[Sharon Burke]

Light Pollution

I live in a rural village in a housing estate.  Recently all the street lights have been redone – the lightbulbs have all been changed to LEDs and the light omitting from them is well reduced.  Most of the neighbours are delighted becasue there are aesthetically pleasing but more importantly, the street lights donot glare into people’s houses, trespass into their bedroom windows at night and people have actually commented (through our Whats App Residents Group) on how happy they are with this result.  Also we were able to witness the spectacular sight of the Northern Lights a number of weeks ago.  The first night was an amazing sight, however the night after there was more cloud cover but still it was possible to see some of them.
So for me, I guess the effects of light pollution can depend on where you live  – countryside, town, village, city, etc, and the presence of artificial light being prominent or not.

Lesson for Light Pollution:
As we are following the Green Schools initative, we promote the conservation of energy daily throughout our school,in each and every classroom. We consistently promote the conservation of energy by ensuring the whiteboard is powered off
during every break and the lights are switched off at every given opportunity. I would talk about this with the children. I would then turn theri attetion to the street lights, security lights, alarm lights, and sensor lights. We have sensot lights in the toilets but also the room beside us has lights on all the time and cannot be switched off – I’m presuming for security reasons. I would lead a class discussion on this topic by introducing the term ‘light pollution’.
I would explain that light poLight pollution is the when there is too much artificial light in our surrounding environment and the negative impact it has on our world, our wildlife, and ways we can try to minimise it.
Again Twinkl (I am a big fan!) have lovely, child-freindly resource packs including a PowerPoint presentation, a mind map template, and activity cards that would enhance the children’s learning of thsi new term for them – Light Pollution.
I would then break it down into the four categories- glare, sky glow, light trepass and clutter. As a class, we would explore each one individually and create four large posters to be displayed in our classroom/corridor. There is an abundence of learning in this topic and I find it very interesting myself and I’m sure the chldren I teach would enoy it very much.
It would serve as a monthly theme and plenty of lliknage and integration would work really well through Literacy – reading and writing; Maths – data and graphs; SESE, Visual Arts; SPHE, etc

[Sharon Burke]

I think Paxi is such a great resource!  I didn’t know about it until I saw it on this course.  Definitely a great age-appropriate way to get the younger children interested and deepen their understanding!

[Sharon Burke]

Create a short teaching resource using Stellarium

This teaching resource will be carried out over a number of lessons throughout the course of a fortnightly/monthly teaching plan.

Investigating and exploring Constellations using ICT.

• Begin by creating a whole-class KWL chart.
• Introduce the topic of consellations using the Twinkl PowerPoint Constellations.
• Children can share their most interesting fact about constellations following the PowerPoint activity.
• Children can create their own constellation or use an activity sheet of dot-to-dot constellations.
• On the IWB teacher has the Stellarium app visible to the children.
• Teacher will demonstrate the various features and model how to use the app.
• Children will be encouraged to identify the different features of the night sky – planets, stars, moon, etc
• Have iPads ready with the Stellarium app.
• Children will be grouped according to how many iPads are available.
• Allow the children sufficient time to play around and explore the app.
• Explore constellations in the night sky using Stellarium.
• Incorporating visual arts the children will create their own planetarium box of constellations. (Youtube video-as shown on slide 13)
• Depending on the age group/class level, the book ‘Who Let the God’s Out?’ by Maz Evans, would be a nice novel to read as it is based on Olympian Gods, stars, constellations, which might be a nice finishing touch to the learning activities completed over a period of time.

[Sharon Burke]

Firstly, constructing a sundial is an activity that most children will love to do.  Well the children I teach at least.  It is an exciting investigation to set up.  Secondly, it will keep the pupils interested and motivated and that sort of ‘hands-on’ exploration is an effective methodology for teaching the children about the position of the sun, the time of day and how people in the past used sun dials as a form of telling the time before clocks and watches came along.

[Sharon Burke]

One Year on Earth PDF Resource

Having looked at the One Year on Earth resource, there are lots of lovely suitable activities to do with children I currently teach.  It focuses on the seasons, why there are seasons and the features of each season.
As I teach the junior end, I quite like the idea of how each lesson/activity follows on from the previous one, thus building on the children’s prior knowledge.
It starts of showing the children 4 pictures of each season and to label them 1-4 and explain why they have made their selection.
The next part shows the four seasons from a satellite view. Again the children must choose the correct season to match the picture and give their reasons.
Activity 2 provides for investigating why there are seasons and how to construct a Sun-Earth Model to explore this concept.
It then further explains how the earth orbits the sun once a year and about long and short days. It allows the children to explore ‘hands-on’ the different seasons in the different countries over the course of the year using the sun-earth model and a torch. It is very visual for the children.
There’s lots of oportunities for oral language, introducing new vocabulary and sharing opinions, thoughts, ideas and explanations.
It provides some links at the bottom and the Pax animation on seasons.
In my opionion this is a very compact, concise and useful resource that I look forward to using in the new school year with my children in First and Second Class.

[Author]

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