and enquire which the class think better represents the near side and the far side of the moon. Also, asteroids come in weird shapes and sizes and can be made from papier mache, or alternatively represented by stones and rocks. And a dark coloured material gets hotter than a light coloured material, and this can be sensed and introduce questions about melting snow and the earth getting less reflective as a result. Lots to think about!
Welcome Katie. That’s a fun fact that is likely to surprise the kids! It’s possibly a tricky one to discuss, but worth noting that the blue sunset on Mars happens for the same reason that the daytime sky on earth is blue. Conversely, it’s also the same reason why sunsets on earth can be red and the daytime Martian sky is red! https://www.nasa.gov/image-article/sunset-on-mars/
Hi Zara, I well remember that advert. For those not familiar, well worth googling! It’s also relevant because there will be an almost total eclipse of the Sun visible from Ireland on 12th August, from 6 to 8pm with maximum eclipse of about 94-96% occuring at about 7:15pm. Keep an eye out for updates and visit https://www.bco.ie/solar-eclipse/ as we upload information. This is the last big solar eclipse until 2090, so it’s really one NOT to be missed.
Welcome Zara. Space does seem to capture the imagination of all ages, so it’s a great starting point for an enquiry. And it helps the classes to stay engaged even when some of the concepts you’re trying to get across are challenging for some of the children.
Hi Grace, welcome. That’s super fun space fact. Allows you to explore the emptiness between things (planets in this case) and the relative scale of their separation from each other compared to their own physical size. Allows you to also explore the idea of large scales, which is theme that’s recurring already on the forum.
Hi Elaine, great to see the use of mind maps. Definitely encourages the children to develop their own connections and to explore how we use connections to better understand a topic. Your list to guide the mind map is a great start.
Hi Louise, lots of great prompt ideas. Your activity encourages classes to think about categorising objects and possibly the materials they are made of into groups. And the same materials can look very different, but have the same magnetic properties. Could this be used to generate some further prompts about how the students think about materials? For example, a hard plastic sheet and a soft plastic bag might look and feel very different, but their magnetic properties are very similar (they’re not!). So depending on how you categorise something, objects can be considered similar or different.
Hi Louise, great to have you on the forum. Another example of a space fact that highlights scale, and in this case volume.
Welcome Nicola. That’s such a surprising fun fact. If Olympus Mons was on Earth, what would be the challenges of climbing it? Might be an opportunity to discuss how the Earth’s atmosphere gets thinner and thinner the higher we go and climbers already often need oxygen to climb Everest – imagine if it was 3 times higher, would that make it more difficult?
Welcome Amy. That fun fact is now the top one on the forum! A great way to make number comparisons, though with the numbers being so large it’s really impossible to fully understand it for any of us!
Welcome Aine! Nice activity and great related space fact. What would happen to objects which sink and float on Earth, if they were in space? With no gravity you could ask the class to predict what they think will happen. Even though they can’t test their answer with an experiment, it will encourage discussion and prediction, in line with the rest of your activity. And enquiry-based learning sometimes leads to answers which need further experiment – and that’s fine, it’s not a weakness in the method or a comment on personal ability.
Thanks Fionnuala. Rockets are always a great starting point. Many kids will have seen some sorts of reports about the recent Artemis mission which sent four people around the Moon and that makes for an interesting and contemporary context. Also allows you to ask what is it that the class think satellites or people do in space, or what would they like to see them do. Remember, some of your class might even go to space one day!
Hi Gemma. Thankfully you don’t need to know lots about space to use it to teach enquiry-based learning. If you don’t know something you can always turn it into a series of questions, as if you and the class were explorers who were trying to discover something for the first time – which is one of the exciting elements of enquiry-based learning – and when you’re exploring you don’t always know the answer. As long as your approach is well grounded, such as using the ESERO Framework, then the richness will be in the conversations and interactions and observations and conclusions.