[Patrick Brophy]

Hi Caitriona,

I really enjoyed your list of suggestions, particularly the Night Sea painting by Klimt. This would be such a lovely inspirational starting point for starting a Night Sky unit of work. I think your suggestions blend really well together and I can see how they would be easily used in the classroom. Thank you!

[Patrick Brophy]

Consider how many Songs / Poems /Art can you think of to connect us with the Night Sky? For example: Look up President Michael D Higgins’ “Stardust”

I am going to try and suggest some ideas that hopefully have not been mentioned!

Art from American Artist Rockwell Kent is a fantastic starting point to get students thinking about Dawn, Dusk and the night sky.

Other Artworks I would use are
Van Gogh – Cafe terrace at night
Picasso – Night fishing at Antibes
Monet – San Giorgio at Dusk

Poems
I would take samples of William Wordsworth’s poems Lines composed above Westminster Bridge and compare and contrast with Daffodils or excerpts from Tintern Abbey, the former describing the poet looking over the dark grey London sky compared to the beauty of the rural landscape depicted in the other two.
Songs

Stories by Shaun Tan cleverly depict the night sky and provide great talking points for shadows and perspective

For songs I would probably choose some child friendly songs off Smashing Pumpkins ‘Mellon Collie and the Infinite Sadness’ double album, Disc 1 ‘Dawn to Dusk’ and Disc 2 is ‘Twilight to Starlight’, lots of songs that would be great for provoking discussion around the night sky.

[Patrick Brophy]

Hi Laura, I also really like the biodiversity detectives idea. This could be such a comprehensive set of lessons looking at different animals over a few weeks. The children could also be split into groups in senior classes with each group having responsibility for investigating bats, birds, insects and plants and then report back on their findings to their classmates. Thanks for the idea!

[Patrick Brophy]

• How you would engage your learners to explore biodiversity in your local area and
  the possible impacts of light pollution on local biodiversity.

  One of my favourite seasonal birds to study with the students is the Brent Goose. We have many football pitches in the local area where these birds congregate, making their unique quacking noise usually in the morning when everyone is on their way to school.

  This and the previous module have given me food for thought as to why these habitats are suitable for the Brent Goose. An interesting lesson would be to look at the local area and identify places where we might encounter the flocks of Brent Geese. Building on the previous lesson where students use their knowledge of the impact of light pollution, depending on the writing ability of the class we could write a letter to the local council who plan to build a new shopping centre on the local football pitch. The children would have to use their prior knowledge on the impact of light pollution on humans, and use this to write a letter advocating for the protection of the brent geese and their habitat. Given that they would suffer many of the same impacts as humans I would hope they would transfer this knowledge into their biodiversity study.

[Patrick Brophy]

Hi Sabrina, I was also taken aback by the health effects of light pollution and it was a really interesting topic to learn about. I would be keen to know more about the impact of light pollution on animals and wildlife, particularly nocturnal animals who have their habitats infringed by urban sprawl and developments. Appreciate your interesting and comprehensive thoughts on this topic!

[Patrick Brophy]

Detail how light pollution is impacting your local area and how you would engage your learners to explore this.

Our school is located on the fringe of Dublin City Centre (Dublin 7), and the area is impacted greatly by light pollution. Being from Dublin myself, It is interesting how we only realise the effects of light pollution when we experience other locations with perfectly clear skies. Two such places that come to mind for me are the Aran Islands, and the Wadi Rum desert in Jordan. Both places I was fortunate to witness a huge clear sky, even seeing ‘shooting stars’ for the first time.

I think an interesting lesson for a senior class would be to print off regular daylight maps of our local area showing the different built up commercial areas and green space areas in the same photos. Students could be given highlighters and asked to shade which areas they think would be most affected by light pollution. We have three large soccer and GAA stadia in the area and I would use these to encourage the students to think about what effect or impact they might have on the night sky. When the students have finished this, as a follow up I would give them a picture of the same map at night time. They can cross compare with their own maps and see if their guesses about the impacted areas were correct.

This module highlighted for me the impact that light pollution has on health and wellbeing. I never really knew that intrusive light had such a detrimental impact on our circadian rhythms and meltonin production. With proper sleep being such a topical issue in schools at the moment, I think it would be a really important Science & Wellbeing lesson for students to investigate ‘How does light pollution affect our health’ with the students conducting research projects and presenting them to their peers.

[Patrick Brophy]

I really like the idea of scaffolding the students with the ‘bright’ star that they can easily find. I also think your lesson idea lends really well to students using their knowledge both at school and at home. I wasn’t familiar with Stellarium before this course but it is a really interesting App and I agree that it has plentiful uses in the classroom, particularly for middle and senior groups.

[Patrick Brophy]

I have chosen to use the Worldwide Telscope resource and would create a simple graph template with 2 axis, once showing time of day and the other showing the level of the sun. This lesson would be suitable for a Senior Class.

Using Worldwide Telescope, I was thinking of a few different lessons you could use for this resource. One would be tracking the Sunrise and Sunset times over the course of a month, using a large class graph display with each child contributing.

Using the ‘Suns Seasonal Journey’ resource on WorldWide Telescope, I also think an integrated Maths and SESE lesson of giving the students different locations and graphing the seasonal Sunrise and Sunset times compared to Ireland would be a great way of showing the seasonality of different locations and having students explain why those locations have different daylight length compared to here at home. I would encourage the students to think about longitude and ask students how this might affect the seasons in each of the different locations.

[Patrick Brophy]

Hi Ronan, I like the idea of having the students predict what is going to happen with the sun. The structure of your lessons sounds like it would lend well to collaborative group work and some excellent discussions would arise from this. I also really like the idea of the groups creating shadow markers, which could be a really good junk art engineering design project. Thanks for sharing your ideas.

[Patrick Brophy]

Lesson; Observe and record the positions of the sun when rising and setting, and at different times of day?

Trigger question; Why is there frost on the ground when we come into school in winter?

Age grouping; 3rd Class

Our school is a perfect environment for showing the different behaviour of the sun from season to season. During Winter we frequently have frost cover which gradually dissappears as the sun rises during the day. A simple way for us to document this would be for groups of students to draw lines of where the frost begins with chalk at 30 minute intervals from 9am. We would use an Ipad to create a time lapse over the course of the day showing the sun moving ‘moving’. I would also like to use the information to provoke thinking on whether it is the Earth or the Sun that is moving, a common misconception in both students and adults! We could also complete this idea on December 21st and June 21st to show both extremes of Winter and Summer Soltace and then compare our results.

Regarding the Unravelling STEM article, What struck me was the idea of students making their predictions and analysing their results. My favourite thing about teaching Science is that it gives the space to make mistakes and learn from them, and that it is a process to be enjoyed rather than something you immediately ‘get’. I also enjoyed the critical thinking aspects of Technology, reinforicing that anything useful can be technology and that it is constantly developing.

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