Out of this world science: linking your teaching to space exploration

 

This post is brought to you by Jane Winter who is one of our advisory teachers based in York and Lincolnshire

This week sees the launch of CIEC's latest IndusTRY AT HOME activity.  As teachers who have worked with us before will know, InusTRY AT HOME is a suite of activities that we have adapted to make user friendly for families.  Each one is based on one of our existing tried and tested science lessons.  They require minimal equipment that can be readily found around the home.  The instructions are written specifically with families, rather than trained teachers in mind.  

The whole set of activities has been very well received by teachers, families and children alike and we are told that they are used in a number of ways.  For example, individual activities being set as homework or the link to the whole page of activities being added to the school website.  Families have also stumbled across IndusTRY AT HOME on the internet and have accessed them independently of school.

Teachers have also told us that they use the activities in their day to day teaching, often sending the activity home after they have used it in the classroom.  Another way that these can be used in school is to do a related, but completely different, practical lesson.  Since all of the IndusTRY AT HOME activities are taken from one of our resources this is easy to do.  This latest activity, for example, is from our free to download publication Is Anyone Out There? which contains eight other activities as well as this one about investigating craters.

All of our free to download resources, including this one, can be found on our Primary Website

One of the activities from this publication that I have enjoyed doing with children is to give them different soil samples to test in the same way that scientists will test any samples that are brought back from Mars (recipes are provided in the resource for the preparation of the different samples).  This is an unusual and exciting way to approach the study of rocks and soils.  As well as investigating the properties of the different soil samples children test them for signs of life.  As you can imagine, there is great excitement when signs of life ARE found in one of the samples. If you would like to find out how to do this you will need to download the resource.

Another great activity from this publication is one which explores volcanos (while helping children to consolidate their understanding about changing materials).  I must tell you now that there is no truth to the rumour that the involvement of chocolate has any bearing on my enjoyment of this particular activity!

A teacher exploring volcanos at one of our CPD sessions.

I hope that I have tempted you to check out this lovely publications.  As ever, if you use it with your class we would LOVE to hear how you get on.  Don't forget, if you would like to be kept up to date with what is happening at CIEC you can sign up for our newsletter by emailing ciec@york.ac.uk.  We will never send more than one email a month and you can unsubscribe at any time.