[Una Halpin]

Hi Michelle

I love your idea of getting the children in your class to design an activity to explain the phases of the moon to children in the junior school. This would be a great exercise for many reasons. As you have mentioned they will be using the engineering design process and learning from each other, but also they will consolidate their own understanding of the moon by teaching it to others and gain great satisfaction and a sense of achievement from the process of creating and teaching a resource. I also love the idea of the children creating their own voice recordings at home as they will be able to compare notes with each other and see how people may have different perspectives based on their location and the time of night  they observed the moon.

[Una Halpin]

Hi Grainne

Getting the children to survey their school grounds is a great way to get started on understanding biodiversity. The fact that your grounds are limited might make the survey part easier and then you could go on to get the children thinking about how to make their small space more biodiversity friendly. The All Ireland Pollinator Plan has some great resources for managing grass cutting to encourage native wildflowers but also on pollinator friendly planting for a range of different spaces including the Pots for Pollinators resource and this one https://pollinators.ie/wp-content/uploads/2023/04/Top-Ten-pollinator-plants-Guide-WEB.pdf which covers plants for small gardens, pots and beds among others. Many of these plants will also be good for birds by both providing berries and also increasing the amount of insects and invertebrates they can use for food.

 

 

[Una Halpin]

Hi Eileen

You have some great ideas there for art and music lessons. I love your description of the Turner painting and as well as the art appreciation, it could be a nice way of looking at how our use of artificial light has intensified over time. I also love the idea of giving children pastels to create their own painting of the moon for homework based on The Moon by Amaral. That would certainly be something new and different for them. Studying the songs of David Bowie is a lovely idea for music. With all of this inspiration, I’m sure your pupils will be well prepared to create their own works of art and literature.

[Una Halpin]

Hi Sheila

The exploring section of your activity is good with the children discussing clothes for different temperatures and their own winter and summer clothes. Your investigation here needs some more thought however. The thermometer measures the body’s core temperature which is will remain constant under most circumstances except in extreme cases like prolonged exposure or illness. When we go out in the cold without proper clothing, we feel cold because the body draws heat away from the extremities to maintain the body’s core temperature and the opposite would be true if we were to wear too many clothes. In the case of putting on different clothes, the children’s core body temperature would not change even if they were to wear those clothes all day. If trying on clothes you would have to use the children’s own assessment of how warm they feel, but again it usually takes a while for them to notice any difference. For an investigation on heat transfer you might take a look at Miriam’s post above. Animals in the Cold is an ESERO activity that looks at a similar topic and the SEAI classroom resources have some Interactive Whiteboard or PowerPoint resources that are good for aiding discussion on clothing for different environments.

[Una Halpin]

Hi Jane

The investigation on continental and oceanic climates is a nice one and it is a great idea to link it to their summer holidays, the heatwave and maybe the water temperature on trips to the beach.

When writing your posts elsewhere and then pasting them here remember to follow Pat’s instructions above: right click on the box and chose “paste as plain text” to avoid all the extra formatting.

 

[Una Halpin]

Hi Maura

Yes it is amazing how much young children know about the world around them and how much they take an interest in it. This is why the inquiry based approach works so well. It allows children to discuss what they already know and allows the teacher to tease out any misconceptions they might about a topic and then to check back after an investigation to see if their understanding has improved. In your description of the floating and sinking investigation you have demonstrated these steps very well. The learning is not in simply putting objects into water to see if they float. It is in the initial exploration of the objects and categorising them and in the follow up discussion where they consider the different variables and wonder why each one floated or sank.

[Una Halpin]

Hi Eilis

Welcome to the course. I’m sure you’ll find lots of ideas for hands on inquiry based Science investigations and design and make activities for junior classes on this course and also ideas on how to adapt many different lessons and themes for younger classes. As you said space is a theme that young children are already interested in and if you read some of the suggestions from other teachers here you will see that dinosaurs feature in a few of the suggestions for inquiry based lessons. Once you have explored the options for space themed lessons, you will be able to apply the same principals and use many of the same websites to find resources for all sorts of SESE themes. Enjoy the course.

 

[Una Halpin]

Hi Sarah

A month long exploration of space as a theme sounds like a fantastic project for first class. Chris Hadfield’s book “The Darkest Dark” is a lovely book for that age group too.  Floating and sinking can be a great example of an inquiry based science lesson especially when you let children choose their own items to test as you have. Designing and making boats is another great lesson in itself and a perfect follow-up to floating and sinking.

[Una Halpin]

Hi Emily

That sounds like a lovely fun inquiry based activity and a great way of getting the children to think about the sun and shadows, come up with their own ideas of how shadows are formed and then investigate making shadows.

[Una Halpin]

Hi Emily

That sounds like a lovely fun inquiry based activity and a great way of getting the children to think about the sun and shadows, come up with their own ideas of how shadows are formed and then investigate making shadows.

[Una Halpin]

Hi Angela

This sounds like an interesting research project and could form the exploring phase of an Inquiry based science investigation. Perhaps the research could be used to encourage the children to think about the design of rockets. They could go on to design and make their own rockets capable of being launched into the air or using one of the rocket activities from primaryscience.ie they could come up with a question to investigate as a whole class or separate questions for each group to investigate such as “will the amount of stretch in the elastic (the force) affect the distance travelled (for foam rockets)” or “will a greater amount of water in the container cause the fizzy tablet rocket to launch more quickly?”

[Una Halpin]

Hi Mick

Paper helicopters is a great activity to investigate forces and lots of fun too. I like your progression with the questions starting off with a broad question like what is the best helicopter and then encouraging the children to discuss what we mean by the best so that they can arrive at a starter question for themselves.

[Una Halpin]

Hi Sarah

That’s a lovely example of an inquiry based lesson. The idea of the investigation is simple enough but the real learning is in the discussion about what happens when we drop things and getting the children to predict. Another lovely element to that investigation would be to hand out the items to the children in advance of the question on dropping and ask them to discuss the different objects and materials in groups. They could talk about various properties of the materials such as colour, size, shape, soft or hard, stretchy or rigid and then group the materials according to their own criteria. Groups could then report to the rest of the class on how they decided to group the objects and why. This way, when they come to make predictions on dropping they will be thinking about the properties they have described and will be able to expand on their predictions. For example they may make statements like “The Lego brick has straight sides so I think it will drop straight down and land here” or “the ball is bouncy so I think it will bounce when it lands and end up over here”. Also a good end to the discussion would be to ask why things fall and to introduce the word Gravity.

[Una Halpin]

Hi Sarah

I think you might also want to introduce the word translucent into your investigation. As transparent items are completely clear and allow all light to pass through, you would not require a torch to test them. Where your torch would be useful is in comparing translucent and opaque items. Another follow up lesson on light involves the making and use of a light box and is explained on the SEAI website https://www.seai.ie/community-energy/schools/primary-school/resources-for-teachers/. Just go to 1st and 2nd class chapter 3 on light.

[Una Halpin]

Hi Ciara

I like the idea of deciding on materials for the boat. Your use of a story as a trigger along with a discussion about floating and sinking should have the children engaged from the start.  I wonder though are you trying to do too much at once with prediction about materials that float and a design and make project in one.  Would you perhaps be better concentrating on the prediction and testing of materials first and then look at making a boat afterwards as a separate activity? When you ask the children to predict which materials will float or sink, they could then go on to test their predictions by placing each of the materials in water. Afterwards, possibly even on a different day, the children could use what they have learned about the different materials to design and make a boat that will float.

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