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Prepare a school project to collect Piseógs/Traditions/Stories of the Night. For Example: Dúchas Folklore Commission
I have a passion for Geography and History therefore projects are a must in the classroom. Projects give so much opportunity for the children to do their own research, work in teams, build confidence when presenting their projects and overall they are engaging fully in important topics.
I think that it is vital for schools in the area to regularly do projects on local traditions, folklore and stories from the past. Children love to talk and the older generation enjoy shairng their stories from times gone by. Having a selction of stories, traditions etc on file for everyone to read in years to come is really important in my eyes.
What a lovely way to integrate the subjects with the theme The Night Sky –
5th and 6th class – History project
After completing lots of work in Geog and Sci on the theme a nice way to finish it all off would be a history project – Stories from the past.
- Pupils will be asked to talk to people in the local area about the night sky and how they think it has changed over the years.
- Discuss how the use of lights has changed over the years – lamps, torches, etc.
- Look at how the lighting in our local area has changed with regard to homes and street lighting. What was the area like years ago?
Pupils will work individually, collect stories and interview the older generation in the local area. Some pupils may even want to ask granny or grandad to come in to school and answer questions from the whole class.
Big projects like this in school that involve the whole community are memorable and special for everyone.
What a lovely celebration to be part of, 125 years of the school in your area. I think it is so important that we interview our older generations at whatever opportunity we can get.
What a lovely celebration to be part of, 125 of the school in your area. I think it is so important that we interview our older generations at whatever opportunity we can get.
Love this Anne, a great list of memorable poems and songs. The pupils would love these and they would enjoy putting together their own list also.
There is such scope for integration with this theme of ‘The Night Sky’
Thank you some of those quotes. Plenty food for thought.
I like the idea of map drawing. Almost like a survey of what we can see in our local area. Having a river close to the school is ideal for this engagement in biodiversity. The joy of the topic is that we can integrate many of the curriculum subjects to the lessons.
How you would engage your learners to explore biodiversity in your local area and
the possible impacts of light pollution on local biodiversity.Engaging the pupils to explore biodiversity –
Our school has been involved with Heritage in schools over the past 10+ years. A member of the forum mentioned in her post how important it is to explore the term biodiversity with our pupils before we delve deeper into the theme and create a clear understanding.
The Heritage in schools, along with tidy towns members and foróige group leaders have all helped the local kids in the area develop a good understanding of biodiversity and how important it is.
Trees have been planted, wildflower meadows created, a beautiful walkway along the river close to the school is currently under construction with the pupils from 3rd class and above helping with this. As the work continues the children are made aware of what animals are in the local area, moth traps have been set up with the children getting to see what types of moths are in the area. Children have helped with the designing and location of bat and bee boxes. We do an annual survey of living things in our local area. This is added to each year and it is great for the pupils to see the difference and increase in both plant and animal life in an around the school and local area.
Impacts of light pollution in our local area –
We recently had an information night in our area and it was all about biodiversity after dark. It was really interesting and the main theme of the night was detecting bats in the area. The lady organising the event works for bats convervation Ireland. She offers free talks to schools also so a great way for us help engage our young learners in this topic.
The talk informed us all about the affects of light pollution on the bats in the area.
We were lucky that the walk we went on that night took us through a very dark area with only minimal lighting, perfect for detecting bats. There was so much emphasis out on the fact that light pollution does not help our nocturnal animals and we must try hard to keep our light pollution to a low level.
That night we got to see how the landscape around us was ideal for bats and how the bats can help us. We were all happy to hear that bats eat over 3,000 midgies each night : – ) We got to hear about how these nocturnal animals are right on our doorstep and how they can help improve our mental and physical health.
Detail how light pollution is impacting your local area and how you would engage your learners to explore this.
I would start by looking at the ESERO 9 light and darkness activity with the pupils. I would pay particular attention to discussions on light sources around us in day time and at night, those that are natural and those manufactured.
I really found the light pollution map pretty cool, especially looking at the difference between 2005 and 2015. We could have a class discussion on this and look at the areas we live in. I could put this resource on the Book Creator App and set it as a homework task.
During the recent Northern Light phenomenon in early May it was clear that the less light around the better the view we had of the northern lights. Even the lights on in the house made a difference. We had a few neighbours out with us that night and we all made sure the lights were out both inside and outside. This is just a perfect example of light pollution and how it affects our view of the night sky. A great conversation to be had in the classroom.
It is definitely something everyone should fully experience, the dark sky reserve in South Kerry. It is truly remarkable and unforgettable. I live in a rural area of Donegal and it doesn’t compare to the dark sky reserve.
There are some fab apps available to download that you can use when exploring the dark skies at night be it in a dark sky reserve or any part of Ireland.
I agree 100% it is sad to think that some pupils will never get to see the beauty of the dark sky during their childhood.
I live in a rural area and appreciate the many starry nights I have witnessed over the years. Doing these CPD courses and learning more about the ESERO has created a real interest in the earth and space. Something I want to explore further with my class.
Hi Brendan
What a simple little app to use. You could definitely make use of this app. The pupils could work independently on this trying to find out the information by themselves. The pupils are little whizzes when it comes to ICT. They could teach us how to use these apps 🙂
Using Stellarium
What a great app to have on the tablets and laptops at school.
I would introduce this resource well into our study of the earth in space. As we covered day and night and sundials in module 1 of this course I would continue with a similar layout in my plans at school.
A KWL chart would be useful here to begin with. Ask the question What is the difference between a planet and a star?
I myself would need to do a lot of research before I would begin explaining this to the children. However, the Stellarium app is very easy to use and the you tube video in module 2 was very useful.
Teachers could show the pupils how to use the app on the whiteboard/interactive whiteboard during the school day then add the link into book creator (an app we use a t school) for the pupils to use and discover themselves at home. Any child who is interested will be happy to explain what they saw and discuss in class the following day.
The joy of Stellarium is that you can set it to a particular date and time and the pupils will be able to see what constellations are to be seen, where the moon will be located and visible planets.
I think it is a lovely simple way to get the children interested in the night sky and know exactly what they are looking at.
I think plenty children would have difficulty knowing where North/South/East/West is in relation to their home, so even getting them to know how to figure that out will be progress and easy to find out using the app.
Activity – 5th and 6th class
Construct a sundial in your immediate area or plan for your school grounds to see where a sundial could be placed.
Introduce the theme of ‘Earth in Space’. The construction of the sundial will only happen after lots of background work. These lessons will integrate all the SESE subjects and include math also.
I would begin by showing the pupils different pictures of the nocturnal and diurnal animals available on the ESERO lesson 30 activity pack. Let the children work in small groups and discuss the different animals and hopefully they will realise that a group are nocturnal and another group diurnal. The terms may have to be given to some.
Begin to get their ideas about night and day. Record their findings. Pupils could record their ideas using the ipads. Give the pupils a chance to speak out in front of the class and explain what they know.
I would show the children the Paxi video of day and night and the seasonal appearance of the sun. This video will give opportunities to speak about the difference in sunlight during the seasons of the year, differing times of sunrise and sunset and the position of the sun at different times of the day.
There is a lot to cover so these lessons will take place over a series of days/weeks.
Children will be sent off to look at the history of the sun-dial. Do they even know what a sun-dial is. This could be given as a homework activty. I use Book Creator a lot and can easily give links to videos and web addresses using this app. The app is easily accessible at home.
I would use a mix of the activities from the ESERO lessons 29 and 52 for shadows and the sundial.
A member in the forum talked about getting the older classes to discuss the best site for a sun-dial at school and I think this is a great idea.
Overall there is great resources available to help teachers with this activity and something the whole school can make use of when created. The student council could help out with this also.
