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Question: ‘How would Climate Change affect the Flora and Fauna of our local canal?’ The local canal is a focal point of our school community. It is a short walk from the school and is very accessible. This question could be investigated at the end of a scheme of work based on climate change, weather and biodiversity, or throughout the year during the different seasons.
The local Community Council (members of the community) have created a website describing the fauna and flora of the area, as well as outlining some of the effects pollution and climate change is having in the area. I would familiarise the class with the biodiversity of the local area. We would also investigate how precipitation, air quality and temperature has changed over time using the resources this course has provided. We would analyse these criteria each month/each season and compare with previous years. A short walk would allow us to investigate these changes first hand.
The data could then be used to predict what changes could happen in the local canal and how this would affect the local fauna and flora as a result. Rising precipitation as a result of climate change would cause the canal to flood more frequently, for example. The children would present their findings to the community council.
I used the Satellite Tracker N2Y0.com to track specific satellites. The website also provided the Norad Identification number and International Code for each satellite. These are identifications that every satellite must have. The launch date is also provided for each satellite!
1. ISS (The International Space Station) – It is the largest space station ever built. It was built and is used by several nations and it enables long-term space exploration.
2. Eirsat 1 – This is Ireland’s first satellite launched into Space. It stands for ‘Educational Irish Research Satellite’. A team of students in University College Dublin, with support from academic and professional staff, has designed, built, tested, and is operating, Ireland’s first satellite. It was launched on December 1st 2023.
3. SES 1 – This is a telecommunications satellite launched by the USA and is designed to replace 2 ageing spacecraft.
4. TIANZHOU 7 – This is a Chinese spacecraft. 7 stands for ‘the 7th mission.’ It is an unmanned cargo craft delivering supplies to the Tianggong Space Station.
5. Vanguard 1 – This is the oldest satellite still orbiting the earth today. An American satellite, Vanguard 1 launched on 17 March 1958 at 12:15:41 from the Atlantic Missile Range in Cape Canaveral Florida.
I enjoyed the video HOME by Yann Arthur Bertrand. I found the visuals to be spectacular and the various clips from around the world to be so interesting. While it can be quite pessimistic viewing at times due to the messaging, it was reassuring to see what humanity has done to slow down climate change and what can be done to help further. I would be conscious of this as children can be anxious when discussing these topics. I would break the video up into sections with my class and watch it over a number of weeks so that it is easier for the children to understand and we can really focus in on the information Bertrand’s film provides. It offers opportunities for talk and discussion around political borders and the earth’s ecosystem which does not have any borders. It is suitable for older classes.
Greta Thumberg’s TED Talk is a powerful example of how young people can take action and provides an opportunity to compare and contrast the climate crisis with what governments are doing, both abroad and closer to home.
While the TEAL Website is an excellent resource, the Paxi video on Greenhouse gases and the videos provided on the website would definitely have to be watched prior and the terminology on the website would need to be explained as well. I would let the children play around with the website allowing them to get used to it before setting some activities and tasks for them to complete based on the TEAL Tool. It is definitely a tool for older classes.
You could divide your class into 5 groups with each group investigating the change of Carbon Emissions, Wind Speed, Solar Radiation, Precipitation and Temperature across a number of countries, with each group getting a different list of countries to investigate. Or you could divide the groups up into continents and allow them to choose whichever countries they wanted within their given continent.
The scope for cross-curricular integration is wide and you could have an interesting maths lesson exploring averages and making predictions or you could write great reports based on the statistics and observations made!
An aspect of ‘Unravelling STEM: Beyond the acronym of Science, Technology, Engineering, and Mathematics’ that stood out for me was the Engineering Design Process that Liston refers to. These steps can make a very complicated or abstract problem posed to the class appear more manageable as it is broken down. I would like to display these steps in my classroom or use it as a reference when coming up interesting problems to solve!
I liked how the ‘Nose Up High in the Sky’ resource is organised and broken up into 3 activities. I would discuss and pre-teach the 3 activities to my 6th class and then select a 3rd or 4th class to work with. They could carry out these 3 activities over a few weeks in small groups with the younger classes. The younger children would love working with 6th discussing the weather proverbs and creating weather forecasts. The weather station would further solidify the collaboration between the class groups over a number of weeks!
I found the ‘Weather Vs Climate’ resources to be very suitable as there can be confusion between the 2. The interactive map suggested on Climate.Copernicus.EU was very useful in showing how research and data can be used to tackle the problem of Climate Change!