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Excellent suggestions above Sharon. The ideas are readily applicable to all school settings and encourage discovery learning, with plenty of opportunities for collaboration and outdoor learning also. I will use a similar plan for the year ahead, having noted your suggestions above. Thank you.
Module 5:
Research famous scientist/engineer associated with your local area and how you would use this person as inspiration for classroom science experiments.
Using the Dictionary of Irish Biography, I discovered two notable shipbuilding engineers from Arklow, which is one of the biggest towns closest to the school that I work in.
The two notable shipbuilding engineers in question are John Tyrell and Michael Tyrell. I would begin by encouraging reflection upon what an engineer is and the various different types of engineers that students know of. Using the Dictionary of Irish Biography students would be encouraged to conduct collaborative research on either John or Michael Tyrell.
To complement our research and prior to conducting our science experiments, the class could visit the Maritime Museum in Arklow for a class tour, before exploring Arklow Harbour, looking at the various types of vessels docked in the harbour. A visit to the local RNLI station could also be incorporated into this visit.
Following on from this, I would complete the STEM Boat Building Challenge from Feel Good Teaching, or the Science Foundation Ireland ‘Design a Boat’ activity, being mindful of the design and make process of exploring, planning, making, evaluating and following up.
Excellent suggestions above Michelle. Your suggestion regarding Trim Bridge is an excellent one and one I will look to incorporate into my own project on this topic in the coming year. It has also encouraged me to consider looking at local bridges a little beyond my locality, from the 19 Arches Bridge in Arklow, the Avoca Bridge on the M11, pedestrian and ancillary bridges crossing the M11, local railway bridges, animal crossing bridges, among others.
Module 4: Assignment
Using 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 math skills appropriate to your class level?
I would begin this challenge by leading the learning of the children on:
– What an engineer is
– Different types of engineers that the students know of and what their job involves
– Researching other types of engineers that students may not know of
– Introducing 3 very important questions every engineer much consider: (1) What is the problem that needs to be solved? (2) Who has the problem that needs to be solved? (3) Why is the problem important to solve?
– I would then share the “Crash course in Engineering” video from YouTube.
Next, I would share the Engineers Week video explaining the Design and Make process to children. Following the prompts given in this video we would then put on our engineering caps and start to think/work as engineers, looking at things in the locality that have been designed by engineers – appliances/devices, roads/structures, computers/software, etc.
We would then follow the design and make process by:
1. Exploring – Observing, investigating and describing the main bridge in our locality, including a class visit to our local bridge.
Looking at photographs, videos and researching other bridges in the nearby area, in Ireland and famous bridges in other parts of the world. Also looking at the different types of bridges and different range of materials that can be used to create bridges. Videos of the Carrick Rope Bridge and of the farmer building his own bridge across the River Suck to access an island for farming purposes would also be very useful at this time.
Discussing/researching when local bridge was built, what purpose it initially served and what purpose it serves today, the advantages and disadvantages of this bridge today [only 1 car can pass bridge at a time coming into village (too narrow), no pedestrian path, very old structure, etc.], among others.
We will then reflect on the following questions before planning and making our new bridge designs for our village: -Are we going to make a completely new bridge or just adapt the current bridge into the village? What problems are there with the current bridge and what problems do we hope to solve by designing and making a new bridge? What will we design? Who are we designing it for?
Explore materials – Using different materials like plastics, paper, cardboard, playdough, natural materials [twigs, stones, etc.], Sellotape, Elastics, String, etc.
The exploring and investigating the design of bridges activity shared in this module using paper, boxes, books and other readily available materials would also be useful to do at this time as it would encourage children to think about the shapes they would use to construct their bridges.
2. Plan – Children make a plan, brainstorm ideas, set out their criteria asking some basic questions like “What does my bridge need to do? Who is it for? How big does it need to be?” among others. They will then sketch out their bridge ideas before moving on to the next step.
3. Make – Children will then either BUILD, MAKE or MODEL their miniature bridges using their pre-chosen materials, noting if they have had to change or adapt their initial bridge plan as problems/challenges may arise.
4. Evaluate – Once completed students will then reflect upon their bridge designs and miniature bridges using question prompts provided by the teacher. Students will evaluate their work and present their bridges to the class, sharing their learning with their peers, as well as sharing challenges they encountered, changes they had to make to their initial plans along the way, etc. They will also reflect upon whether they have met their own success criteria, focusing on the positives.
5. Follow-Up – As reflected upon in this module, it can be very useful to conduct follow-up activities like looking at the history of bridge design and discussing the possible future of bridge design with modern technology [increased use of drones, etc.] in mind, discussing the use of bridges on farms, wildlife bridges in motorways and around the world, looking at examples of bridges being swept away in storms, discussing the impact on climate change and erosion on bridges, looking at the different types of bridges that exist, unusual bridge design, etc.
Excellent reflections above Lorraine and great consideration given to integrated learning with a wide range of excellent cross-curricular links listed above. I really like the your suggestion of conducting seasonal biodiversity projects on a bimonthly basis and you have made reference to some very useful resources for enabling these activities to be suitably completed. Thanks for the excellent suggestions above.
Module 3 Assignment:
Outline how you would use some of the course resources to conduct a seasonal biodiversity project to run throughout the school year. What resources and recording sheets would you need? How often would you bring teaching outdoors? How would you integrate other subject areas?
The wide variety of ideas and resources in this module were excellent, awakening my awareness of the boundless learning potential that can be gained through conducting projects and outdoor learning opportunities on the school grounds and in the local environment.
Of the many great ideas shared in this module, the ones that stood out most for me were the Design and Make challenges for making different bird feeders and nest boxes with different species of birds in mind. As mentioned in this module, it is a great Citizen Science initiative and can lead to tallying and recording of different bird species in the locality.
The video provided relating to “How to improve your garden for birds”, accompanied by the “Robby the Christmas Robin” story also help to enhance children’s learning relating to this idea.
Through designing bird boxes for nesting purposes, it also helps extend the timeframe of learning beyond the winter/early spring months, into the late spring and early summer, enabling outdoor learning opportunities throughout the school year. Through engaging with the Birdwatch Ireland Irish Garden Bird Survey it enables students become Citizen Scientists also.
Thank you for your excellent reflection and ideas above Louise. On the topic of creating map layers specific to the local woodland as mentioned in your post above, when I was engaging with the Maps page on Biodiversity Ireland website following this module one of the filters that can be explored in the ‘Habitats’ section is “Ancient and Long Established Woodland”. This filter would be particularly relevant to the hands on mapping activity you plan on doing with your students and could encourage great debate and consideration relating to Irish woodland in your locality and beyond. When using this filter I found it striking how few forests and woodlands in Ireland are considered ancient or long established, particularly in the midlands and west of the country and including the few wooded areas close to my locality.
Other information available on this website that could be useful in your project could be looking at the terrestrial mammals [including red squirrels, foxes, badgers, etc.], insects, birds, protected species and invasive species all recorded in the locality from the data provided on the Maps page on the Biodiversity website. Thanks for the great ideas above Louise. I look forward to putting these to use in the coming school year.
Module 2 Assignment:
Explore some of the online tools to gather information about land use, soil types, plants and animals, weather, etc. in the area around your home or school and outline how you would integrate this information into local studies linking various curriculum areas.
One of the online mapping resources I spent some time engaging with following this module was the Biodiversity Ireland website, looking at the information shared on a national and local scale, focusing on the areas where I’m from, where I teach and where I live. The information available on this website is excellent, ranging from information relating to land use, soil types, plants, animal species, protected habitats in the locality and ancient long established woodlands, among many others.
Senior students in particular could have endless open-ended learning opportunities from engaging with the wide variety of information and data shared on this website. It could be used, in conjunction with a local map overlay from Google Maps Satellite view, to create maps of the locality representing the variety of data available from the Biodiversity website, all the while being mindful of the ESERO Framework for Enquiry shared in this module and in module 1 to encourage active learning in my class.
Really great ideas for cross curricular integration on the topic of light Katie. Thank you. To echo the sentiments of Emma above, I really like your idea for integration of English and Drama with the topic of light. Prior to completing this module I was unaware of the vast array of resources and ideas on the Curious Minds website and the integration opportunities relating to Birr Castle, which have the potential to really enhance student engagement. I like your idea integrating colour wheel activities in art with this topic. Thank you for the great suggestions.
Module 1 Assignment:
Describe how you could apply some of the concepts and skills you have learned in this module to your own teaching practice in line with the STEM Education policy statement.
The biggest take away for me from module 1 that will impact my own teaching practice has been the introduction to the SFI Curious Minds and ESERO inquiry-based learning framework when planning and teaching topics from the SESE curriculum in line with the STEM Education policy statement.
Prior to completing this module I hadn’t been aware of this 3 part framework of (1) Engage, (2) Investigate and (3) Take the next step. The ten steps of the inquiry based teaching and learning process expanded upon in the introduction video shared in this module were very useful, talking through the different headings and subsections of the framework.
Summarised, these steps included…
1. Write down curriculum strand, stand unit, learning objectives and tables in planning guide that best suit your requirements
2. Consider how you will engage your learnings… how will you introduce the new experience to pupils… PROMPT: Picture, Story, Video, Show & tell object… stimulate discussion
3. Discussion should lead to wondering… Posing a problem, providing a scenario, draw a mind map to come up with possible solutions.
4. Exploring… Encourage children to consider various options and to compare alternatives they develop
5. Present to problem to be investigated by posing a starter question for investigation… Can also come from children themselves…
6. Consider how children will predict and provide reasons for predictions… Important to record their predictions and compare to their findings
7. Conducting investigation: Consider how you organise the children to design, plan and conduct inquiry based activity… Consider what makes it a fair test. How will they collect and organise data?
8. Plan for sharing and interpreting data and results…
9. Consider how to extent their new learning and/or skills… Applying learning to new scenario or problem… Making connections with the world around them or with other curricular areas or thoughtful actions about how to make their environment a better place and what they have learned.
10. Reflection: What have you achieved or what could be done better next time? Children to reflect on their own learning.
The lesson ideas and resources shared in this module are excellent. I will use these lesson ideas in the coming year, which, through use of the framework, will enhance my own instruction and the learning outcomes for my students in the year ahead.
The development of lesson ideas building on the Light strand of the science curriculum were excellent. Starting from the oft taught lessons investigating light, to exploring, designing and constructing telescopes, investigating concave and convex lenses, using mirrors, etc. Linking this to the Great telescope in Birr, the evolution of telescopes and the impact on astronomy is also excellent and has been well laid out in this module.