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I took my class into Dublin Castle a few years ago for a guided tour and it was a brilliant experience. It would definitely be an excellent stimulus for creative activities.
Describe how you would involve your pupils in an art, music drama or creative writing project based around your local natural or scientific heritage
Dublin’s Grand Canal is located a short stroll away from my school. In preparation for this activity, I would take the children on a walk to the canal where they could use the class iPads to take photos of the canal and its flora and fauna to take back as inspiration.
Children would then work in groups to create 3-D dioramas of the canal using shoeboxes and a variety of art materials. While artistic creativity will be important for this activity, emphasis will be primarily placed on creating as accurate a scene as possible in terms of wildlife. Groups would also be allowed to use ICT to further research the plants and animals that are native to Grand Canal and surrounding area.
As an extension activity, groups would create a simple booklet or poster showing the various plants and animals that they have included in their diorama.
Assessment: Children would be provided with a simple rubric which would allow them to self-assess their work.
Using the suspension bridge in Birr Castle Demesne or a bridge in your local area as inspiration, describe how you would plan a class or whole school challenge to design and make a bridge. How would you integrate mathematical thinking and incorporate the maths skills appropriate to your class level.
As my school is located in Co. Dublin, I would use some of the well-known bridges in Dublin City as a stimulus for this activity: Samuel Beckett Bridge, Ha’penny Bridge, O’Connell Bridge.
Children would be split into groups and each group would be given a picture of one of the above bridges. On the page surrounding the picture, they would write down any observations, opinions, or questions that they have about the bridge.
Pictures of the bridges would then be shown on the interactive board and groups would share their recordings.
All three bridges would then be shown side-by-side on the board, and the class would compare and contrast the design features of each one. Some facts that I would share could include:
– O’Connell Bridge is 5m wider than it is long (key questions: Would this impact the stability of the bridge? Why might this be a useful design feature?)
– Samuel Beckett Bridge is a moving bridge, which can open to an angle of 90 degrees (key questions: Why might it need to open? What benefit is this to the city?)
– Ha’Penny Bridge is over 200 years old and is a pedestrian bridge (key questions: How might the design of bridges changed in 200 years?)
Groups would be given time to design their bridges, with an emphasis placed on choosing original and unusual designs while still maintaining a strong, stable structure. I would remind the children that each of the bridges that we studied have very different features.
As part of their plans, children would list the materials needed to construct their bridge. The class would also decide together how a “fair test” could be conducted to test the stability of each bridge.
Mathematical Thinking and Skills:
- Estimating the number of materials required, finding the difference between the group’s estimate and the actual materials used
- Understanding the relationship between length, width, height and weight. Looking at the ratio of length:width of the bridge – what makes for a strong structure?
- Using their understanding of angles and shape/space when ensuring the structure is strong and secure
- Addition and subtraction: Calculating the total lengths, widths etc. of all of the bridges in the class
This sounds like a brilliant lesson, Emily. A local resource like Maynooth Castle lends itself to an entire unit of work and one which really encourages the children to look at their locality through a new lens.
I like how you integrated art, data collection, and ICT into your plans here, Fiona. It sounds like it was a wonderful whole-school project.
Register your garden with the All Ireland Pollinator Plan and record your actions for pollinators, then outline how you would register your school and what actions you could take to help pollinators
I have registered my garden with the All Ireland Pollinator Plan. Keeping the garden pollinator-friendly has been a priority of ours for some time now so we have tried our best to do as much as we can with limited space!
We do not mow a certain area of the garden so as to encourage food and shelter for pollinators. The grass has gotten quite long there now and there are plenty of dandelions growing. It is encouraging seeing this being done in so many gardens and public areas now.
We also have a herb garden which has grown with varying success over the years..! I was unaware that herbs were helpful to pollinators, so I was pleasantly surprised to find this out in this module.
My school has been pollinator-conscious for quite some time now. We try to avoid cutting the grass in certain areas and have signs displayed to explain this to children and visitors. The children are all familiar with this concept, however, as similar measures are taken in the parks in the surrounding areas.
I thought that the pollinator calendar found at https://pollinators.ie/wp-content/uploads/2021/03/Pledge-your-Garden-for-Pollinators_WEB.pdf provided lots of great ideas for schools to follow and would be a wonderful resource for the Green Schools Committee to review throughout the year. It would be nice to display the calendar on a noticeboard in school and have different classes take responsibility to an action each month.
Hi Claire,
I really like the idea of using Lego or unifix cubes to make classroom maps. It is a lovely opportunity for the children to decide on what they deem to be the most suitable material for their map and also to self-assess their choices on completion of the task.
For younger classes, describe how you would plan and conduct a lesson on map making and explain how you might incorporate some online tools such as Google maps or Geohive
Introduction:
I would use the book “Martha Maps it Out” as a stimulus for this lesson.
As an introductory activity, I would enter the school’s eircode into GeoHive. The children could observe the aerial view of our locality and discuss some of the other buildings and features that are visible on the map.
I would then do the same using Google Maps. Using a split screen, the children could compare and contract the differences between the two maps (how the images are presented, etc.) and which they feel is more effective.
I then would encourage individuals to give simple oral directions to different landmarks surrounding the school (the park, the local shop, etc.). As a whole class, we could then trace the directions given on the map on the interactive board.
Development:
I would explain to the children that today we will be making a map of the school playground.
We would go outside and children would work with a partner to draw a rough sketch of a birds eye view of the playground. I would encourage them to compare maps with other pairs within the class and, based off this, to self-assess the accuracy of their map.
Pairs would then be encouraged to gather natural materials with which they could build a 3D map of the yard.
Closure:
Having built their 3D maps, children would have the opportunity to go around and observe/discuss the maps of others. I would encourage them to ask one another questions to prompt discussion. We could then use iPads to take photos of the maps before disassembling them and returning the materials to their rightful places.
Once back in the classroom, I would display the photos on the interactive board and the children could peer assess by sharing two stars and a wish about the maps.
Thanks, Una.
I generally find that a novelty video is a great way to get the children engaged in the initial conversation and can prompt them to ask more open questions.
Hi Megan,
I have done the rainbow spinner activity with classes in previous years and it has always been very popular. It’s a great opportunity to link art, maths and science together.
Describe how you would conduct a lesson on mirrors
I will be teaching 2nd class this year. For this age group, I feel that it would be fun to integrate maths with science and use mirrors to investigate symmetry in letters and objects.
Introduction:
Children watch a video of “fun house” mirrors to grasp their attention and illicit conversation.
Sample questions: What happened in the video? Why did the people like different throughout? How do mirrors work? How might the mirrors from this video create different illusions?
Class discussion would then be focused onto mirrors and how they work by reflecting the light. Children would be given time in small groups to experiment with mirrors, with specific encouragement given to them holding the mirrors near and far away, at different angles, etc. Class would then be given the opportunity to share their experiences and observations. Points would be recorded on the whiteboard.
Development:
Having previously completed the topic of “symmetry” in maths, there would be a quick oral recap on the meaning on symmetry and lines of symmetry. Children would be asked to identify how a mirror might help in ascertaining the line of symmetry in objects. A pre-cut picture of a butterfly would be used as an example to show how we can test for symmetry. This would also be repeated with some images which are not symmetrical.
Small groups would then each be given mirrors and a selection of pictures and printed (half) letters. They would work together to identify whether the image is symmetrical or not, and where the line of symmetry lies.
Closure:
As an independent task, children could either draw half of a shape/picture, or else draw the full picture and fold it in half. They could then swap pictures with a partner and use a mirror to “expose” the image in its entirety.
A whole-class conversation on what they discovered would complete the lesson. Some examples of images used in the group activity would be shown on the board also, and groups could explain whether it was symmetrical or not and how they used the mirror to draw their conclusions.
I think that the rockets activities would be a lovely follow-on from the work the children would have previously done when designing their own aliens. The rocket activities could be presented to them as an opportunity to help their aliens get back to their home planets. It would enable the class to refer back to previous conversations about habitats on the alien’s planet and the conditions in Space – the children could brainstorm the various features the rocket could have to “help” it travel quickly and to land safely on the alien’s planet.
This would then link nicely with the Make a Spacecraft activity from the Space Week website (http://www.spaceweek.ie/wp-content/uploads/2020/03/Make-a-Spacecraft.pdf). Children could work in small groups to first draw a plan of what their rocket would look like before building and designing it. I can imagine that there would be great excitement when the time comes to test the rockets out and “launch” them. Afterwards, there would be plenty of scope for discussion about why some rockets travelled further than others, what they could have done differently, etc. The children could self and peer assess their work, and could also record their launches using school iPads or cameras for the class blog.
I do think that this activity would require a lot of supervision in the junior classes so would probably be best suited to 2nd or above. It might be a nice opportunity for an older class to come down and work alongside the junior children to create a paired project. We do this regularly in our school for paired reading, seed planting, etc. It would be another enjoyable way for the classes to mingle and work together.
I like your idea of having the junior children watch the senior class rockets on yard Barbara. This would definitely create an extra air of excitement for everybody and would give the senior children a real chance to show off their hard work! It would be a lovely way to end Science Week.
I really liked the idea behind the lesson “Investigating Children’s Coats”. I think that it would be a very useful activity to link in with the Data strand of the Maths curriculum. As I teach 1st class, the objectives of Data are quite basic so bar charts and Venn diagrams may be too complex for the children initially. However, it could also be a great opportunity to introduce these strategies for representing data. If it was a case that it proved too difficult, I would use pictograms instead as these are very visual and would be an easy way for the children to represent colours and features of the various coats in the class.
I would begin the lesson by using the feely bag and encouraging the children to use as many different adjectives as they can think of. I would model this extensively initially and would ensure to have word prompts on the board to help the children also. This vocabulary could be a mix of words pre-written by me but also those brainstormed by the children at the outset of the lesson.
When collecting data about the children’s coats, I would first give them an opportunity to brainstorm questions with their partners or in their groups. This would give the children ownership over the lesson and make it relevant to them.
To conclude, I would play a simple game with the children such as Stand Up, Sit Down. Every child would begin by sitting down and I would call out a description – e.g. “Stand up if your coat has a hood”. Children could then count how many are standing and compare it to the previous question by saying “more children have hoods on their coats than pockets”, etc.
This would also tie in nicely with a fabric and fibre art lesson where children design a winter coat.
