Forum Replies Created
-
Posts
-
Laura, I like the way you have assigned a role to each pupil. This keeps them actively engaged and focused on their task of creating g their own Dark Sky place.
- Consider how many Songs / Poems /Art can you think of to connect us with the Night Sky?
The Night Sky is an ideal topic showing how all the STEAM elements can be integrated and a thematic approach implemented when teaching Science. Many of the songs, poems and art below are popular in Irish classrooms. I look forward to teaching Science in a more creative manner in the coming school year.
Poems
The Star( Twinkle Twinkle ) by Jane Taylor is a familiar Nursery Rhyme and is an ideal starting point for very young g learners. It is has the “wonder” question acting as a prompt for the Night Sky topic.
Phasing of the moon by Little Dazzy Donuts explains the waxing and the waning of the moon. It is available, with a visual and auditory representation on the website kidspoetryclubArt
Starry Night by Vincent Van Gogh would be my go to here. I love this painting with its swirls and colours and pupils can easily look and respond to the painting as well as recreate their own version.
Wax resist starry night sky art, is an easy lesson to implement. It also shows that wax and water do not mix.Music
The Planets by Gustav Holst is a power piece of music. Pupils can listen to a section and then respond by drawing and creating Mars for example.
Follow that Star is a Christmas Concert which shows how the night sky was used by shepherds and wisemen to navigate their journey to baby Jesus.
Lyndsy, your idea of giving biodiversity homework is excellent. It brings the message home in the importance of protecting nature and how we all have a role play. Pupils love outdoor homework and will be readily engaged.
Biodiversity refers to the variety of plants and animal life in the world. It is the variety of life in earth. Our lives depend on having healthy ecosystems and therefore it is important to protect biodiversity. Clean water is essential for healthy living, plants can provide us with clean air as well as medicinal benefits. Plants have a natural purification system removing pollutants from the air.
I would introduce the idea of biodiversity to my class by showing them the video – what is biodiversity from Laois County Council. It shows how making space for nature in our lives is very important and we all have a part to play and can start in our own doorstep. The book Gardening for Biodiversity can be used to supplement t the video with some work sheets and activities fur pupils.
I would integrate Art with a Design Challenge., by first exploring the school grounds and garden and plan how we as a school can increase biodiversity in our school grounds. Pupils could work in groups to create bird boxes and bird feeders. Outdoor work could include planting native wildlife trees and shrubs and the creation of raised beds. We can evaluate our progress by repeating a survey and compare data each year. This is vital so pupils can modify their plan and see what has or hasn’t worked in our school garden. Pupils could oration the Citizen Science Project as well as the Green School initiative further exploring their knowledge and life skills.Yes it is such a pity that is becoming increasingly difficult to observe the night sky as skies are no longer dark enough. I was in Switzerland recently, the street lights were very soft but allowed you to observe the many stars.
Light Pollution is the brightening of the night sky from artificial light sources such as football stadiums, schools, offices, street lights. Light Plollution is wasted energy as seen from space.
too much light stops us seeing and interpreting the magic of the night sky. It has a big impact on all living things. For humans it interrupts the natural sleep cycle. Glare from lights causes visual discomfort and can lead to accidents on our roads. Because of light pollution many people have never seen the Milky Way from their own homes. for nocturnal animals it turns their night into day affecting their breeding. The lights confuse baby turtles. Blue lights attract insects away from their natural food sources.
pupils will naturally be interested in this topic and it will be easy to engage their curiosity. The video from Sliding Springs Australia : What is Light Pollution will serve as an introduction to the topic. Also the video: Losing the dark will engage pupils and spark their curiosity and wonder in how light pollution can be reduced. I think showing pupils the Slide outlining growth of Arttlight between 1997 and 2915 will be very effective. The ESERO 09 Light and Darkness prompts as well as the Soace Week activity/ A box planetarium will incorporate many STEM elements into this topic. I am sure pupils will enjoy doing a light survey in school a mobs checking which classes have lights on when not needed or when a natural source of light could be used instead.Pupils will be very interested to learn that the moon doesn’t generate its own light and that the sun is the source of light.
ESA’ s mascot Paxi and his video Our Moon, phases and eclipses will serve as a prompt to engage pupils in discussing and learning about the moon. The video is an excellent resource for younger learners and explanations are clear and visual. Even I can understand them!
I love the Moon Observation Log. It is especially important that pupils observe the moon in the morning as very often children think the moon is only visible at night. I like that the log allows pupils to shading what aspect of the moon is visible and over the course of a month the pupils would gain a good insight of the phases of the moon simply by looking at their own log.
ICT tools such as heavens-above or timeandate will incorporate Digital Learning tools into the teaching of STEM. This will support pupils learning and can encourage them to further explore the topic.Sean, these are all excellent activities for teaching pupils about the sun and shadows.they will truly understand the concept considering the practical hands on activities you have provided.
Day and night in the world using ESEEO 30
the Day/Night song “ the sun is shining” is a very hands-on way to explain day and night to younger learners. Pupils face a lamp while they sing “ the sun is shining” and rotate so their backs face the lamp as they sing “the sun is gone”. This enables pupils to recognise that the sun is a source of light .
The ESERO 30 activity uses models to encourage pupils to make predictions about what part of the world will be in darkness when another part is in daylight. It emphasises that the sun is the source of daylight, and the cause of day and night is the earth turning so that one side is in Earths shadow.
the ESERO 30 activity also introduces the concept of “Animals in the night” and how they have adapted to living in the dark eg nocturnal animals often have bigger eyes than diurnal animals so that they can see better at night.
The Paxi Day and Night Video is also an excellent resource to explain day and night in a visual way.Yes Dean I too have used Alka seltzer rocket launcher. Pupils live this lesson especially as it is done outdoors and creates a little mess. The excitement when their rocket launches is unreal. It’s great to see them so involved and igniting their joy of Science.
Lesson plan for Activity Set- Rockets
class- Junior Infants
Strand- Energy and Forces
Strand Unit – Forces, exploring pushing and pulling
Learning Objective- children will explore how a push can make a rocket move and investigate ways to make a simple paper rocket travel further.
Prompt-show video clips of a rocket launching and ask pupils what is this?, where does it go? What happens when it launches?
investigation- Rocket Mouse from Science Museum London
Using a pre cut paper cone decorated as a mouse and an empty milk carton as a launcher pupils predict how high the rocket will go?
Pupils apply a gentle force to the milk carton and observe how high their rocket moves.Explore and extend
Pupils predict if using a stronger force effect how far the rocket launches.
Explore with different bottles and stronger/ weaker pressure and observe differences.I have used this lesson several times in class from Juniors to Second, each age group enjoying it no end and are actively involved as well as highly motivated to discover how high they can launch their rocket. The competition can be fierce and many a mouse was lost behind cupboards during the investigation.
This is a great lesson Doireann. The use of Vaseline will really enable the pupils to understand the concept of waterproof. Your story “say hello to snowy animals” along with your images will provide the pupils with many second hand experiences further enhancing their comprehension and understanding of the topic.
This module provided us with lots of hands-on activities and online resources. I really loved Stellarium. It is a free computer program that acts like a virtual night sky. It shows the stars, planets, moon and sun exactly as they appear from any location on Earth and at any time of the day or year. It is an ideal resource to follow the rise and setting of the sun across the world. I can see the pupils in my multicultural school being very interested in this and want to watch the sun from their home country.
the Astronomy picture of the day is also an excellent resource used as a prompt for further exploring and questioning.
the esa.int online tools will be very useful in the future too. Each classroom resource is composed of a teacher guide and student worksheets with practical activities such as “ Could we live on Mars? “. ESA kids and UNAWE space resources will all be put to good use next year.
The Activity Set- Where do you live?/Weather also had many resources and lesson plans to be used with younger pupils. The ESERO 05 Lesson- Where do you live, Lesson 07 -Animals in the cold and Lesson 11- what clothes to wear are great lessons for use in Junior Classes.