[Una Halpin]

Hi Dara

That sounds like a great plan for observing wildlife in your local area and planning for dark sky friendly lighting practices in your school. I really like the idea of the evening night sky observation activity to be carried out with parents. This is a great way to increase parental involvement in the school and also to spread awareness of the problems of too much artificial light beyond the children themselves. As you said, the recording of nigh-time biodiversity sightings could be combined with a simple lighting survey. Having the children record their scientific observations both in school and at home and encouraging them to discuss and implement improvments for biodiversity in the school grounds is a great way to encourage pupils to be both active learners and active citizens, supporting 2 of the key competencies of the new primary curriculum.

[Una Halpin]

Hi Tracey

That sounds like a lovely project on collecting folklore and piseógs from your local area and producing a book to celebrate your collection with illustrations drawn by the children. I love the idea of mapping where the stories came from and comparing stories from different parts of Ireland. I really love the idea of exploring the science behind some of the stories and beliefs and showing how our understanding of the night sky has changed  over time, It is a great way of linking the past and the present and showing that changes over time can be both good and bad.

[Una Halpin]

Hi Elisa

Thank you for joining us from Italy and sharing your insights. I hope you have enjoyed the course. I love the idea you had in an earlier post about collaborating with a school in Ireland for some of your investigations on light and shadows. I can see how living in a big city, it is difficult to see how you and your pupils can do anything about light pollution, but I love the idea of writing to the mayor, to show your pupils that they have a right to have their voices heard. I think the most important thing you can do is what you are already doing, educating your pupils on what is important and opening their minds to thinking differently about our world and questioning our actions.

[Una Halpin]

Hi Mairead

Welcome to the course. I agree that mapping as a concept can be a difficult one for infants but as you have outlined in your lesson plan for infants, it is a question of introducing some of the the basic ideas like sequencing a journey, making note of what landmarks the children might pass when walking from the school to the church and what order they see them in.  Many children may have some familiarity with Google maps having seen parents use it in the car so thsi is a nice link. I like your idea of using the journey time function on Google maps. This could be used to emphasise the difference between short journeys we can walk or longer journeys we need a car or a bus for. You might even return to the idea when preparing for a school tour and showing the route on Google maps.

[Una Halpin]

Hi Gemma

As you sais asking children to explain their choices in the weather and climate activity is important to assess their understanding of the topic. Otherwise, it could just become a guessing exercise with children hitting on the correct answer by accident or simply agreeing with others without giving the question any real thought. Knowing that they could be asked to justify their answer will encourage them to really think about the question. I like your ideas for differentiation in the weather recording activity with scaffolding for those who strugggle with the task and extension activities for the early finishers

[Una Halpin]

Hi Alison

 

Welcome to the course. It is great that Maeve Liston’s article has encouraged you to think about how to teach STEM in your classroom and I’m glad that you see the lniks between Maeve Liston’s ideas and the activities outlined in this module, which encourage children to be active learners and critical and creative thinkers. Practical tasks are so important for teaching both concepts and skills and recording weather is something that is very relevant to the children’s lives. I hope you find the rest of the course equally useful

[Una Halpin]

Hi John

That’s a great question for a Climate Detectives project as it is directly related to the children’s lives, neither too broad nor too narrow and has a direct link to Climate change.  Monitoring use before and after taking action is very important as it shows the importance of data collection and evidence based actions. to work out the electricity saved you could look at the electricity bill to see if it has reduced but as this will vary anyway with time of year and weather then a  ore accurate way to measure this is to find the wattage of the different appliances and multiply this by the number of hours left on to get the kWhr or units of electricity used.

[Una Halpin]

Hi Michael

Bringing the children to the dunes and woods to imagine what wildlife are active there at night is a lovely exercise as being in the location will make it much easier to visualise than simply sitting in the classroom. I also love the idea of surveying family and friends about nocturnal wildlife sitings as this will help give a broader sense of what creatures are active in the local area. Referencing your county Biodiversity Action Plan is a great way to teach the children about public participation in decision making. As most county Biodiversity Action Plans are currently in the submission stage, it is an opportunity for a class to make a submission on something they are particularly interested in.

[Una Halpin]

Hi Siobhan

I love the idea of planning for biodiversity and designing bird boxes, bird feeders or other soltions to help. the idea of carrying out biodiversity surveys in the school grounds on a periodic basis to see what has worked and what hasn’t is a really good way to teach the children about the importance of evidence based actions which is what Science is all about and is the basis of the All Ireland Pollinator plan. This is a good link with the new Nature of STEM strand in the new primary STEM curriculum.

[Una Halpin]

Hi Katie

Welcome to the course and thanks for your thoughts on using the ESERO resource with junior classes in a Gaelscoil. As you said, the observation of the moon can be done quite easily both in school in the daytime and at home in the evenings. The practical demonstration is a nice way for the children to visualise the Earth’s rotation and the art work can help to consolidate learning. I’m sure there are a wealth of songs, stories and poems about the sun as gaeilge that can help to reinforce the language.

[Una Halpin]

Hi Evin

Revising compass directions and talking about where the sun rises and sets is a nice way to start a practical lesson on the sun and shadows. There are lots of simple games that could be used to practice compass directions so it could possibly tie in with going outside for PE.  Asking the children to predict where their shadow will be at each of the times is a nice idea. I also like your plan of getting each child to draw and label their shadows and write a sentence explaining what they observed. This sentence is a great way to assess their understanding of the topic and perhaps you could ask a selection of children to share their sentence with the class. The activity could also be repeated at a difefrent time of year to see if they expected or noticed any differences.

[Una Halpin]

Hi Caitriona

That is an excellent question for a Climate Detectives project as it is something that is relevant to all our lives and an issue that is very topical. The rise in data centres has had a profound effect on Ireland’s energy use and greenhouse gas emissions which has a global impact. I like how you have linked this with the pupils in your school and the global impact of climate change. As you said, the data is readily available, but as there are lots of ways you can work with that data, there is plenty of scope for exploration of the topic. This page from SEAI https://www.seai.ie/data-and-insights/seai-statistics/key-publications/energy-in-ireland will give you some of the basic statistics and if you click on the link to the left, you can download the full Energy in Ireland report which has a variety of graphs and tables that illustrate the figures and show the impact of data centres growing over recent years. Of course the recent global rise in demand for data centres is directly related to the use of AI which is another idea that you could explore.

[Una Halpin]

Hi Kelly

You have posted your module 2 comment into the module 1 forum. You might want to repost this into the module 2 forum just to keep your log straight

[Una Halpin]

Hi Lisa

You have outlined a very comprehensive plan for a lesson on map making from the use of symbols and keys to draw a classroom map, to the use of online maps such as Geohive with the various layers that can be turned on and off. Using the different maps and aerial photographs in Geohive is a nice way to look at their local area and see how it has changed over time. I like the way you have highlighted the various uses of maps. You have suggested a comparison between the children’s classroom maps and Google maps. This will not be possible as Google maps will only show the outline of the school building. In order to enable comparison between the maps the children make for themselves and Google maps, you would need to bring the learning outside and have the children draw or make maps of the whole school grounds, a section of the grounds or another outdoor location.

[Una Halpin]

Hi Serena

It is great that you have so many different types of bridge in your local area to use as inspiration, all serving different purposes.  This is great for starting a discussion on the uses of bridges and helping to set the criteria for your class engineering project. I love the idea of using the picture books as inspiration too. Tying in the research project on bridges will also round out the lesson.

• This reply was modified 2 weeks ago by Una Halpin.

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