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Hi Siobhan
I’m happy that STEM is one acronym that you can get behind and I fully agree with you on the STEM kits. I hope you will find from using the resources in this course and others on the Curious Minds and ESERO websites that a wide range of active and engaging STEM lessons can be carried out very well with very little expense, simply by using materials already in your classroom, supplemented with the contents of your recycling bin and some inexpensive stationery items. Of course some specialist equipment for some of the energy and forces strand units such as electricity, light and magnetism are very useful. It is fantastic that you already monitor the weather with your class and I hope you have found some new ideas from this module to add to your weather station.
Hi Ciara
It’s lovely to hear that you are becoming more familiar with the concept of STEM and are getting more confident at encouraging active STEM exploration in your classroom. It is great that you have a weather station and encouraging children to make their own weather instruments is a great way to supplement what is in your weather station or even to compare their own instruments with the others to understand how they work. As Lorna said, I think you will find the Curious Minds and ESERO resources to be very useful for your work in SET as practical hands on STEM lessons are a great way to work on numeracy and literacy skills especially to see the practical application of maths.
Hi Louise
That’s a nice short video clip that could be used as a prompt for lots of lessons and I like how you have introduced it as a prompt for discussion around how we tell the time and the project of designing and making a sundial. Researching sundials for themselves is a great way for the children to take ownership of their projects and could result in a good variety of materials and designs in the class sundials, depending on where children got their inspiration. Using the sundials at different times of the year is a nice way to talk about the seasons and show how the hours of daylight vary throughout the year which could itself be a prompt for lessons on day, night and the seasons.
Hi Katie
Welcome to the course. I’m glad that Maeve Liston’s paper has given you some clarity on what STEM actually means and how full integration of the elements of STEM and the skills such as critical thinking, creativity and collaboration can be of real benefit to pupils and teachers. Throughout the modules of this course and using the Curious Minds and ESERO resources we are giving examples of how to put these ideas into practice in the classroom. You have already outlined how designing and making a sundial can be a fully rounded STEM activity and I hope you find many more examples throughout the course that will provide inspiration for your own STEM classroom.
Hi Shane
I love your integration of Stellarium with the hands on elements. In each of the examples you have used of finding a planet on Stellarium, you have identified a characteristic of that planet, discussed how it might be best viewed in the night sky and also pointed out what to look for. Using Google images to show the planets is another nice idea. Guiding your pupils through the first few examples on the iPads will give them a good foundation for using the tool and then using it independently will give them extra confidence in exploring the night sky. Some of the children might choose to download it on devices at home and use it to explore the night sky with their families.
Hi Odhran
You have outlined a great plan there for a Dark Sky Place project. As you have identified, planning is very important, both for the teacher and for the pupils. For the teacher, as you said, planning will involve deciding how much time will be dedicated to the project and identifying all of the curriculum links so that it can be integrated into a number of lessons. For the pupils, planning will involve research into dark skies and light pollution, discussion of materials to be used, drawing of plans if they are to make a model and decisions on how they will present their work to others.
Hi Daniel
You have mentioned both external visits to the school by local environmental specialists and also engagement with the local community. Both of these are very important when considering how to improve Biodiversity in your school and also when considering the needs of nocturnal species. Collaboration with environmental specialists can help you to improve biodiversity in the school grounds in a number of ways: they can help children and teachers to discover what biodiversity is already in your school; help with research on native plant and animal species and provide advice on choosing the biodiversity actions that are best suited to your space. Cooperation with the local community can give children an opportunity to share their knowledge with others to provide wider benefit for wildlife beyond the school. Night time events such as bat walks or stargazing events could then be community events that the children in the school can benefit from.
Hi Jamie
Looking at the concept of Carbon footprint can be a good way to start thinking of a project for Climate Detectives but as this is an extremely broad topic that would encompass all electricity use, heating, transport, purchasing and waste among other things, you would need to narrow it down considerably to make it a suitable research question. If you try to look into too many different aspects of energy use, you will find it difficult to gather data and measure the impact of any actions. You might want to chose either electricity or heating as your overall topic and then come up with a question that covers one aspect of that. e.g “how does our school’s computer usage contribute to greenhouse gas emissions and how could we lower our impact?”
Hi Christina
Looking at the effects of Climate Change on tourism in Ireland is an interesting idea for a project. It is quite a broad question but could be narrowed down once you see what sort of data is available. Once you have looked into the reasons that people come to Ireland, you might also want to look at the main places that tourists visit and of course you will need to look at climate predictions for Ireland and other data such as predicted flood maps. You would then need to look at whether some of the main tourist destinations are likely to be affected by Climate Change and use that to formulate your research question e.g. Will Coastal Erosion impact on tourist numbers travelling the Wild Atlantic Way
Hi Louise
That sounds like a great mix of activities to get your class interested in maps but it does seem a little rushed if considering it all as a single lesson, especially for younger pupils. Perhaps think about breaking it up over a number of days and integrating with other subjects. Other participants have suggested some lovely books that feature maps as a way to introduce the topic of maps which would incorporate literacy, drawing your classroom map would involve maths. You mentioned the use of geohive to study population density so perhaps this could integrate into a geography lesson on the topic allowing the children more time to explore Geohive independently.
Hi Miriam
It is great that you plan to go outdoors twice per month as this will give the children plenty of opportunity to see seasonal changes happening. As some trees will get their leaves much earlier than others in springtime and lose them much earlier in winter, going outdoors often will allow them to notice this. Similarly, different types of flowers will emerge and bloom throughout the spring and summer. Frequent visits to the outdoors will also allow the class to notice how some wildflowers growing in the shade of trees make the best use of sunlight by flowering before they are shaded out by the growing leaves and how different insects will emerge to feed on different flowers. Your outdoor lessons don’t all need to be long ones. You could have some longer lessons to explore and identify wildlife in greater depth and lots of short visits to check on seasonal changes, perhaps when you are already going outdoors for geography or PE. Your list of equipment and resources will be great to get you started, but I wouldn’t worry too much about weatherproof notebooks. They can be expensive to buy and you will probably not be used much. If you go outdoors on wetter days you can concentrate on observation and record what you have seen when you go back to the classroom.
Hi Helen
You are very lucky to have a school caretaker who is enthusiastic about nature. It is very important to have the caretaker on board when planning for wildlife friendly actions in the school such reducing mowing, leaving trees and hedges to flower and produce berries and seeds and cutting out herbicide and pesticide use. The fact that your caretaker is able to help you with observing and identifying the trees is a great bonus and this will give you a great start in exploring and identifying the trees in and close to the school throughout the seasons. You have some lovely ideas there for cross curricular links.
Hi Serena
Here We Are by Oliver Jeffers seems like a great book to get children thinking and talking about different types of maps that show us our place on Earth, Looking at different types of physical map as well as the globe and online maps will help children to understand that there are many types of maps for different purposes, some showing our country and its place in the world, some showing larger areas and some maps showing an area close up and highlighting different features. Exploring and mapping your new school building and its surroundings is a great way to explore and learn about the school and I love that you are encouraging each group to build using different materials. finally using the bee bots to navigate around the school map is a great way to integrate technology.
Hi Orla
It is great that you used the resources from Teaching Space in Junior Classes to make a sundial with your 2nd and 3rd year class and that you have reflected on that exercise to plan a more detailed version of the lesson for 5th and 6th class. this is a great example of inquiry in action, recognising that an older class will be capable of more in depth exploration of the purpose of sundials and how to locate and build them. there is plenty of opportunity for integration with other subject areas particularly geography, history and maths from learning about longitude and finding the longitude of your school, to researching how people told the time in the past and the measuring and calculating of angles for the gnomon.
Hi Doireann
I love your idea of basing this project around Halloween, a time when a lot of the traditions and folklore are associated with darkness and the outdoors. With newer Halloween activities such as buying costumes and carving pumpkins rather than turnips becoming more and more prevalent in recent years, it would be a really interesting exercise to see what older games and stories still persist in families and what traditions were remembered by parents and grandparents. Linking these to duchas.ie and to local landmarks would be a lovely idea. You can make the link to Dark Skies by thinking about the contrast of children in the past enjoying their Halloween traditions under a dark sky with children today Trick or Treating on overlit streets and discuss how that would have affected their experience of the festival.
