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I agree Sinead, the idea of a year long project will help students get a more detailed view of weather patterns. They could also have a relook at a later stage in their school journey. The integration across the curriculum will be essential as the revised curriculum is rolled out.
STEM Reflection & ESA Activities (Junior Infants)
Liston (2018) highlights STEM as an integrated way of thinking rather than four separate subjects, which aligns naturally with Junior Infants’ exploratory, play‑based learning. In my classroom, STEM emerges through a natural curiosity, questioning, simple predictions, and hands‑on investigation. This has other cross curricular links with Gaeilge and weather recording and reposting in literacy. The ESA activities Nose Up High in the Sky and Weather vs Climate suit early learners because they use observation, noticing, and comparing—core skills at this age. I would adapt them through sensory exploration, daily weather discussions, and simple pictorial recording. To incorporate digital literacy, they could also create their own weather forecasts.
Setting up a Junior Infants weather station in our school grounds would foster STEM skills such as observing (science), using simple tools like rain gauges (technology), constructing shelters or windsocks (engineering), and counting/measuring rainfall or sunny days (maths). As a small rural school with large grounds, we have able areas to create weather stations and we also have a good bank of resources to help make them from scratch such as paper cups, straws, bottles, cans, etc. I would share children’s weather logs, photos, and simple graphs on Google Classroom which may foster discussion at home to further expand their curiosity. As a means of modelling collective practice and building whole‑school engagement with weather and climate learning, the older students would be encouraged to develop their own skills at their level. Peer tutoring and mentoring would also be hugely beneficial here.
