Extreme Weather hits the CLC

A Year 3 class from Sir Harold Jackson came to the CLC to complete a project on weather and climate. Groups of pupils wrote weather reports and extreme weather warnings to act out in front of the green screen. Other groups researched climate change to create a multimedia poster using Glogster. Unfortunately Glogster couldn’t deal with a large number of people accessing it at the same time and so we ended up using PowerPoint instead.

Click here to see an example.

Weston Park Interactive Trails – Feedback

Museums Sheffield

As you may be aware from previous posts, the museum at Weston Park has a number of Ultra Mobile PCs (UMPCs) – essentially computers you can carry around with you, and two interactive trails to accompany the exhibits. The two trails are Ancient Egypt and Animal Adaptation and are aimed at year 6 pupils. This summer the UMPCs have been available for family groups to use during their visit.

The feedback from the primary school and family sessions has been excellent:

“Great way of getting children to interact with the artefacts.”

“Kept them on task and directed their activity, at the same time allowing them to work at their own pace and in any order.”

“Recording answers verbally instead of writing them was much better for the SEN group. Higher achievers could use the audio facility to add expression and be creative, such as making it like a news report.”

If you are interested in taking part in one of the Trails with your class, see the previous post here for details, or contact Pauline Sharkey on 0114 278 2655, pauline.sharkey@museums-sheffield.org.uk.

Science Trail

Large Hadron Collider Simulation

Whilst the real thing is out of action, send your pupils to this excellent simulator here. You have to set the magnet temperature, magnet strength and collision energy accurately, then look out for black holes, the Higgs boson etc. occurring during your run.

Weston Park Interactive Primary Trails

There are now two possible trails that can be completed by primary classes at Weston Park using Ultra Mobile Computers (UMPCs). There is the History Trail, looking at the museum’s collection of Ancient Egyptian artefacts, and a Science Trail, which investigates animal adaptation. The trails are aimed at year 6 pupils, with students working in small groups to complete interactive exercises and record their findings.

There will be an INSET afternoon at the museum on the 24th June (12.45-16.00) for year 6 teachers. The session is free and supply cover will be paid for. The INSET will provide teachers with an opportunity to follow the animal adaptation trail, learn how to use the UMPCs and provide feedback on the trail.

From September 2008, Museums Sheffield will only offer the UMPC sessions as part of a full day package (the other half of the day will be a led workshop about the same curriculum area) for which there will be a charge. As an attendee of the INSET day, you will be able to book your class onto the full day package free of charge in the next school year. Alternatively, you may bring your class for the free half-day session this summer term.

• To find out more about the UMPC sessions or to book a place on the INSET afternoon, please contact:

Jacqueline O’Neil, E-Learning Co-ordinator
0114 2782653
jacqueline.o’neil@museums-sheffield.org.uk

• To book a half-day session for your class to attend this summer term, please contact:

Pauline Sharkey, Learning Bookings Administrator, 0114 2782655

The UMPC project has been supported by the South Yorkshire e-Learning Programme and Sheffield South CLC, and funded by the European Union Social Fund.

Science revision for SATs using PDAs

Fifty-one year 6 pupils from Sir Harold Jackson Primary School took part in a project to revise what they have learnt in science lessons using Glofiish M700 PDAs (personal digital assistants – i.e. small, handheld computers) last week. They worked in small groups, following a trail around the school, with experiments and questions on their surroundings at 6 stations. For example they answered questions on the life cycle of the frog at the pond, and grappled with forces in the adventure playground.

Despite the showery weather, all of the pupils reported that they enjoyed it. One pupil said she enjoyed it “because you could get involved and experiment with the items.” Another said “it is good to be outside for learning and it’s a really fun idea.”

The year 6 teachers were all agreed that it was good revision and the pupils were engaged throughout.

If you are interested in undertaking in a similar project, contact Catherine at the CLC (0114 2587728).

Power League – stimulating debate

http://www.powerleague.org.uk/

This website from Futurelab describes itself as a “fun and easy way to explore any topic [...] Power League is a versatile resource that lets you ask tough questions, stimulates debate and creates a visual league table based on votes gathered across your group.” Essentially you choose a question, for example, “Which is the bigger cause of climate change?”and set up a league. Students are offered a series of random choices between two people or things, e.g. Deforestation and Farming, each backed up with a link to more information. After they’ve made a number of choices you can view the league. Currently in the World Power League (“Who do you wish had more power?”) Albert Einstein is top of the list, Michael Owen second from bottom.

This ideal for use in English, Citizenship, Geography, History, RE and indeed any subject that asks students to make decisions about aspects of what they are studying and be able to debate why they made that choice. The website includes a number of lesson plans.

Human anatomy

Here are two good websites to explore the human body, excellent for science or sports science lessons.

http://www.medtropolis.com/vbody.asp is a reasonably simple site with sections onthe brain, skeleton, digestive system and heart. Take tours, put bones in the right place, watch animations and organise your organs.

http://www.visiblebody.com/  is more detailed with a complete, fully interactive, 3D human anatomy model and detailed models of all body systems.

Weather and Climate

Check out this fantastic site: http://weather.atomwide.com/  for information from a number of weather stations across England, the nearest being in Rotherham. It has an attractive, clear pictorial view of the temperature, pressure, humidity, rain rate, wind direction (and others), updated every minute for each station. You can also click on any of the images to get a graph of, for example, the temperature over the past 24 hours. Obviously ideal for teaching about the weather and climate in geography and science, but could also fit in other curriculum areas. See the Met Office Education site for ideas:

http://www.metoffice.gov.uk/education/index.html

Resources for Science

Here are some interesting websites with resources for science lessons. Please feel free to comment on this post and add your own favourites.

• http://www.scibermonkey.org/ – organises a large number of excellent websites in topics for key stage 3 science.
• http://www.ted.com/ – a collection of video talks by the world’s greatest thinkers and doers, with a section on science. Students can listen to talks from, amongst others, Richard Dawkins, Al Gore or James Watson.
• http://www.newscientist.com/podcast.ns – listen to a number of podcasts from the New Scientist.