[Una Halpin]

Hi David

That sounds like a great whole school project. I like the idea of dividing the school grounds on the basis of how welcoming each area would be for wildlife and identifying the issues that might exist for nocturnal animals by using the bat and moth game other activities to help explain the barriers to moving and feeding. Giving each class responsibility for a particular part of the school grounds is a great idea. That way the children could come up with ideas and research their chosen action and lots of little improvements could be made for biodiversity without any class having to take on too much. Having a before and after Biodiversity map would be a lovely visual way to showcase what you have done at your Dark Skies family evening and a great way to inspire similar action in pupils’ homes.

[Una Halpin]

Hi David

Radio waves can be a difficult enough concept, but you have some lovely ideas for simple easy to follow hands on investigations that can really make it accessible to your pupils. Tuning forks are always a hit especially when seeing how sounds waves travel through water and using prisms or water to study the refraction of light is another simple idea with a big visual impact.  I love the idea of the creative challenge to design a space listening device.  especially the communication part where groups explain how their device might work.

[Una Halpin]

Hi Kate

Welcome to the course. I like the idea of building your monthly theme around a STEM topic.  There are so many ways to integrate other subjects with a STEM theme and you have some really nice ideas there. I supposed I am a bit biased coming from a Science background and being involved with delivering teacher CPD for Curious Minds for many years, but I often recommend to teachers that if they are looking for ideas for cross curricular themes, they should start with a STEM topic or even a single investigation and build around that. Hopefully the other modules of this course will give you plenty of ides for STEM themes and ideas for integration with subjects across the curriculum.

[Una Halpin]

Hi Carmel

I love your perspective on the videos in this module. As well as the messages on Climate Change, the videos can also be used for other purposes. I love the idea of the Listen and Draw exercise. It would be really interesting to see the children’s interpretations of the score, especially if you used contrasting parts such as where the beauty of the Earth is shown and where the focus is on human destruction.  Greta Thunberg’s discussion of her Autism is a great way of introducing discussion on diversity but also a nice way to open up discussions about why some people see the problem of Climate Change more clearly while others dismiss it

[Una Halpin]

Hi Lauren

That is a great question as it is based on a local climate issue and relates to the children’s everyday lives. I like the way you have framed the question to include the children’s parents. As climate change is measured over a period of 30 years or more, it is good to have a longer reference period that just the children’s own limited experience. They will of course have personal experience of extreme weather events such as storm Eowyn, which have become much more common. Doing their own weather collection and keeping weather diaries is a great way to help them understand how weather and climate data are collected and some comparisons between their own short term data and long term online data would really help with their understanding of the differences between weather and climate and the effects of climate change.

[Una Halpin]

Hi Sharon

That sounds like a lovely local investigation. I like the way you have started with a general question and then aim to define the focus of the question through discussion and debate and local exploration. Using the children’s own experiences is a good start but as their personal frame of reference is so narrow, it would be good to include discussions with parents and grandparents and comparing their recollections with actual past weather data. I didn’t know until quite recently that there was such a thing as meteorological seasons and it was even later when I learned that astronomical seasons are defined by the equinoxes and solstices.  We only ever learned about the traditional Irish seasons when I was in school and it never made sense to me as a child that February was in spring and August was autumn. Meterological seasons make much more sense to me in terms of the weather, and reflect what I always thought the seasons should be, although I do now have more of an understanding and an appreciation for the old Celtic Calendar which I never heard much about in school. It would be a fascinating cross curricular study to delve a bit further into this topic as it would combine history, geography and science. This is Met Eireann’s description of the seasons https://www.met.ie/meteorological-spring-begins-wednesday-1st-march-2023 https://www.met.ie/meteorological-spring-begins-wednesday-1st-march-2023

[Una Halpin]

Hi Carolann

That sounds like a lovely investigation rooted in a local environmental issue. I love that there is a clear path for investigation in recording the types of litter and the amount of each. You also have a plan for taking action and relating the litter found to people’s actions. You could also relate the local litter problem to the wider global problem of plastic pollution. Many people are very concerned about ocean plastic without considering the source of that plastic so it would be nice to emphasis to your pupils that by taking action at a local level with the nearby stream, they are helping to reduce ocean plastic.  It might be nice to show the children the story of Boyan Slat who started investigating solutions to ocean plastic when he was just 16 years old and soon after, started his company The Ocean Clean-Up https://theoceancleanup.com/boyan-slat/. You could also look into how plastic is made and make the link between climate change and plastic waste, to show the children that every effort they can make to reduce plastic waste will decrease greenhouse gas emissions.

 

 

 

 

[Una Halpin]

Hi Arlene

Welcome to the course.  It’s great to hear your very positive reaction to Module 1 and the resources and tools outlined within it and also your great enthusiasm for STEM practice. The Curious Minds / ESERO Framework for inquiry was designed to make structuring lessons and cross curricular themes easier for teachers so it is great that you can see its value for helping to structure your own STEM work.  Hopefully you will find lots more inspiration in the other modules of the course for STEM teaching across a variety of themes and integration with subjects across the curriculum.

[Una Halpin]

Hi Marie

It’s fantastic that your own boys are planning a BioBlitz in the garden. Children love exploring nature especially finding minibeasts and I’m sure they would get great fun out of making a hide to observe birds. Through helping your own boys with their BioBlitz, you will get a lot of insight into what will and won’t work well with your class and what equipment and recording sheets you might need, which is great preparation for doing a school BioBlitz. During Biodiversity week in May every year, the Irish Environmental Network run a Backyard BioBlitz event over a full weekend where families are encouraged to BioBlitz their gardens and upload pictures of their finds on social media where there are experts on had to help identify them.

[Una Halpin]

Hi Nicola

I really love the idea of working with 3 other schools in different parts of the country on your weather stations. The zoom calls between schools are a great idea especially when it comes to designing and making their weather instruments and coming up with a common system for collecting and displaying data as well as monthly meet ups to discuss their results. Adding in factors such as weather related school closures really makes it relevant to their lives.  To add to it and connect to the wider climate issue, you could compare your collected weather data to some of the long term recorded climate data.

[Una Halpin]

Hi Roisin

I love this project idea. One of the main climate impacts we are seeing in Ireland is the increase in frequency of these extreme weather events so using this as the basis for your project is a good idea. I like the idea of using the children’s own experiences and then broadening out to look at newspaper articles. Tools like the EO Browser even the Teal Tool could be used here along with long term weather data. I really like the idea of getting the children involved with designing the Climate Safety kits. As power cuts become more frequent, due to extreme weather events, I am always amazed by the amount of people who are not prepared and do not have the basics in their houses like charged torches, gas camping stoves and a few days worth of food.

[Una Halpin]

Hi Sarah

I like the idea of using some of the more positive footage of Home to explore the origan of the Earth and the history of development for Geography and History lessons. Using this footage to highlight how wonderful the Earth is and how it sustains all human and animal life is a nice way to foster an appreciation of the Earth in children before introducing them to Climate Change. Some of the more stark footage of the damage we are doing to the Earth might be used more sparingly as discussion points or the lessons on Climate Change might be better taught using some of the other videos and resources instead.

[Una Halpin]

Hi Andy

I like the idea of using the Paxi video to assess the children’s prior knowledge of Greenhouse gases. Some breaks during the video with questions could help with assessing their understanding of the topic and also identifying any misconceptions they may have. One misconception that I come across in many classrooms is the idea that climate change is caused by holes in the ozone layer. Through explaining the cause of global warming, the Paxi video can help to correct some of these misconceptions. I love the idea of assigning different future years to different groups and having them record their climate reports in their own chosen format.

[Una Halpin]

Hi Denis

I like your description of the EO browser.  It takes a bit of work initially to get used to how to navigate it but once you have figured it out it can be very useful as a tool to carry out a cross curricular study of your local area or any other area in the world.  As you said looking at images of the same area in different time periods is a good way to study land use change and a variety of environmental factors and looking at different areas in the same time period is good for comparisons of places in different climate zones or those that experience different weather events.

[Una Halpin]

Hi Fiona

Kay McNulty is a great example of an Irish woman working in STEM and one of the many women who’s work was not recognised until recent years.  I found a short clip from RTE about Kay McNulty here https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=X8Oz5jW6wfs and she is also featured in the Dictionary of Irish Biography and was featrured in one of the 6 episodes of the documentary Herstory. Kay’s pioneering work on computer programming would be a lovely tie in with any work on technology and computer programming in the classroom such as BeeBots or Lego WeDo.

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