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I like the idea of space bingo as this would get the pupils to use new vocabulary learned. In my experience, all children love bingo so this is a nice way of getting them all engaged in the topic.
Module 5 Assignment
Rocket Mice:
As a stimulus to this activity, I would play an audio of a rocket launch countdown. I would ask the pupils to close their eyes and guess what they were listening to. I would then use the CBC Kids News website to show the pupils a rocket launch video. In groups, the pupils would discuss how they think they would make a rocket launch and share their ideas. They would be informed that they would be making rocket mice in groups. The group that makes the mouse launch the furthest wins. The pupils must gather different-sized milk containers at home and bring them to school. As an art activity, the children would design their rockets.
Launch day:
The pupils will make predictions on what rocket will launch the mouse the furthest and why. Outside the pupils will launch their rockets and record how far their mouse was launched using steps (1 step, 2 steps, etc.). This can be compared with other groups and their milk carton sizes. The pupils will also discuss what made the mouse launch and why it landed back on the ground.
During Aistear time the pupils can build a rocket from Lego and bricks. They can pretend to go to the moon, sun, or planets in their rocket.
During creative writing, the pupils can write an account of their experience of taking their rocket to a planet of their choice. They may also draw pictures.
Activity Set:
Animals in the cold.
I would begin a set of lessons related to this activity with pictures of penguins in polar regions. A discussion about the weather conditions and how children keep warm would occur. Together with the pupils, I would brainstorm how they think these animals stay warm. A video of penguins huddling would be displayed and the pupils would be brought outside to experiment if huddling makes them feel warmer. I would read the story ‘Pierre the Penguin’ to the children, about how a penguin lost its feathers and struggled to keep warm. For an art activity, the pupils would be asked to glue and stick feathers onto a penguin to keep it warm. During Aistear, the story of Pierre the Penguin would be dramatised. These lessons could then be extended into hibernation and what clothes to wear.
In my classroom, I would use this activity across a number of lessons. Firstly, I would explore the sphere with the children and have them go on a maths hunt to search for spheres in the school and home environment. As an art lesson, we would create the earth using papier maché spheres. They would then paint this to look like the earth. Polar regions would be explored and videos about the Arctic and Antarctica would be shown to the pupils. Using small-world animals, the pupils would place a penguin and a polar bear in their correct region on their papier maché earth. They may also place a small figure on Ireland to represent themselves.
I love the idea of telling the children that you are a magician and then reminding them that they are one too. I will be using this in the future to spark their interest in lessons
An inquiry-based activity that I would use in my classroom (and one that I remember doing in school myself) would be to show how gravity works by dropping eggs from a height. Eggs would be dropped onto different surfaces (the ground, grass, soft towel, etc). The pupils must guess if the egg will break when it hits all the surfaces or just some of the surfaces. To extend this lesson the pupils can create different methods of protecting the eggs to prevent them from breaking.
