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Hi Rachel, I’ve actually done this investigation with my class in the past and they loved it. It’s a really good way to show living maths and it makes constructing and analysing grpahs much more relevant. They used to collect the rainfall data from the school weather station and it was like having a class pet going to check it every morning. It’s definitely something I’d do with future classes.
A potential research question I could pose to my students would be ‘how does the amount of green space around our school affect local air temperature and biodiversity?’ We could further expand the investigation by then asking what actions could improve our school environment in response to climate change?
The research question is relevant, and encourages pupils to investigate a climate issue that directly affects their local community. To encourage participation, I would begin by connecting the topic to pupils’ everyday experiences, such as feeling hotter on the playground during warm weather or noticing differences in the number of birds and insects in various parts of the school grounds.
As we’ve looked at in other modules I would involve pupils in planning the investigation by allowing them to generate ideas, make predictions, and decide what data they want to collect. Activities could include measuring temperatures in shaded and unshaded areas, mapping green spaces, identifying plants and pollinators, and recording observations over several weeks.
I would encourage the use of digital tools to record and analyse data would strengthen pupils’ digital literacy skills. Pupils could compare their findings with local weather data and discuss how increasing vegetation might reduce heat and support wildlife.
Finally I would also encourage pupils to share their results with the wider school community through presentations, posters, or a sustainability campaign.Hi Diarmaid, I thought your description of the EO browser as “Google Maps with live and historical satellite data that helps us investigate real-world environmental issues” was really concise and accurate. It’s a fantastic resource and one I hadn’t come across before. I think at times I can forget the power of the internet and the learning opportunities that are at our fingertips (for ourselves as well as for the pupils). I think this a great resource and one that would be a superb springboard for loads of lessons.
I honestly had no idea that that thousands of satellites orbit Ireland every day. The apps are fascinating to watch. Seeing them update in real time and the fact that these satellites can complete a full orbit of the earth in 90 minutes blew my mind! A few that were passing over Ireland were the Tiangong Space Station, METEOR-M2, The ISS, Starlink Communications Satellites and NOAA-19.
Tiangong Space Station is China’s orbiting space station, supporting long-duration astronaut missions and scientific research.
METEOR-M2 is a Russian weather satellite producing detailed Earth and weather imagery.
The ISS is permanently crewed laboratory where astronauts conduct scientific experiments in microgravity. It is one of the brightest objects visible in the night sky.
Starlink Communications Satellites are thousands of satellites providing high-speed broadband internet to homes, ships, aircraft, and remote communities worldwide.
NOAA-19 is a weather satellite monitoring storms, cloud cover, ocean temperatures, and climate conditions.Hi Cathal, I think it’s a really valid point you make that the video is more about promoting and encouraging responsibility than scaremongering or inducing anxiety in pupils. Climate change can be such an overwhelming and worrying issue for young pupils and it’s important to reinforce the concept that they have power and they can make a change. The imagery in the video is stunning and the aerial shots shown are spectacular so I agree there are fantastic links that could be made with the visual arts curriculum too.
I felt the HOME video was really impactful and introduced the topic of climate change in a way that was really engaging and interesting for children. Above all else I felt it really helped explain the human impact on climate change and how we have accelerated the heating of the planet faster than nature ever could. The lesson was engaging and dynamic and the children were still active learners and not just passive consumers of the content. Linking the lesson to the green schools campaign is a way to make it even more tangible for primary school pupils too.
As others have alluded to however I do think it would be important to make sure the children are mature enough to engage with the lesson. There can be a lot of climate anxiety with younger children and I would be conscious of not overwhelming younger pupils.
Overall I think this is a great resource that senior pupils would engage with and benefit from watching.Having watched the Paxi video on greenhouse gases and explored how to use the TEAL tool for predicting future temperatures I think there are a lot of opportunities to use this with my class.
As others have noted the language is quite advanced and it would require an degree of preteaching to make sure that all pupils can access the lesson fully but I think the idea of linking climate change with the past and showing children how we can learn from the past to make future predictions is a great way to make climate change more real and relevant.
The Paxi video is colourful, engaging, and stimulating for young children. I felt it explained greenhouse gases and the greenhouse effect in a clear and accessible way, making these concepts easy for children to understand. The combination of the video and the interactive digital tool would accommodate a wide range of learning styles. For me, it’s definitiely something I can see myself using next year.Hi Rachel, I really like your suggestion of teaming up with the older classes to explore the activity. I teach 6th class and they absolutely love working with the junior classes. I love that it gives students who may not feel that confident academically an opportunity to shine. We do it for buddy reading in our school and I think this activity lends itself really nicely to this type of teaching. The TEAL tool would definitely be too advanced for a first class but with guidance and support from older pupils I think they could access it and enjoy it.
Hi Mollie, I really enjoyed your post and I agree that the benefits of a weather station in a school are fantastic. We have a really good weather station in my own school and the learning opportunities are fantastic. I used it a lot when I was teaching Data for example and we tracked the temperature for the month of January. It was a really nice way to see an example of ‘living maths’. The smart screen that came with the solar panels was another really useful tool and it takes maths out of the text books and makes it more relevant for children.
I think Liston (2018) makes many really valid points about STEM education in her article Unravelling STEM: Beyond the acronym of Science, Technology, Engineering, and Mathematics. Personally, for me, the main learning point was that high-quality STEM experiences intentionally combine knowledge and skills from multiple STEM disciplines. I think in the past I’ve been guilty of teaching one individual component of STEM (example a coding lesson) and considering it a STEM lesson. Going forward I want to combine a few elements of science, technology, engineering and maths together to have a really authentic STEM lesson.
To that end I really enjoyed the weather or climate activities outlined in this module. These would be lovely activities to do in small groups or pairs and would allow for peer led learning. I think it reinforces the fact that teachers don’t need to reinvent the wheel to have effective and authentic STEM lessons in their classroom but once they are focused on quality STEM content the benefits will follow.