Into Our Skies: Space in Schools

The aim of "Into Our Skies: Space in Schools" is to use creative, imaginative and interactive educational videos relating to the upper KS2 national curriculum (year 5 and 6) to engage young audiences with the curiosity and excitement of science.

Preliminary findings from an ongoing study at UCLan suggest that, as a result of school closures due to Covid-19, some schools are sending out less science than they would provide in the normal school week. Some teachers are also reporting that they are having difficulty in translating the curriculum to online learning, particularly when it comes to practical work. There is clearly a need for a new provision of online, accessible science learning and the aim of this project is to produce such content and make it available irrespective of the learning environment.

Moving away from traditional science-learning we aim to use dance to engage young children with science. This project was originally planned for face-to-face delivery and we had a targeted amount of University funding to trial it. We have responded quickly to the pandemic and have used the funding to create a short pilot video (available here: https://youtu.be/aR0vqRHIL8U) which is being tested by a handful of local schools.

To maintain social distancing in schools, it is increasingly likely that the academic year 2020/21 will see a mixture of both in-class and home learning. Here we propose to expand our project by producing a useful online resource for both teachers and parents. We will produce three pre-recorded interactive educational videos which will guide young children through astronomy and space-related concepts, sparking an interest in science and a thirst for knowledge. Topics will include 1) The Moon, 2) Earth and the Sun and 3) The Solar System and will incorporate KS2 curricula such as (i) gravity, (ii) orbits, (iii) light and reflection and (iv) properties and changes of materials and (v) day and night.

The interactive educational videos will be accompanied by additional resources, including "top tips" on how to facilitate a dance class and supplementary information on "the science bit". designed to help parents and teachers alike deliver the content, irrelevant of their background or level of science knowledge. To promote sustained engagement and deeper learning we will include lesson plans and worksheets for practical sessions which can be carried out at home or in school. There will be no cost element, so all material can truly be accessible to everyone.

After speaking to teachers, it is clear that students have missed out on considerable time in school and so there is pressure to cover the curriculum. Using a cross-curricular approach we can embed science learning within other subjects. For example, the descriptive words used in the videos can develop new vocabulary, students can improve their writing comprehension for example by writing a story about their journey to the Moon or investigate the geography of craters on Earth and compare them with the Moon. They can use the soundtrack to the videos, which will also be made available, to create new dances in their PE lessons, or use it as inspiration for their own musical composition.

Our aim is to produce interactive educational videos and accompanying resources that can be used (i) over the 2020/21 academic year as part of both in-class and home learning, as well as (ii) in the longer term as the start of a significant body of work both online and face-to-face.

All these resources will be made freely available via the UCLan Astronomy web pages and will remain accessible beyond this project; the University already has resources in place to manage the web page. No specialist equipment is required to view the videos and they can simply be streamed on a laptop, tablet or Wi-Fi-enabled TV. We can also make the session available as a direct download if required.

The main deliverable of this project will be a series of online resources which will be available for download from the UCLan webpages. These resources will cover topics on the KS2 science national curriculum including gravity, orbits of the Sun and Earth and the Solar System.

This project aligns with STFC's Wonder initiative, giving school children nationally (and internationally) the chance to connect with Astronomy though dance. Crucially it gives under-served communities equal opportunity to engage with the project as the interactive educational videos and accompanying resources will be freely available online. Whilst we will use our existing links with primary schools throughout the North West to develop and disseminate this opportunity, we will focus specifically on working with the schools that lie within under-served communities in the North West. We will also work with Dr Sheila Kanani, the Education, Outreach and Diversity officer at the Royal Astronomical Society to disseminate the interactive educational videos to a wider audience beyond the North West.

Dr Pledger was Ogden Science Officer for UCLan between 2013-2018 and still works closely with the UCLan's current outreach officer and the Ogden Trust itself. One of the Ogden Trust's "priority audiences" is primary students (and their teachers) who are from remote areas, have a low science capital or live in areas of social deprivation. The Ogden Trust have agreed support-in-kind and will provide access to curriculum experts to advise on the curriculum links. They will link Joanne with primary partnership schools to test the resource e.g via the live Zoom sessions and allow crucial feedback of the resources. The trust will support the dissemination of the resources throughout their network across the UK. There is also the potential for the videos to be followed up by a visit from Ogden Outreach Officers nationally. Dr Pledger has already been working closely with upper KS2 teachers from Marus Bridge Primary school to understand what they want and need from the resources proposed here; this has been fed into our pilot video.

Similarly, our UCLan Public Engagement unit runs a 'Schools University Network' [1] widening Participation program to raise aspirations amongst young people from backgrounds under-represented in higher education. We will work closely with these schools to promote these interactive educational videos as part of ongoing engagement. Based on the '2015 English Indices of Deprivation', nearly 50% of the districts in Preston have an Index of multiple deprivation of 3 or less, indicating even just working with local schools will encourage children within these under-served communities to explore science in a new way. Many of these schools also attend the annual Lancashire Science Festival presented by UCLan which hosts over 10,000 visitors every year.

We will use a social media to publicise these resources nationally, making use of Lucy's social media contacts to reach dance audiences across the UK. We will also explore the possibility of additional platforms distributing the work such as the STFC, RAS, IoP Spark and Twinkl database for teachers, the latter two of which are currently offering free membership to all during the period of home-schooling due to Covid-19.

Around 160 countries follow the English national curriculum, so these resources also have the potential to be used world-wide.

[1] https://www.uclan.ac.uk/about_us/school-uni-network.php