[Sinead Keane]

William Dargan is a really interesting character and he has projects connected to lots of different parts of Ireland, including my own locality. Great call to use him as inspiration!

[Sinead Keane]

Hi Rachel,

I really enjoyed reading your post – and especially liked how you are splitting your lessons up and creating an overarching six week block project. I have found in the past that I take on too much for an SESE lesson and Science in particular, because a certain topic can have so much scope for learning. Because Birr has so much to offer in temr of STEM lessons, splitting it into six lessons from the beginning is a great idea. I will be taking inspiration from your idea for my own locality!

[Sinead Keane]

I did some research on engineers and scientists from the North County Dublin area and was very interested to learn about how the Dublin to Drogheda train line was engineered and built; a line that goes through my local town and would be very familiar to the students in my school. The engineer John McNeill, who was born in Drogheda, was the chief engineer on the Dublin to Drogheda railway line project. He was also part of the team that created the line across the estuary from Donabate to Malahide, across the Boyne viaduct near Drogheda and of course through the Ardgillan Castle estate. All these places would be very familiar to the children in my school and a study on MacNeill and his achievements would show the students how one of the most familiar feats of engineering in our locality was thought out, designed and made. We could study each section of the railway from Dublin to Drogheda as a class, and look at why the line was placed where it was, what obstacles they may have faced designing it and why they chose to build it across estuaries, castle demesnes or through certain towns. The children could then recreate some of the more famous landmarks, bridges or sections of the railway line and see if they can improve on the current designs. I think John MacNeill would be a great person to study and take inspiration from when looking at our own local area and the engineering that can be seen around us.

• This reply was modified 2 months, 2 weeks ago by Sinead Keane.

[Sinead Keane]

Thanks for such a detailed and interesting lesson idea – I havent tried anything like this before and would love to give it a go next year!

[Sinead Keane]

I love your ideas Sarah – I love the idea of linking the strength of suspension bridges to your own bird feeders close to home. I sometimes think especially in older classes that children are bored with the Build a Bridge challenge as it is done so often – changing the challenge to look at the materials involved is a great way to look at bridges with a new perspective. This would link well with the Green Schools initiatives too on a whole school level. Thanks for the great ideas!

[Sinead Keane]

Using the suspension bridge in Birr Castle Demesne or a bridge in your local area as inspiration, describe how you would plan a class or whole school challenge to design and make a bridge. How would you integrate mathematical thinking and incorporate the maths skills appropriate to your class level.

In our local area, there has recently been permission given for a new greenway that crosses the local estuary from the next town to ours. We already have a train bridge that crosses the estuary and this new greenway will go alongside it.

I would lvoe to use this greenway bridge as inspiration for a design and make lesson in my school – particularly as the project is still in its early stage of building. As a whole school it would be great to jump on this idea and involve them in the design part of the process because it is still so early on. There is loads of scope for alternative designs by the children as the greenway is built.

In my own class next year (4th) there would be lots of opportunities to align this design and make challange with Maths. We would first in the wondering/planning stage of the lessons look at the current train bridge, its design and why it is shaped the way it is over our local estuary. We will then need to measure the train bridge, its length and width and compare the size/weight of a train compared to a bike in order to ensure our designs are efficient yet strong enough to carry over water. We would also need to look at the tides and how that may affect the heights of our bridge – we would have to calculate the height of high tide in the are we are looking at, using local maps as our guide. Finally, we would need to see where the greenway would go once it reaches land and make sure it is safely located when crossing roads locally.

Because the greenway is being built in real time, a whole school challenge would be really interesting for the children as it is relevant to their lives and happening as they go to school. A visit from the building company or local council would also be a great way to set this desing and make challenge into real life and it would be a fantastic opportunity to meet and speak with an engineer in the real world. We have a lot of building going on in our local area in recent years so we are in the perfect position to bring engineering into our school and classrooms.

[Sinead Keane]

Carrie I completely agree with you – as I was exploring the website and looking at the different animals spotted in my own lacal area I couldnt help but imaging how excted the kids would be the navigate this website and register their own findings. It could be a great lesson to bring the school ipads outside to the yard, sit and observe the different birds, butterflies, etc that we see, use the ipads to identify them and then register them on the National Biodiveristy Data centre webstie there and then! What a great lesson and a great way to empower kids to be an active citizen in their locality.

[Sinead Keane]

Hi Katie, your idea of using the whole school to implement a biodiversity project would have so much more imptact and would really create buzz and talk about your school grounds and how your school can progress in terms of biodiversity. Sometimes I find in my own school that a class will do a fantastic project or initiative, but it can be lost among the range of events and days in the school calendar. By raising it to a whole school level you can giving biodiversity the space it needs to make a bigger impact. I think I will also bring this to the attention of my own staff because as you say, there are plenty of resources that can really help get these initiatives off the ground. Thanks for the inspo!

[Sinead Keane]

I have just signed up my own personal garden to Actions for Pollinators and recorded the few thing I do at home to help pollinators. I am looking forward to bringing this to my school in September.

I will register my school online with Actions for Pollinators, with the username connected to our Green School Team. Alongside the team I will implement some new initiatives during the school year to improve our pollinators and I will work with the children on the Green Schools team to record our actions as a school on the Plan.

Initial Meeting – the Green Schools students and myself will register online and we will then draw out our own school area on the map. We will then brainstorm and note all the actions we currently take as a school and record them on the website. Our next step would be to choose targets and initiatives we could start this year to improve on ourselves. We will plan to meet every term to update our Pollinatior Actions on the website and assess our progress.

We already have a small windflower area to the back of our school but it has been neglected and could do with some improvements. We also have a large unused area that is mowed regularly – the children dont often use this area as it is not near any of the classrooms so we could potentially improve this area to focus on pollinators.

The school council could create and put up signs around the school to encourage students to use the paths, not walk in wind areas. We could create a no mow schedule for certain areas in the school in spring with our caretaker also. Finally, we have lots of spaces in which we could place flower pots with different pollinator friendly plants – a trip to our local garden centre for advice could be organised.

[Sinead Keane]

I think what you bring up about the language of location is so important and especially with infants – I have often seen older children struggling with maps and directions in lessons because they dont’ have the vocabulary at hand to describe to someone else where something is located. Simple blind drawing tasks would be great for these – two children back to back and one with a picture which they need to describe to their partner. I love these activities because they can set children up for success when it comes to map reading and making in the future.

[Sinead Keane]

I love the idea of using We are going on a Bear Hunt to show the idea of maps to infants. The whole concept is very tricky and by  making a story board the children can begin to see the sequence of a map in real time or at the very least as part of a story with a beginning, middle and end. Maybe they could bring in their teddy bears and reenact the story in the gymnastics hall as their first introduction to following a map physically too. The next time I have infants I will definitely give this a try.

[Sinead Keane]

I would love to do a map making lesson with my 4th Class next year – We live in an area which is developing very fast and our environs is changing hugely as these children grow through primary school. I think it would be great to start the year with a map making lesson and record our changing school grounds and environs, and perhaps we could repeat the lesson every year as a school project for our School Council display board. I would teach the lesson as follows:

Prompt: I would show the children the local county council development plans for our local area – in particular the site closest to our school and how it is going to affect our environs.

Wondering: I wonder what this field beside our classroom will look like? Will they keep these trees? Will the path at the back of the school have to change? Will there be more or less birds now the hedgerow is going to be taken out? Will the light change as the buildings are built in our windows?

Exploring: Lets use Geo Hive to look at our school and our road over the last 100 years. When was the shop built? Were there more trees along here in the past? I wonder what kinds of animals were around back then? Where did they go as the shops and houses came?
The key question I will try to elicit is – What biodiversity will our area have after these new buildings are built next year? What will the area look like?

Planning: The class will create as a group a base map with teacher using the Paint app and Google Maps as a guide. The children will take turns to suggest what should go on the base map – roads, fields etc and will help the teacher create the key.
Teacher will print this base map and then the children will split into groups of four and will then choose their own layer map to go on top.

Exploring: Once they have chosen their focus – the groups will go out into the school grounds and will begin to note their chosen focus ie. Flora, buildings, trees, signs, water, etc. Each group will focus on a different aspect of our environment

Making: Back in the classroom the groups will draw out their maps on acetate (one side of a laminating sheet) on their chosen focus. They will then on the other side use the local county council development plans to draw a map of the area next year with the new buildings in place.
On a notice board the children will place their laminate sheets so that the two layered maps can be seen one on top of the other – by lifting the front of the laminate (the building map) you can see underneath what biodiversity will be lost by the new development (the wildlife map).

Evaluating: The groups can then view each laminate sheet displayed and evaluate the impact that the new development will have on the area and what exactly we are going to lose. The class will discuss the pros and cons of this new development and what changes it will bring to our community.

[Sinead Keane]

Hi Emer,

 

I also thought the pen being a piece of technology was so interesting – I had never realsied that technology is not something electronic! I think that my own students would also be shocked to hear that as all they think about is iPads etc as technology. I love your idea of the real wordl problems too and I think I will actually do something along those lines myself, we have a few projects next year in our outside area that will definitely be good for some STEM thinking!!

[Sinead Keane]

Hi Lisa,

 

I really like this series of lessons – and I agree with your layout in that it would problably take a few lessons or even a whole week of activities before the STEM challenge to get the children prepared with new vocabulaty and science concepts too, . I wonder could you align this with length or angles in Maths that week to prepare them for building their telescopes and getting the dimensions right (although I do agree too creativity would be important too!)

Thanks for an insightful post!

[Sinead Keane]

Question 2: Responding to the article Unravelling STEM: Beyond the acronym of Science, Technology, Engineering, and
Mathematics.

 

I found this article really interesting because as a teacher I have never actually taken a step back and looked at the four aspects of STEM individually; I have always taught Maths and Science, alongside technology in my classroom, but I had not considered much before the Engineering side of STEM and it’s importance. I was really interested in Liston’s focus on the importance of the Engineering part of STEM and how important it is. In reading that the Engineering is the ‘glue’ that combines the Science, Maths and Technology I realised that in my own teaching I need to guide the students towards solving a problem as the main learning adjective, using Science, Maths and Technology as the resources to do that. This is not how my classroom has worked with STEM so far; in my STEM lessons I have leant more into the Maths side of things and in doing so I have not given my students the chance to focus on ‘engineering’ the problem or task in front of them. I suppose as this is a relatively new concept in our curriculum it is something I had not really thought about too deeply; but Liston’s insights into the role of each individual letter in STEM really helped me look at the subject more closely and adjust how I approach a lesson in the future.

• This reply was modified 3 months, 1 week ago by Sinead Keane.

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