[Una Halpin]

Hi Aisling

I confess I wasn’t familiar with the work of Kenneth Edgeworth but I am always amazed at the number of important scientists and engineers who have come from Ireland and there are great local connections to these people in every part of the country. Kenneth Edgeworth is a great choice for a scientific heritage project on your local area and a fantastic way to introduce classroom investigations on astronomy.

[Una Halpin]

Hi Ciara

You have some lovely plans for exploring biodiversity with your class and the mixture of outdoor exploration of plants and animals and construction of bird feeders and creation of habitats will bring great satisfaction, especially if the children’s efforts are rewarded and more wildlife is attracted to your school for them to see. I would encourage the use of technology for recording what you find but don’t forget to encourage the use of books and keys. A book or key will encourage observation as children need to look at key features and read about viewing dates etc. in order to come to a conclusion about what a plant or animal is. Aps can be useful as a backup but I wouldn’t rely on them for identification as they teach the children nothing and often misidentify species. There are some good aps such as ObsIdentify (plants and animals) and Flora Incognita (plants) that are great as a back-up to books and keys but Google Lens is very unreliable.

[Una Halpin]

Hi Serina

It is fantastic that you have registered your garden with the All Ireland Pollinator Plan and I love that you plan to introduce the idea at your next staff meeting and try to register the school and get everyone involved in learning about and protecting pollinators. You have a great start anyway with your orchard and sensory garden. Your native hedgerow int he garden sounds lovely. We have a native hedgerow and 2 sides of our garden and it is fantastic to see the hawthorn and the bramble flowers come out to feed the pollinators and to see the fruit and the ivy providing food and shelter for birds. We have also planted a new mixed native hedgerow in the front that will hopefully eventually replace the ugly Lleylandii hedge that came with the house when we bought it. Like you, I can’t understand why people would rip out a beautiful native hedge that is home to so many different plants and animals and replace it with an ugly sterile hedge of invasive Laurel.

[Una Halpin]

Hi Amy

Welcome to the course and I’m happy that you are getting some good ideas for use in your classroom. I like the way you have placed such emphasis on group work and getting the children to problem solve about ways to represent gravity on the different planets. I’m sure it would be a really enjoyable activity for your class and having the different groups consult to learn from each other is a nice touch.

[Una Halpin]

Hi Barry

I like your focus on picking celestial objects that are easy to view through binoculars. You could still use your Planetarium wheel and the Stellarium app to explore where the planets should be seen and the children will enjoy using Stellarium  and finding what is above them, but picking out some things that should be easily visible is a good idea as there will be a great satisfaction for the children if they are able to spot the stars and constellations they have explored in class.

[Una Halpin]

Hi Rachel

Observing the moon when the children line up on the way into class in the morning is a great idea as it starts off the day well and the children will enjoy looking at the moon and taking turns to record it. Using the super moon as a way to introduce the moon observation is a nice way to introduce customs, history and culture and also a nice way to introduce discussion about the moon’s orbit and why the moon appears larger during a supermoon

[Una Halpin]

Hi Maria

That sounds like a lovely lesson, where you introduce the topics and the websites and tools to find information and then give the children the freedom to work in groups on their projects. allowing them the space to research climate change and find information for themselves and come up with solutions will give them ownership of their project and make them more likely to retain the information than if you had simply presented it to them.

[Una Halpin]

Hi Amy

Thank you for sharing your insights into all three activities here: use of the satellite tracker app and the EO Browser as well as the practical activities from “Nose High Up in the Sky”.  I’m glad that you appreciated both of the online tools and can see their value for use in the classroom. I like how you linked satellite coordinates with maths. The weather proverbs and weather descriptions provide a great cross curricular approach to looking at the weather and I agree that making a weather station is a great way to get children involved in recording the weather. Perhaps they can then compare the results from their own instruments with those from standard weather equipment and from published weather data.

[Una Halpin]

Hi Odhrán

From your answer, I assume that you are talking about the EO browser although you haven’t specified. I’m glad that you appreciate the tool and find it user friendly. Once you are confident in using the EO browser it can be a great tool to use in your classroom as you will be able to guide the children at the start and then allow them to pose questions and explore the answers for themselves and most children will get to grips with this type of technology relatively easily. Good luck with your explorations.

[Una Halpin]

Hi Adam

A project based on transport to school is a great idea. It is focussed on a local climate problem and makes use of readily available data on the average emissions from cars and other forms of transport. You also have a clear plan for how to carry out your project. I would however rephrase your question slightly. For a Climate Detectives project you should remove vague terms like “help the environment” and  don’t use very broad terms like “Carbon footprint” as it would be extremely difficult to calculate your school’s carbon footprint. A question that fits your project better would be “How can we reduce the Carbon emissions resulting from our travel to school?” You can find average emissions data for cars in the Data and Insights section on https://www.seai.ie/. You will also find some basic transport statistics on https://www.gov.ie/en/publication/004a9-your-journey-counts/. You would then need to conduct surveys on the ways children travel to school and the average length of their journey.

[Una Halpin]

Hi Fiona

That is a really good question that is based on a local climate problem, is not too broad and makes use of readily available data. Because your question is well defined, you have a clear idea of what data you need to gather to answer your question. The website https://waterlevel.ie/ can give you recent water levels on any local rivers that have a monitor installed and for older water level data going back as far as 1972 you can use https://waterlevel.ie/hydro-data/#/overview/Waterlevel

 

 

[Una Halpin]

Hi Padraig

This is a very good question based on a local climate issue that is directly related to the children’s own experience. It would be a good to ask the children about their own experience of the weather over the summer holidays compared to previous years before checking up the actual rainfall and temperature data to see if their perception actually matches the reality. Another nice addition to this activity would be making the weather station from module 1 and encouraging the children to gather their own weather data to compare to the published data. I’m glad that you enjoyed the resources in this course and feel that they can add to the work you have done in previous years when teaching children about climate change.

[Una Halpin]

Hi Fiona

I’m glad you enjoyed the “Nose High Up in the Sky” resource and are hoping to use it in your classroom. I agree that studying and recording the weather, especially with the aid of weather instruments that the children make for themselves is a great integrated STEM lesson that incorporates lots of the science skills. As you said, their own predictions about the weather will not always be correct and their weather instruments won’t give precise readings but this can all lead to discussion about why this is so. Also by going through the process of making them and recording their own weather observations, the children will learn a lot about what it takes to record the weather and how this data needs to be gathered over a long period of time to get information on climate patterns and climate change.

[Una Halpin]

Hi Dawn

It is fantastic that you have gained so much from this module that you can apply in your STEM teaching from resources to teach the curriculum strands to ideas for encouraging STEM skills. Your question for Climate Detectives is a good one but it might be difficult to find enough information on past records of plants and animals in your area. The National Biodiversity Data Centre that coordinates all of the biodiversity records relies very much on citizen science, so while we know that Climate Change is affecting the timing of flowering plants, the emergence of insect species and the migration of birds, most animals and plants are not recorded, so it is difficult to get enough data. Perhaps narrowing down your focus would help. Many of the bird species around Dublin Bay have been recorded over a number of years and migratory birds can be particularly susceptible to climate change so maybe restricting your project to migratory birds might be a good idea.

[Una Halpin]

Hi Eimear

That sounds like a great plan using the available space in the secondary school to study biodiversity. It is great that your own school also has great potential for biodiversity and that you have already begun to explore that through getting involved with the Nature Hero Awards. the more you study biodiversity, the more ideas you will gather for improvements in your school. I’m glad you see the potential of the FIT count. It is a great way to focus on identifying the main groups of pollinators and a great way to practice the science skill of observation through learning to recognise the features that differentiate bees from hoverflies for example and also as you said a great way to integrate data in maths. It is a lovely idea to do this with your learning support groups as it is an activity that is particularly suited to a small group and if the children bring it back to their classes and peer teach, it can be more easily introduced to a wider group.

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