News 4 Youth- COVID-19 Learning Activities

News4Youth is a photocopiable current events resource for students ages 10 and up. This organisation produce monthly issues of resources focused on current events around the world. In this edition, students engage in a range of learning activities focusing on the COVID-19 Pandemic. Activities include reading investigations, interactive timelines, cartoon and infographic interpretation and mapping with a focus on the health impacts and economic consequences of COVID-19. The resource pack contains simple teacher instructions and learning activities that are ready to be delivered from a distance or at home.

In this packet, students are provided with a Challenge Sheet and Student Handouts that guide them through the engineering design process. The challenge, along with relevant math and science concepts, maybe reviewed in class, and completed at home or as a student driven in class project. Students are tasked with completing the challenge and recording results.

This task requires students to explore how sound can influence a place or the culture within a place in their school. Students record the sounds of different places around the school and create an interactive sound map which can be published to other students. Students can then go on and use their recorded sounds to create and original composition that identifies certain spaces within the school or the school itself.

RUBE GOLDBERG family video challenge

This task requires families to create a video of a Rube Goldberg machine that delivers a bar of soap into someone's hand. This activity can be done by all of the family at home. Rube Goldberg have a competition online that closes May 31st 2020, but this is an activity that can be done at any time as class/school wide competitions. A Rube Goldberg machine uses the principles of energy transformation and simple machines all demonstrated in one machine.

This task provides a template for teachers to use to facilitate a design thinking project based around an issue identified by the students. The issue used in this template is something students observed or experienced during lock down or a holiday break that they want to change. But it could be any issue. The resource steps teachers through the design thinking process describing the purpose of each step.

In this task students are asked to look at upcycling their trash into a treasure. The pack includes a differentiated student task sheet, ranking table and lots of ideas on how simple trash can be turned into works of art. Students are also asked to ideate on multiple 'treasure' options and rank them prior to creating their final masterpiece / reuseable item. Makes for great gifts or an end product for a larger sustainability topic.

Students will have different reactions to learning about climate change and some may have strong emotions and struggle to cope. Therefore, it is important to check in with them on how they are feeling throughout the sessions. The ‘Climate Change Wellbeing Guide’ has been developed to provide teachers with background information and tailored resources to help them navigate the delivery of climate change scientific content, whilst maintaining the wellbeing/hauora of students.

In this task students are asked to share on social media photos and images of how they marked the 50th anniversary of World-earth day, using the hashtag #EarthDayAtHome. This could be a picture of a special science activity they have done at home, an original work of art they created, the tree outside their window, or whatever inspires them. Teachers could use this event as a basis for a unit around our earth. Resources from NASA website

This lesson students try to complete trick shots using ping pong balls and cups. The aim is to get students engaged with this activity and get them thinking about the why/how behind how it works. Students should think about bio-mechanical principles and physics principles such as; projectile motion and Newton's Laws will think about different angles and techniques that they can use in order to achieve their goal. Students then put what they have learnt into practice by creating their own trick shot to challenge the other students in class to complete. Talk with students should relate to principles highlighted above and comparisons being made to other actions (kicking a ball, hitting a ball, shooting hoops etc).

This lesson students will need to work as a group to blow a ping pong ball around a maze. The aim is to get students working together to complete a challenge and to think about the best ways to use their team mates. Students then put what they have learnt into practice by creating their own maze to challenge the other students in class to complete. All students take part in a ping pong golf maze.

Students should think about strategies to achieve the goal, then testing out those strategies and finally discussing positives and negatives of using those strategies. Students should think about bio-mechanical principles and physics principles such as; projectile motion and Newton's Laws will think about different angles and techniques that they can use in order to achieve their goal.

This lesson students try to stack the cups in specific formations without using their hands and with the help of their team mates. The aim is to get students engaged with this activity and get them thinking about the best strategy to use in order to complete the challenge. Students will experience a range of different challenges which start simple and then become more difficult this will cause them to rethink strategy and how they can achieve their goal. Students also have a chance to share the strategies they used and explain why they worked as well as developing their own challenge.

Twinkl - Teacher Resource Database

Dr Michelle Dickinson is the famous Nanogirl, a fun and engaging female scientist who brings the excitement back to hands on science. She has joined forces with TVNZ during lockdown to bring us Breaking it down. A 6 episode TV show aimed at Year 4-8 students (advertised as Years 8/9) that includes hands on science that can be done at home. It will also have interviews with scientists and engineers. The topics are; Light / Human brain / plastics / materials / energy and electricity and sound. Teachers just need to register through nanogirls lab to get access to a teaching pack 24 hours prior to each lesson.

The James Dyson Foundation have created this PDF of 44 challenge cards with a engineering and science focus however, there are a range of other underlying subject areas within these projects. It has been designed for any adults to use with children aged 7 and above. The learning focuses on a practical task and there is information for more in-depth learning that teachers can build on and extend to suit the needs of students. This is a really good resource with a great range of activities with pictures and examples that will engage kids and adults alike!

This resource created by American organisation Vivify STEM in conjunction with NASA is designed to support students during school closings due to COVID-19, however is completely suitable for use in the everyday classroom. This project is designed to get students to use design thinking to begin thinking like an Engineer. This task asks students to explore the issue of landing a spacecraft on the Planet Mars and asks them to design a lander that will be able to handle the stresses of space travel. All instructions can be found in the attached PowerPoint slides or instructions and further information about the task can be accessed via this link.