[Una Halpin]

Hi Felicity

Castletown House sounds like a great amenity to have within walking distance of your school and you have outlined a great seasonal project on trees to make the best use of the resource. You have mentioned using the FIT count and you certainly have a great location for using this. Castletown house is one of only 8 grasslands studied by scientists as part of a new NPWS publication called The Grasslands Trail. You would no doubt be interested in the project website https://www.greatirishgrasslands.ie/

[Una Halpin]

Hi Monica

Using the Leviathan as inspiration for your engineering project is a great idea. I particularly like the focus on documenting the design process. This is something that Mary Parsons did very well throughout the manufacture of the Leviathan with her photography so photography could be another element to your project and you could discuss how easy it is for the children to take photographs of their work on an iPad compared to the work that Mary Parsons needed to put into each photograph she took. The design of the mirror and the walls and support structure for the telescope were two of the engineering challenges faced by the 3rd Earl. The children would have to consider how to fit their mirrors or lenses into their telescopes and they could also consider how to support their telescopes.

[Una Halpin]

Hi Kieran

It is fantastic that you plan to use staff meeting time to share what you have learned about light pollution with your colleagues and to try to implement practical changes with regards to lighting in your school especially in your wildlife garden. Spreading the awareness throughout the classes in the school and then at home through monitoring of nocturnal species and light levels. Only last night, I came across an article about a chinese scientific study on the effects of light pollution on trees. They have discovered that in areas where street lights are on all night, the leaves on the trees are toughened as a defense mechanism, which makes them inedible to insects. https://www.nationalgeographic.com/environment/article/artificial-night-sky-light-pollution-trees-insects.Using a visit to the National Reptile Zoo to learn about nocturnal and diurnal reptiles is a great idea as the children will be able to see the animals up close and then apply what they have learned to thinking about native animals that they may not be able to examine up close.

[Una Halpin]

Hi Kieran

Those are some lovely creative ways to explore constellations with a combination of practical drawing activities and the use of Stellarium. I love the idea of recreating the constellations in chalk on the tarmac and using the iPads to create their own astronomy guides. There are great practical maths links there too as you have said and I’m sure measuring out angles and making sure to preserve the correct ratios when calculating distances between the points will be much more fun when done in large scale on the tarmac.

[Una Halpin]

Hi Meadhbh

I love the idea of the class coming up with questions on the night sky and then using Stellarium to find the answers in smaller groups.

[Una Halpin]

Hi Olivia

I love your idea of linking the topic of light pollution to your history lessons around World War 2 and the Glimmer Man. It is a really great way to introduce the topic and discuss the different reasons for preserving dark skies and the differences in light levels between the 1940s and the 202os and various periods in between. Discussions with older family members would really add to their understanding around this issue as many of the children have possibly never experienced a truly dark sky. Of course, as you said with family members working shift work discussions around the safety aspect of providing lighting are important and these can then lead to exploration on striking a balance and the different types of measures that can allow for outdoor lighting with minimal impact.

[Una Halpin]

Hi Frances

Thank you for all of those links. You have some fantastic ideas there for art, music, dance and drama based on the Northern Lights and have done a great deal of research to find relevant contrasting video clips. I was fascinated by the idea of the music of the northern lights.

[Una Halpin]

Hi Lisa

It is great to be able to tie your learning into events such as the supermoon and the partial lunar eclipse and as you said, it will be so much more meaningful for the children if you have learned about the moon in class prior to these events so they will know more about what they are seeing and be able to share that information with their parents when observing the moon at home in the evenings.

[Una Halpin]

Hi Marie

You make a very good point there. Not only can we study individual artworks, songs and poems about the night sky to see how the artists saw the skies and to compare the experiences of different people in the past and in different locations and situations, but we can also look at the sheer volume of creative works based on the night sky and realise how important it is to us culturally as well as for our own health and that of other species to have dark skies.

[Una Halpin]

Hi Emma

Encouraging your students to conduct night time observations on light pollution and to document, photograph or sketch what they saw is a good idea. They could include observations of the different types of lights, their numbers and colours, any nocturnal wildlife they have seen or heard, and also what stars they may have seen. As your pupils may be living in different areas, some more urban and some rural, light pollution levels are likely to vary so they can compare notes in class the next day to see how their experiences vary. This could lead to great discussions on the effects of light pollution. After then learning a little more about the types of light pollution and discussing general solutions, they might repeat their surveys and see what solutions would be necessary in their homes or local areas, such as turning off unnecessary lights, changing the colour of bulbs, shielding etc.

[Una Halpin]

Hi Mairead

That is fantastic that you are already allowing wildflowers to grow naturally in your school by reducing mowing and you are so right that almost every school has the opportunity to do this even on a small scale. Not only are you helping to provide for pollinators and other insects and also for birds, but you are also providing a valuable learning experience for the children. and hopefully also spreading the message home to families about how to protect and preserve our native wildlife.

[Una Halpin]

Hi Geraldine

That is a great idea to combine your exploration of biodiversity along your local canal walk with a mapping exercise. Recording the changes through the seasons is a lovely idea particularly if you can use the iPads to take photos of key features from the same vantage point each time. For example, in the walk featured on my 3D maps video, there is a large wild cherry tree located close to a bridge on the far side of the canal. Because of its location, it is easy to take photos of the same tree in different seasons, when it is on flower, when the leaves are dark green in late summer, when they change in autumn and when it is bare in winter. Hedgerows can be great as well if you can photograph the new leaves, flowers, fruit and bare twigs through the seasons. The children could create some lovely project work or videos by incorporating your seasonal photos and maps with artwork and creative writing based on what they have seen.

[Una Halpin]

Hi Colette

This is a great activity that not only makes use of real world data for maths but is also a great opportunity to explore maps and learn how to use them. In looking at the number of fire stations, you could also look at CSO figures on population and correlate those with the number of fire stations. I like the idea of looking at the area within a 5km radius of the fire stations and of working out the distances that a fire engine might need to travel. Another nice idea might be to get the children to pick some locations furthest from a fire station and use Google maps to work out the length of time it would take the a fire engine to arrive. Having done this type of research in advance, the children would have lots of questions to ask a visiting fire fighter.

[Una Halpin]

Hi David

That is a really great research question for Climate Detectives. It is focused on a local climate problem, offers great opportunities for data collection and is neither too broad nor too narrow. As part of your research, you could look into the work that is being done in other European cities to add more green spaces and reduce the urban heat island effect. As well as your field trips, it might be a good idea to see if you can replicate your temperature and air quality studies on a smaller scale in your school yard, if you have some suitable green spaces. The data collected from outside the school will be limited to times when you can get out and leave the school, but you could capture more data in school by simply leaving the classroom for a few minutes a day.

[Una Halpin]

Hi Emma

I’m glad you enjoyed the satellite tracker app and I’m sure that the senior children in your school would have great fun finding out about what is passing overhead. When you really start to think about all the satellites that are orbiting above us, the problem of space junk becomes. I came across this website from the UK Natural History Museum that give some figures for space junk https://www.nhm.ac.uk/discover/what-is-space-junk-and-why-is-it-a-problem.html although I think these figures are out of date given the number of Starlink satellites being lauunched all the time. With the number of satellites being launched all the time we are not only cluttering up the night skies but in a world of finite resources, we are sending a lot of valuable metals and other mineral resources away from our planet and not retrieving them.

 

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