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This is a great question that gets children thinking about their local weather. It is an engaging way for the children to include talking to family and using weather diaries to make it real for them. The mix of drawing, writing, and drama means everyone can join in and enjoy learning about climate in a fun way.
Research Question:
How is our local climate changing, and what evidence can we find in our school environment to show this?To engage the children in this Climate Detectives project, I would begin by encouraging curiosity through discussion and observation. I would start with questions like ‘Have you noticed any changes in the weather?’ or ‘Do you think our seasons seem different than they used to?’ This could lead and has led to the discussion/debate of the months in each season! It happened in my class two years ago. We had to ask the principal for her advice and she went with the old way, not the metrological calendar. Following on from the weather questions, this could lead to outdoor exploration and looking at changes in plant growth, unusual weather patterns, or flooding after rain. We could discuss the different storms that have happened over the year – Storm Éowyn, for example as this seems to have had a lasting impact and memory on the children that I taught last year. The children would be invited to gather evidence through photographs, drawings, and simple measurements (like rainfall or temperature), which would build a sense of purpose and involvement. I would use the Climate Detectives Research Planner to help guide their thinking step-by-step, from making observations to forming a question and deciding how to investigate it. I would encourage the children to work in small groups to collect and compare data, discuss their findings, and share them with the wider school community. This hands-on, pupil-led approach encourages ownership, critical thinking, and real-world connections to climate awareness.
What a great activity! It’s amazing to see how many satellites pass overhead each day. Using real-time tracking is such a fun and effective way to bring space science to life for the children.
I found ‘Nose High Up in the Sky’ a very useful and engaging resource for teachers and pupils alike. The activities focus on concerning issues like air pollution, weather, and climate change. It helps children explore weather observation using their senses and simple instruments. Activities include analysing weather proverbs, making sensory observations, and building a basic meteorological station to measure rain, wind, and temperature. It links everyday experiences with scientific tools to enhance weather understanding.
Having gone through the pupil activities myself, they provided hands-on and engaging approaches to the learning and understanding of observing and measuring weather conditions. Children are encouraged to observe, ask questions, and interpret data through drawing, discussion, and simple analysis. This makes complex space science accessible and relevant.
The resource links space technology to everyday environmental concerns, helping the children understand how satellites assist in protecting our planet. It links well with other areas of the SESE curriculum, particularly geography and supports developing STEM skills, critical thinking, and environmental awareness. It is a valuable resource to use in the classroom when teaching the children lessons on this topic.
I agree. Greta’s honesty about her Asperger’s and how it helps her see things is so inspiring. It’s a lovely way to start simple, meaningful conversations with children, not just about climate change, but also about how everyone thinks and learns differently. It can help the children understand and appreciate the different and unique strengths their classmates bring.
‘Home’ is such a powerful film. It captures the beauty of our planet while showing the damage being done. It’s emotional and thought-provoking, and I think children would respond well to it.
For the Junior Classes, I would approach climate change gently, focusing on the idea of taking care of our world. I would use short, age-appropriate clips from ‘Home’ and the other videos as a starting point for discussion. From there, we could explore the themes through drawing, storytelling, or simple experiments. It’s all about helping them feel connected to nature and showing that their small actions can make a big difference. There is also the opportunity to link this to what we observe locally and around the school, such as weather changes in our area, litter in the yard, or how we travel to school. By keeping it relevant and child-appropriate, they will be inspired to care for the Earth and understand that their voices, actions and choices matter.
This is a great way to make climate learning meaningful and action-based. I love the idea of using real data and linking it to a Climate Awareness Day. It’s such a powerful way for children to see the impact of their learning!
Activity 3 is a fun and meaningful way for young children to learn about climate change. It links well with the Paxi video and allows the children to apply what they’ve learned about greenhouse gases to real-life situations. I like how the activity promotes teamwork, critical thinking, and STEM skills such as analysing and interpreting data.
Using the Teal tool to explore future temperature predictions would help the children understand how different levels of emissions can impact the world around them. I would begin by demonstrating the tool on the interactive whiteboard, then assign different emission scenarios to mixed-ability groups. The ‘Climate Summary’ worksheet provides a helpful structure for recording findings, while the group presentations encourage collaboration and creativity. It is a very useful activity that supports learning across several areas of the curriculum and helps children see themselves as part of the climate solution.
Setting up a Weather Station is such a lovely idea and provides so many learning opportunities. For example, it provides for hands-on learning. The children are not just reading about temperature or rainfall; they’re measuring it themselves. Children love jobs of responsibility, and recording the weather gives meaning to their learning. Taking daily readings would give the children ownership and pride in their role. It brings science to life. It provides opportunities for group work in assigning roles and rotating jobs which supports collaboration and communication. It sparks curiosity, which can lead to oral language discussion about the weather, the weather forecast, improve vocabulary, and create a real-life interest in the topic of weather.
Module 1 Assignment
I completed Activities 1 and 2 from the Teach with Space: Weather vs Climate resource. Both activities are well-structured, practical, and easy to visualise in a classroom setting. Activity 1 made the distinction between weather and climate clear through everyday examples. The task of sorting statements encourages observation, reasoning, and critical thinking. The birthday weather prompt is a great idea. It is personal, relevant to the children, and naturally leads to comparing short-term events with long-term patterns.
Activity 2 involves a wide range of STEM skills. Some of these include taking daily temperature readings, ensuring consistency in time and location, and recording the data. This supports scientific inquiry and accuracy. Creating graphs builds mathematical skills such as data representation, pattern recognition, and calculating averages. Comparing class data with online sources introduces digital literacy and interpretation of real-world information.
If I were using this with the children I teach, I’d add visual aids, sentence starters for reflection, and a class chart to support group recording. These activities align well with cross-curricular teaching and learning, promoting problem-solving, collaboration, and scientific thinking, all key components of STEM learning.
I love the way you made the connection with the night sky at looking up to it and asking for help or to say a prayer to a loved one that is gone, or just saying goodnight up there!
Consider how many Songs / Poems /Art can you think of to connect us with the Night Sky?
As a Junior Teacher, I just love theming my fortnightly/monthly plans.
This theme of Night Sky will offer lots of cross curriucular links and integration.
The theme of Night Sky is so vast – Space, rockets, galaxies, the moon, the stars, the planets, the Milky Way,
the list is long!
Songs vary from nursery rhymes like Twinkle Twinkle Little Star, The Night Sky, Zoom Zoom Zoom We’re Going ot the Moon,
Five Little Aliens in a Flying Saucer, Star Light Star Bright First Star I See Tonight, are only to mention a few!
Other songs for older children might include Can you Feel the Love Tonight? Reach for the Stars, Sky Full of Stars.
Stories include Peace at Last, The Bedtime Bear, Goodnight Moon, Papa Please Get the Moon for Me, nCan’t you Sleep Little Bear? The Owl who was Afraid of the Dark, Night Monkey Day Monkey.
Art ideas – Starry Night Over the Rhone by Vincent van Gogh , Starry Night by Edvard Munch, Starlight Night by Georgia O’Keefe. Then there are more simple art activities for younger children – they could paint or draw or colour The Man on the Moon, day picture(made from white card on black background)/night picture (black card on white background), finger painting the sky at night, dark sky reflections onto a lake, night time picture using charcoal, dark skies with shooting stars, the moon, planets, etc.We have a bug hotel too and it is on the yard for the Junior Classes. They love looking in and seeing what’s going on, but lately there haven’t been many guests at all for whatever reason that may be?!
We also have a school garden with seating around the sides, big tractor tyres serve as flower beds and raised beds for planting vegetables. the best reward is getting to have lunch in the School Garden – it is their highlight. It’s just a pity with the weather most of the time!
Our school is in a rural area and I just love the idea of a night motion camera. It would be so interesting to see what’s lurking in the middle of the night on the school grounds and down on the grass pitch!
How you would engage your learners to explore biodiversity in your local area and the possible impacts of light pollution on local biodiversity?
At the start of October last year, we had a session with a a man named Micheal Bell from Nature Learn who gave a fascinating talk about Biodiversity with each class. He presented my class (First and Second) with a PowerPoint presentation featuring all the local wildlife in the area where the children live. He gave each of them a bkkloet on Irish birds and even brought in a a stuffed pine Marten called Martin!
He followed on with an intersting workshop that focused on the local natural environment and showed us all the various types of living things (plants and animals) that live around our school and in the wider community.
We listened to the different chirps and tweets of birds and Michael was able to identify them by sound. We looked at the plants and insects living in our school garden and we had a look at our bug hotel to identify different living creatures there. We spotted a nest near the top of the roof on one school building and witnessed the mother bird flying in and our with food for her babies.
It was an excellent, hands-on and very relevent workshop. The children really enjoyed it and got a lot out of it. It would be lovely if he pays us another visit it in the future!
Regarding teaching further on the effects of light pollution children could be enouraged to carry out a survey, gather information through media sources, explore the presence of artifical light in their area by going on a ‘light pollution hunt’ and figure out first hand the sources of this pollution and then create a list of ways that we could help minimise it. There were some great experiments, resources and web links and the Bat Moth Game that the children could do to investigate light pollution in their local community in this module too.
