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That’s a great activity – who wouldn’t enjoy firing balloons around the classroom? I like that there’s a lot of room for experimentation and speculation about the different effects of different shapes and sizes of balloons as well as inflating each to different capacities. Those are the kinds of lessons that I think have real scope for great scientific skills development because everyone is equally in the dark about what might happen next.
The activity set that I would like to use in class is the dancing raisins activity. The activity requires a clear container, a fizzy drink and raisins. When the raisins are first introduced to the liquid, they are more dense than the liquid itself and therefore they sink to the bottom of the container. After a short time, the raisins gather bubbles of gas on their surface. The combined raisin and gas bubbles are now less dense so they float back upwards where they lose the bubbles and sink once more, repeating the process as long as the drink is fizzy. There are a few reasons that I think this is a great activity with a junior class. First of all, it’s a very visual experience with a surprising outcome. The repeated rise and fall of the “dancing” raisins is a great hook for children’s natural curiosity. I also think that the outcome (the sinking, rising, sinking and rising again) is quite counter intuitive an could open up a lot of speculation and discussion. There is also a lot of scope for extension work – if we try the activity with something other than a raisin (a strawberry, a grape, a crayon) will the outcome be different and, if so, why? Does the type of fizzy liquid have an impact on the activity, either in terms of duration or speed of the rising effect? I really like that this is a relatively simple activity to prepare that would lead to lots of discussion.
I like the extension activity with the construction: I remember one year a student found a large bird’s nest on the road outside the school and brought it in to show the other children. It was surprisingly elaborate and well constructed! In hindsight it would have been a great idea to give the children some materials and see if they could build something as sturdy by themselves.
Classroom activity: What Clothes to Wear
I think this is a great activity for the classroom as it involves making a connection for the children between astronomical concepts and the more immediately relatable topic of which clothes to wear at different times of the year. It is not necessary for children to fully understand the relationship between the angle of the Earth towards the Sun at certain times of the year and the resulting temperatures and weather but it helps children to start thinking about the connection between the Sun, the seasons and their own lives.
The lesson involves asking children in groups to take turns choosing clothes from the dressup box that would be appropriate for different times of the year. Children can also be asked to select clothes that would be appropriate for sudden, unexpected weather such as a rainstorm. The lesson could be extended in a number of ways – children could be given a variety of materials and asked to design a garment for a teddy bear that would be waterproof, warm, cool, etc. There are curricular links to the history of clothing in different parts of the world as well.
From a School Self Evaluation perspective, I think it is important as a school to identify which skills associated with STEM are important to develop and to make an assessment across the school about where children are in relation to those skills. This allows for planning structured activities to further develop those skills.
That’s a really nice lesson! It covers so much – starting with fiction, considering the big question of whether there is life in the universe, focusing on life here on Earth and then having a drama element. What I really like about it is that it opens up considerations about life here on Earth and considering the scientific themes of life and what is required to support it.
Activity Set: Stars – Draw Your Own Constellation
The activity set is a nice lesson for junior classes, I could see it working really well in first class. The lesson involves looking at the stars that make up the classic constellations. I think it would provoke a lot of discussion as the constellations in question often look quite different from the things they are meant to represent – this gives an opening for children to use their imaginations to try and see if the shapes can actually match up to, for example, a bull, a bear, etc.
The main activity in the lesson is then to use the sheet to construct an alternative constellation shape based on the stars in question. There are two reasons that I think this is a good lesson for a junior class – the first is that the activity capitalises on the inherent creativity and imagination of young children. It would be interesting to see what shapes and objects the children would associate with the stars. The second reason that I think this is a good activity is that, by asking children to study the arrangements of stars and construct their own constellations, it encourages children to study the arrangement of stars as they would really appear in the night sky. Children will be more likely to be able to identify constellations in the night sky if they can associate it with a shape or pattern that is personally meaningful to them.
I agree with you that space as a topic seems to have a natural appeal to young children. I feel like it prompts all sorts of discussions and speculation about what it would be like to be on another planet. I like the way the warm-up to your lesson involves a bit of movement as well as repetition to help consolidate the names of the planet.
I also feel like children could spend so much time just looking at the images of the planets and be fascinated by the patterns and colours. It could be the basis of a whole art lesson in itself.
Meet our neighbours: the Moon
I think this is a great activity, particularly for junior classes. The moon is a really great topic for study – its appearance changes dramatically over the course of the month, it is our closest celestial neighbour and it is also clearly visible even during the day time at many times of the year. The moon can be a fascinating topic for children as well, whose natural curiosity leads them to wonder about it as a place. The topic can be introduced with lots of stories, poetry, songs and mythology based around the moon. The activity in question is great for junior classes as it has a really tactile element to it: recreating the physical geography of the moon by creating a template with different textures of cloth for the high ground and low-lying valleys of the lunar surface. The sensory nature of the activity is really engaging for younger children and it leads them into a really interesting concept – considering the moon as a real physical place with its own geography. A really nice resource to extend their understanding of this topic would be to show video and photographs of the lunar surface.
I think that’s a great lesson Tadgh – it’s great to start a lesson like that from a position where everyone has to really start engaging with the ideas and make predictions. Children will obviously know that the objects will fall but it would a great opportunity to see whether they think different objects fall at different speeds based on weight, volume, etc. And by having the children make their predictions, it really encourages them to observe closely during the experimental part so they can see if they were right.
Inquiry-based learning – clean up an oil spill
I think that STEM lessons work really well when there is a specific focus but an open-ended problem solving approach that the children can use. A lesson that I think can work really well is modeling an oil spill by giving groups a basin with water and cooking oil in it (adding cocoa powder to the oil makes it easy to detect and simulates an oil spill more closely). Children then have access to a variety of materials to see if they can devise the most effective way of dealing with the spill – e.g. tissue paper, washing-up liquid, scoops/spoons, etc. The children can really tackle this problem imaginatively and explore the material properties of the different substances involved (e.g. oil floats on water). There’s a real connection to a problem of global significance. As an extension activity, children can consider and discuss how their preferred solutions could be scaled up to tackle a real oil spill.Hello, my name is Patrick and I’ll be teaching an autism class next year. My favourite space fact is that there is a storm on Jupiter that has been raging for hundreds of years and it’s bigger than the planet Earth.
I know what you mean about the heatwaves Claire – I used to be so excited about the fine weather but when it’s sunny these days (like it is here today) I have a certain level of anxiety about how unnatural this is and worry about the implications for the future.
We’re definitely seeing the impact of climate change across Ireland as a whole and there are specific areas that are more exposed than others. One of the notable impacts we have seen in recent years is the increasing volume of very powerful storms. Extreme weather events are growing in number with a huge impact on everyone living here. This year storm Eowyn meant that there were power outages across the country, including in my area. Our power outage was relatively brief but I work with colleagues who experienced this for over a week. The same was true in many areas of the country.
As a keen gardener, I’m also seeing the impacts of climate change in our back gardener. Unpredictable weather such as later-than-normal extreme cold, heavy rain or above-average amounts of dry, hot weather all have a massive effect on the plants we choose to grow in our garden and, more significantly, on the native plant life all around Ireland.
Three actions I try to take to reduce the impact of climate change are as follows – first, I try to reduce consumption overall. Whether this means purchasing fewer items, driving/traveling less than I might have or being conscious of energy-use within the household, this is something that really affects my personal impact on the climate. I think that sourcing sustainable energy sources is another way to try to tackle climate change – relying more on solar, wind, etc. Finally, I take account of climate concerns when planning my own gardening – I like to plant trees and plants that promote biodiversity.
It’s really interesting to read about the Crosscare Migrant Project that you’re describing here Claire. Life as a refugee in Ireland must be so overwhelming – being able to connect with an organisation that can provide so much practical support around navigating the bureaucratic and administrative hurdles involved must be very empowering.
The organisations that work to support refugees in my area are those with a nationwide footprint. The most interesting of these, in my opinion, is the Movement of Asylum Seekers in Ireland (MASI). I think that the ethos of this organisation aligns closely with some of the principles of the sustainable development goals. Notably, MASI is an organisation whose membership is entirely made up of asylum seekers in Ireland – it emerged from protests about the conditions in Direct Provision in Ireland in 2014. The notable theme here is that it is an organisation that centers the experiences and agency of asylum seekers rather than relying on others to “save” them. This aligns closely with the SDG thinking around refugee activism.
In order to welcome refugee students in our school we need to be sensitive to the experiences and challenges that refugees have endured. This involves the sort of empathy, patience and kindness that staff and students use to provide an inclusive school environment for all our vulnerable students but it also relies on us as professionals to inform ourselves and seek additional training to be alert to the specific issues involved. Training such as this course helps us to learn new information and skills in this area.