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Hi Hilary
One of my favourite parts of moderating this course is reading about the fantastic ideas people have for projects based around local scientists and engineers. William Dargan is a great figure for inspiring your project and you have incorporated so many ideas here from building design to sustainable transport and friction. I love the idea of your musical composition based on the sounds of a railway. You had mentioned magnets and went into some detail on your investigations into friction so a nice extension activity might be to research Maglev trains where magnets are used to reduce friction and allow for faster speeds.
Hi James
That sounds like a lovely lesson for your senior infants class using the yard to draw chalk shadows and the existing circle to demonstrate how the sundial works during the time that they are in school. Partnering with an older class is a great idea too to help the children with carrying out and understanding the tasks. I love the idea of the children making their own sundials at home with parents so they can track the progress of the sun over a longer time such as when they are at home at the weekend and I’m sure they will enjoy sharing their results on the Class Dojo.
Hi Niamh
Integrating art, poetry and music into all of your STEM lessons is a lovely idea and it sounds like you have discovered a wide range of art, poetry and music while doing this. Encouraging your pupils to do the same might be a nice exercise too to see what they come up with. I remember my son doing a poetry assignment during school closures where he had to choose a poem to write about. For reference, he was given a website link with a wide range of poetry all listed by subject area. I took a look at the section on “Nature Poetry” for my own interest and was disappointed to find poems about farm animals and pets but not a single one about nature so I was delighted to look up and read your suggested poem Nature Trail by Benjamin Zephaniah. It is a great poem to go along with bug hunting and discovering Biodiversity and the reference to the owl in the garden at night is a lovely link with Dark Skies
Hi Cathy
You are so right about the importance of teaching children about Biodiversity. As you said, children in Dublin and other large urban areas may not have regular contact with wild spaces. Often gardens and parks are so manicured that there is very little wildlife to be seen. If we are not used to seeing wild plants and animals, we won’t notice them disappearing until it starts to impact our lives in other ways. Your plan makes great use of the resources in this module and I love the emphasis on peer learning with children researching their favourite plant or animal and teaching others about it. Incorporating the needs of birds into your sensory garden is a lovely idea and I’m sure the sound of birdsong will add greatly to your garden.
Hi Aoife
I’m happy that you got so much enjoyment out of this module and lots of ideas to bring back to your classroom. It is a lovely idea to do a 4 week block of lessons on space with lots of practical activities to introduce the features of the night sky before introducing the two websites and allowing children to explore them. I like your focus on energy use and looking at light levels across the world.
Hi Mairead
I like your focus on materials and comparing the materials used to make a rocket and the comparison with the materials used for other forms of transport also the focus on the materials in the box that they can use to make their rocket. Perhaps if you are going to leave it up to the groups to design their own rocket you might like to do some preparatory work on forces and discuss the different forces that might make a rocket move. Maybe exploring some different types of rockets such as the paper rockets and balloon rockets would be a good exploring phase.
Hi David
I like your approach here. Talking about the themes raised in the Paxi video is important. Although it is a short video, it covers quite a lot, so a discussion on the main points is a good idea. I love the idea of using the “Cloudy with a chance of meatballs” film as inspiration for their own thoughts on the Earth’s climate
Hi David
That is a great question. It ticks all the boxes for a Climate Detectives project in that it is a local climate problem, can be investigated and is not too broad or too narrow. It also has the added bonus of having a good practical and hands on component. Your idea of making the weather instruments and learning about weather is a good one and the Weather and Climate resource from Module 1 could be a good one here to help the children understand the difference between weather and climate and how climate change can affect our local weather. You are probably not going to go too much into the data gathering with 1st class but you could also look up past weather data from Ireland to add to your project.
Hi Kevin
Welcome to the course. Your classroom sounds like a fun and creative space with lots of hands on learning, creativity and collaboration. Designing and constructing something to meet a purpose and follow certain criteria is a fantastic way to teach children to adapt and to problem solve. Once you have cultivated that STEM mindset in the classroom, it will spill over into other areas of the curriculum too.
Hi Karena
I like the idea of using the bridge building kits for hands oning learn about different types of bridges and then moving on to the design and make project where they have to design their own bridge to meet a set of criteria
Hi Conor
That sounds like a great bridge project. I love the way you have incorporated local history into the project and bringing in grandparents to talk about the ferries is a fantastic way to start off. I took a look at your bridge on Google maps just there and I can see how the building of the bridge must have made a big change in your local area. I really like how you have incorporated different elements into the brief for your classroom bridge design such as protection from the wind for pedestrians and cyclists, a safe space for animals to cross and lifting to allow boats to pass underneath. A class visit to the local bridge is a nice way to end the project.
Hi Louise
This is a lovely question that has a nice local link. You will want to pick a bird species whose numbers have been well documented over a number of years so part of your initial research could involve finding out what birds migrate to Ireland and seeing what data is available on them. If there is a particular migratory bird species that come to your local area that might be a good species to pick as getting someone local to talk about the birds and maybe planning a trip to see them would be easier. Taking action by creating bird boxes or improving the local habitat to provide food for birds would be a great plan. Don’t forget to also study historic climate data to correlate with your data on bid numbers.
Hi Lorna
I agree with your approach in using video clips from Home and investigations such as “Earth Under the Lid” and “The Ice is Melting” to ensure that your pupils understand what Climate Change is before investigating their local problem. I think your research question is too broad. You have lots of examples of different aspects of the local environment to be investigated but I think you will find that by splitting the class into different groups to investigate different aspects you will have too many fieldtrip to organise and too many projects to supervise. I would suggest narrowing your question to one thing such as rainfall or coastal erosion. The project can them be completed as a whole class with different groups responsible for aspects such as accessing satellite data, taking local measurements, graphing results etc.
Hi Anne
Your question is a good one. The World Health Organisation has said that climate change is having an impact on human health but it is hard to quantify. Most of your examples relate to developing countries where the effects of climate change on human health is easier to quantify but the brief for a Climate Detectives project is to investigate a local climate problem so you would need to look at health effects closer to home. For example, a group from Castleisland Community School looked at the incidences of Asthma in their local community and correlated this with air pollution from the burning of fossil fuels.
Hi Hilary
Your school garden sounds fantastic and it is great that you were able to access good advice when planning and designing it. It is also fantastic that you can study biodiversity both in your school and in Malahide Castle because it is good for the children to see plants and animals in different areas, to notice similarities and differences and to think of why similar or different plants and animals will be found in different places. As you have said, there are so many opportunities here for subject integration which will help in finding the time to carry out the project.
