[Carmel Wright]

Hi Helen,

Thanks for sharing.

You’ve created a lovely plan for your junior and senior infant class, with a simple introduction and eliciting prior knowledge.

Stellarium is a wonderful addition to this plan, as you say, it is an exciting and engaging tool for your children. It’s accessible, fun and fairly intuitive for the digital native generation you are teaching.

Making their own constellations is a nice way to conclude this session, with a hands-on activity that can replicate the night sky or be of their own design!

[Carmel Wright]

Hi Emma,

Thanks for your plan on observing and recording the sun’s position. I love your choice of questions-they are such an integral part of the process, and planning in advance makes running the activity so much easier-having questions to hand, and any others that may arise organically as the activity is underway.

Some lovely ideas to conclude with a song or rhyme, and explore further topics on the sun-lots of more great resources on these topics and much more in the classroom investigation database section of the Curious Minds website.

[Carmel Wright]

Hi Laura,

Thanks for sharing, and welcome to the course!

I am delighted to see that you found this module clear and informative, with engaging and child-centered activities.

First class is a great age to run these activities, and I like how you plan to adapt this to engage your learners by using some YouTube videos and songs as a prompt for this lesson.

 

Great idea to get the whole school involved in monitoring temperatures and creating peer learning opportunities.

The curriculum is jam-packed, but like you say, it would be a very worthwhile activity if the children get to use STEM strategies, and come along in their STEM skills.

[Carmel Wright]

Hi Peter,

Welcome to the course, and thanks for sharing your thoughts.

A weather station is a wonderful addition to any school and provides so many learning opportunities! You have mentioned the many opportunities to develop a suite of STEM skills-from measuring to graphing, calculating, interpreting and designing-its an activity that packs a punch in terms of value.

What I like about this activity is that it doesn’t need to be completed in one class; the weather station can grow its instrument collection over time, and data collection can be ongoing, allowing everyone to take the lead and ownership of the task. A great way to incorporate a movement break into a busy day, too!

Great plan to make it part of weekly assemblies, and leverage technology to capture/share data and insights making use of technology to develop ICT and communication skills.

[Carmel Wright]

Hi Aimee,
Thanks for sharing your ideas for this activity.

There is so much online to support this activity as your learners conduct research! I’d highly recommend https://www.ibcp.ie/kidszone/, which includes a range of child-friendly information and great visuals too!

It’s wonderful to source information on this topic from the broader community, getting first-hand insights from parents and grandparents of the shifting baselines that can also easily go unnoticed. The IUCN red list will also connect the dots between species decline and its underlying causes.

It would be lovely to add a flower insect timed count as part of this project, contributing to citizen science.

I really like your plan to display this for the wider school community to learn about and discuss this important topic. It may lead to reflections on current school grounds and how they could improve to support bee conservation with these new insights.

[Carmel Wright]

Hi Patrick,

Thanks for sharing.

What a great local choice with Mary Ward-and I really like your plan to use Victorian Science Notebooks. This type of narrative within a lesson really adds to the excitement of such an activity. By choosing to introduce your learners to the work of female STEM role models, it is an important way to inspire girls and young women into STEM careers.

The illustrated reports and their presentation sound like a wonderful way to celebrate her legacy and help foster a new generation of curious scientists!

[Carmel Wright]

Hi Fiona,

Thanks for sharing.

You have some lovely ideas on how to roll out this activity-I particularly like your idea to create signs/placards to alert the wider school community about the work underway and it’s importance. These add another dimension to the activity, encompassing literacy, art, and presenting learners with an opportunity to design with the aim of educating. An Irish version of the copy or key words could also be added to extend learning opportunities.

Through the activities listed above, your learners will develop an appreciation for darkness, its role in supporting us all, and how to protect the darkness from light pollution.

[Carmel Wright]

Hi Derbhla,

Thanks for your post and welcome to the course.

I am delighted to see that you can see the value in this planet tube activity-like you say, it takes abstract data and makes it more meaningful for learners. It’s a great one to work on in teams or even as homework if time doesn’t allow.

It also incorporates an art aspect, and it works well to not only repurpose pringle tubes for this but also any other materials to decorate, making this activity accessible and sustainable as well.

It’s a wonderful addition to Space Week activities and can be extended in a variety of ways-learners can present these tubes to other classes to interact with/display, developing communication skills through peer learning opportunities.

[Carmel Wright]

Hi Sinéad,

Welcome to the course.

Thanks for your feedback on the lack of an Irish version-I will share your input with the team. I like how you have adapted this by making it part of your English comprehension instead.

Your idea to build a stand for the thermometer sounds like a terrific way to incorporate a problem-solving engineering challenge, with scope to reflect and improve on the design through testing.

I quite like TEAL as an interactive visual display of climate variables changing over time. As we move from 1950 to 2024, the temperature increase shown in red dramatically changes, making it a striking reminder of what is happening. Having said that, it is sluggish, and there are many other resources on offer to visually demonstrate these changes.

[Carmel Wright]

Hi Louise,

Welcome to the course, and thanks for sharing!

I am delighted to see that this module and its assignment have given you pause to reflect on STEM in your classroom, and Liston’s paper has made you rethink how you teach and prepare STEM subjects.

The Curious Minds resources really do help in this, and take the pain out of class plans by providing all the information needed in the context of their Framework of Inquiry, available for various class levels, and in Irish too.

Using a prompt, such as asking a question, is a great way to ignite an interest, and right from the start, it creates a learner-centred experience as active participants in the lesson.

I hope you enjoy the rest of the course-lots of more great resources to come!

[Carmel Wright]

Hi Olga,

Thanks for your post and welcome to the course.

I can see that you have taken the time to reflect on Dr Liston’s paper, and how your current classroom practices compare. Her work serves as a helpful gold standard benchmark. It’s an important reminder of the integrated rather than siloed approach required for a true STEM lesson, with engineering as the glue-a problem for young critical thinkers to solve, as you mention at the end of your post!

In taking this approach, teachers and learners go on a journey of discovery that forges a continuous improvement, solution-focused mindset that will benefit them within and beyond the classroom.

Great to see your technology definition expand-you are not alone in your thinking on this one! From the humble pen to the latest app, it’s all to solve a problem!

[Carmel Wright]

Hi Owen,

Thanks for your post and welcome to the course.

This is a great one to run in the heart of winter, coming up to the solstice when the days are short, and sunrise is particularly late, nearing school time at 8:40 approximately, and sets at 16:10, making it a suitable time for learners to observe upon arrival in school and soon after as their homework.

I like how you include drawing as part of the observation and recording work for this activity, linking both landmarks and compass information to create a holistic understanding of positioning.

Lots of scope to go further with this, as you mention, shadow tracking and the sundial activity.

[Carmel Wright]

Hi Donal,

Thanks for your post and welcome to the course.

You have created a lovely plan for this sundial activity-I particularly like your idea to use a sunflower-that’s a new one on me! It could also give rise to lots of great questions and reflections after using it on what would work best over the long term, and the possible issues with using a growing plant for monitoring time.

You provide a couple of examples of how math is integrated into this lesson, such as recording time and measuring shadows. Depending on the age and ability of your class, it can also extend to measuring angles created—whether they remain equal between each hour. Acute or obtuse? On average, how accurate is the sundial versus the school clock? Etc.

[Carmel Wright]

Hi Sophie,

Thanks for your post and welcome to the course!

Your moon observation schedule sounds like a great way to develop learners skills in this area, through repetition and structured times for observing, recording and sketching its various phases, and taking time to reflect on findings once they are collected, a great time to ask questions and compare results-are they all the same? Etc. In time, they may predict which phase comes next.

While ChatGPT is very handy, the website links provided on this course have some great extras too. This provided link https://www.timeanddate.com/astronomy/moon/location.html has a great visual; press play and watch how the phases change as the Moon orbits Earth —a lovely prompt for visual learners.

By spreading the observations across both school and home hours, learners have the best opportunity to see all the phases, and it also helps engage the broader school community in this lovely and very accessible activity.

[Carmel Wright]

Hi Sarah,

Thanks for sharing. I couldn’t agree more about the Paxi videos-they really do cover the topic well, at an age-appropriate level, and it is a super choice of prompt as an opener to your lesson. I feel like they should be shown more than once, if time allows, with questions for learners to answer the second time round to consolidate learning.

 

The TEAL tool is a user-friendly way of exploring data, and I really like your plan to get your learners to create a researched piece of writing for the local school newsletter to share findings and ways we can all reduce our impact at this critical juncture. It is a wonderful opportunity for learners to begin to understand the importance of taking action, through understanding and communicating the issue. Great to integrate literacy and communication skills into this activity.

 

By including the weather station findings in the newsletter, learners will see the value of their data, being broadcast to the wider school community, and they in turn will be encouraged to have a greater interest in this important topic.

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