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I always love using a book as a stimulus for discussion and as an entry into learning about a topic. I had never heard of Mousetronaut so thanks for the suggestion, it sounds really great!
I also like the suggestion of sharing one new thing they learned with their partner. To extend that further, I always like to ask the child what their partner said instead of telling me their own answer, to help develop their listening skills.
As part of Space Week last year, we explored the topic of rockets, and the children absolutely loved it. They were fully engaged throughout the lessons, and during our end-of-year discussion, many said it was one of their favourite topics that we had learned about. I introduced the lesson by using a picture of a rocket as a stimulus and asked questions such as, “Do you know what this is called?”, “What does it do?”, “Where does it go?” and finally, “What makes a rocket fly?” We had some wonderful responses, including one child suggesting that rockets were powered by fairy dust!
After displaying our new vocabulary, the children became “Rocket Engineers.” We talked about what an engineer does, and one child proudly shared that their parent was an engineer, which created a lovely home-school connection. I demonstrated how to launch a paper rocket using a straw, and the children eagerly predicted how far it would travel before making and testing their own rockets. The activity encouraged curiosity, teamwork, prediction, and problem-solving, while making meaningful cross-curricular links across Science, STEM, Oral Language, and Art.
I like that this activity first of all links to an every day object that the child uses and so it’s a great starting point. The feely bag of materials is a great way to get oral language discussions going and in my experience, the children are always very engaged in an activity with a prop like a feely bag. I love the phrase ‘work as scientists’ as that is the language I use throughout the curriculum ‘work as artists’ etc, it is a lovely way to frame the learning hopefully sets a mindset that aids learning.
The hands on element of testing the material is a great inquiry based method and is such an excellent and motivating way for children to learn.
I like how easily the learning can be extended with the designing of the coat, factoring in different elements. Lots of learning and fun to be had with this lesson.
I would choose one of the hands-on classroom themed activities, as from experience, I see that children learn best when they are actively involved in their learning. I particularly enjoyed the space-themed activities because they encourage curiosity, creativity, and problem-solving while linking Science with other curriculum areas such as Art, Maths, and Oral Language. It is also a great one to tie in with Aistear. This cross-curricular approach helps to make learning more meaningful and engaging, particularly for younger children who enjoy learning through play and exploration.
In an infant classroom, I would encourage the students to explore the activity through play, discussion, and simple investigations. They could work in pairs to make predictions, observe what happens, and talk about what they notice using age-appropriate language. I would also include opportunities for drawing, colouring, and storytelling so that children can record and share their ideas. These activities would help to build confidence, communication skills, and a basic early understanding of scientific inquiry.
As a further step towards a STEM-focused School Self-Evaluation (SSE), I would aim to provide regular opportunities for infants to engage in hands-on STEM activities throughout the year. Using playful, inquiry-based lessons and sharing ideas and resources with colleagues would help create a consistent whole-school approach to STEM. This would encourage children’s natural curiosity and foster positive attitudes towards Science, Technology, Engineering, and Maths from an early age.
I really liked your idea, especially starting with a discussion about aliens. I think it’s a great way to get the children excited and encourage them to use their imagination.
The cross-curricular link to 2D shapes is really clever too, as it gives them a fun way to use what they’ve learned in Maths.
I also liked that the children get to share their finished aliens with the class—it would be lovely to see how different and creative everyone’s designs are.
I have chosen a Star activity for an infant class.
Prompt: Read the picture book How To Catch a Star by Oliver Jeffers.
Starter Question: Have you ever looked up at the stars in the sky and wondered if stars make pictures?
Display a picture of a starry night and ask questions such as “What do you notice?”, “Can you see any shapes?” “Do the shapes remind you of anything?”
Predicting:
– What do you think would happen if we joined the stars together with lines?
– Would it look like something? (an animal, object etc)
– Will all of you see the same picture?Conducting the Investigation: Use the ‘Draw your Constellation’ worksheet from Space Week to help the children discover and create their own constellations. Encourage students to name it.
Sharing the Results: Display the children’s constellations on the noticeboard and gather children in a circle. Ask questions such as
– Did everyone make the same constellation?
– Why do the pictures look different even though we all had the same stars?
– What did you enjoy creating?
– Call on some children to share their experience with the class.Consolidation: The Constellation Song https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nvDosSr69zA&list=RDnvDosSr69zA&start_radio=1
I love the idea of shadow tag, it is such a fun and engaging way to start the lesson and one I know my class would love.
The exploration of shadow through questioning an experience they have just had is very clever.
Small group work is great for collaborative learning and hands on learning with the flashlamps and teddy bears is very creative and makes the learning very real for the students.
Returning to the school yard throughout the day to observe how the shadows change is a great consolidation of the learning.
I loved the activity of the spherical earth, it was so creative and I loved the hands on nature of the learning.
Based on the lesson in the video I would model what that teacher did. I love the Earth ball, I had not seen one of those before and the use of the lamp to portray the sunlight was really powerful.
Adding the teddies to both sides of the Earth to discuss the difference between day and night was so simple, yet so powerful. Great for visual learners and such a fun way to teach the concept.
I loved how the idea was developed further when the kids used their bodies to face the ‘sun’ and then turn away from the ‘sun’ denoting day and night.
Consolidation of the learning through the song was a great way to end the lesson.
Overall, I loved how clever, simple and engaging this lesson was.
Hi Colette, I love this prompt question as it provides such a wealth of exploration and is so fun! I like the small group aspect of the lesson encouraging discussion and collaboration. I love the compare and contrasting as I can see how we could introduce Maths language to that. I also like that the teacher’s role is open ended, providing resources as you said and not providing answers. I can see how every class would really enjoy this lesson and it is a discussion I could see children continuing in the school yard and at home.
I loved the Curious Minds/ESERO Framework for Inquiry as it is really helpful to have a one page template where you can write down your plan, keep everything on task to meet curriculum objectives and also reflect.
Thinking of a Junior Infant classroom, a very basic prompt like – What do we see in the sky? – would work very well and provide a great starting point.
ENGAGE
Prompt: What do we see in the sky?
Wondering – does it change according to the time of day?
Exploring – let’s go outside, lie on the ground and look up. Draw a picture of what you can see.
INVESTIGATE
Starter question – what did you see?
Predicting – What do you think you might see at night time?
Conducting the investigation – homework, look up at the sky at night time. What do you see? Draw a picture
THE NEXT STEP
Applying the learning – what, if anything, are the differences in what we see in the sky during the day time and the night time? What differences showed up in your pictures?
Making Connections – what, if anything, was the same in what we see during the day and the night? Did anything the same show up on your pictures?
Thoughtful actions – Can we say the sky is the same during the day/night or can we say the sky is different during the day/night?
Reflections: What did we enjoy about the lesson? Would we change/add/take away anything in the lesson? How could we explore this further?
CONSIDERATION OF INCLUSIONS
– Visual supports and picture cards to pre teach vocab
– Pairing with peers where needed to encourage collaborative learning and to support the children that may need extra help.
– Support sensory needs.My name is Melanie and I work in Educate Together. I have a range of experience across many different classes, including support and autism classes. I am interested in looking at teaching Space to the Junior classes and exploring ways to extend it to the Senior classes. I don’t have a space fact yet, that is why I am doing this course. It is something I have always been interested in so I am finding this course really fascinating.
I like the range of AI tools Geraldine has incorporated into her lesson plan. Animating each stage of the life cycle during the Gamma presentation is much more valuable than a stand alone image and I can see the kids responding really well to this.
I really liked the sequencing activity, its collaborative nature and the active learning element. Quizezz was used towards the end of the lesson to assess if the pupils had understood the topic. The instant feedback enables the teacher to decide whether the class can move on with the lesson or whether any part of the life cycle needs to be revised.
I also like how Geraldine concluded the lesson without AI by getting the children to partner with each other and describe the life cycle of a butterfly using the relevant vocabulary.
This lesson provides a nice balance between AI generated learning and the more traditional teaching strategies.
During my training for the new Maths curriculum, problem solving and relating it to real world experiences seems to be a priority. AI can be a very useful tool in achieving this target as it allows us to amend content to make it appropriate to the lives of the children we are teaching. We can connect the learning content to a classroom, school, family and community. This can help engage and motivate the children by relating it to their world.
Class level: 2nd class
Subject: Maths
Strand: Number
Strand Unit: Sets/Operations
Learning Outcome: Select, make use of and represent a range of addition and subtraction strategies.
Use of AI tools:
– Gamma can be used to present problem solving strategies in an interesting and engaging way. Once the strategy is chosen, Gamma will help to present it in a clear and concise manner.– Differentiated word problems. I can prompt AI to create a set of word problems within the remit of the ability level in my class. In an earlier module, we saw how a teacher used the children’s names within the word problems and he explained how that excited and motivated the children to learn. We could extend this further by including details about happenings within the school.
For example,.
– the allocation of hot lunches to each named classroom. X amount of kids are absent from Oak class, how many hot meals are left to be delivered?
– Teacher is absent from Oak class today so Oak class are being put together with Hazel class. How many hot lunches will need to be delivered?
– Make it relevant to PE/sports day activities linking equipment with classes etcOnce the input/prompt has the relevant information the output should help achieve learning outcomes.
– Khan Academy has an application which can extend problem solving abilities by asking the student to rephrase a question in their own words. This can really enable active learning of the mathematical concept you are teaching.
These are just some of the ways I could use AI to help plan this Maths lesson.
I really like the way Laura has said she would introduce RoboGarden by framing it as an exploration rather than a formal lesson. I love the openness that narrative allows when it comes to interacting with this AI tool. It takes the pressure off of us as teachers as using this strategy helps us to learn and explore with the kids. Once we all get more familiar with how it works and how to use it, I as the teacher can then tie it to curriculum goals and objectives.
I love the use of the words playful learning. It is really creative, engaging and motivating to students and to me as teacher. Thanks Laura.
Khan Academy looks like an interesting AI application that I could introduce to the kids in my class. Having taken a look at how it could work in my classroom, the personalised learning it facilitates, as well as being able to support a wide range of needs, would be of most value to my students down the line.
A good first step in using this application would be a whole class project, with everyone working on the same topic. I would then assign the same mastery goal to all of the class as a starting point and follow up by giving each student an appropriate amount of time to engage with the programme. When it comes to setting assignments, the whole class could work on it together or they could break into smaller groups to facilitate group work and collaboration skills.
I think this would be a good first step in using this application with my class.