Eckington Camms Endowed C of E Primary School climate change workshops


On 17t h June 2024, John Grant of Sheffield Hallam University (SHU) and David Garlovsky of Solar-Active conducted workshops at Eckington Camms Endowed C of E Primary School with thirty Y3 children.

John presented a climate and ecological emergency workshop – about how serious our situation currently is, and focused on the wider positive elements of taking positive action; and the wonders of the Universe (solar system).

John’s activity was based on and shown the Artimus video from the NASA website.

Eyes on the Solar System: A real-time visualization of our solar system using planetary science data.
NASA/JPL-Caltech

The activies were relatively simple exercises of visual aids and active involvement. Introduction to the topic – night sky and the wonders of astronomy and science as we pursue the unknown but are also amazed by with wonder of what we can see.

There were four parts to John’s lesson plan (2-3 hours). John adjusted delivery for the Y3 children:

  1. Introduction to the solar system
  2. The Earth and the Moon
  3. The scale of the solar system
  4. Building a scaled model of the solar system (conducted outside)

First part of the lesson

John created flags on poles to represent each planet. The scale used for this outdoor element of the activity assumes a scale of 3cm = 1.4 million km!. At this scale a linier placement over 97m is required to place all the planets of the solar system and 29km if Proxima Centauri is to be place on the scaled representation.


John established that the students knew that we are “part” of a solar system. Asked how many planets there are – amazingly accurate but as well as the eight planets, Pluto was named (now defined as a dwarf planet) and also the moon.

Second part of the lesson

We talked about our nearest neighbour the moon. Two volunteers were selected and given the visual aids of the earth and the moon. A discussion is then initiated regards what the students knew about the moon, this conversation was allowed to range:

  1. what we can see,
  2. is there a man on the moon,
  3. is it made of cheese 😊
  4. finishing with the apollo mission which landed first in 1969, and
  5. moving to the discussion to the fact we’re going back!

Third part of the lesson

The next part of the lesson began with the explanation of the huge size of the solar system. Introduction of each of the planets and the Sun:

Fourth Part of the Lesson

The lesson moved outside to the playground where a straight line measurement of 97m was possible. Building the scale model begins with putting the Sun (pair of students) at one end of the playground and explain that we are going to scale the solar system to the size of this Sun (approx. 3cm diameter)

The end of the tape measure is given to the student who is with the student holding the Sun (they didn’t have a flag) but need them to be the centre of the solar system!

Following the measurement each pair is placed the scaled distance from the “Sun” – this clearly shows the concept of the inner and outer solar system. So the first four planets – Flags are put into the ground (Mercury, Venus, Earth and Mars) and are all within 5m of the Sun. Then (distance from the Sun): Jupiter is 16m – Saturn 31m – Uranus 62m – Neptune 97m (massive distance from the sun! Then students discuss about how a Sun only 3cm across, and how far away the sun is from the outer planets. There were two more flags (talked about how impossible it is to place them out at this scale):

  1. Voyager – that would be 520m from the sun
  2. Proxima Centauri – would be 29km away

Solar-Active workshop

David split the Y3 class into 15 pairs. Each pair built a solar are first using the battery pack to power the cars. Then the children removed the battery pack and connected the wires of the motor direct to the solar cell. All the children easily made this connection of the solar cell. We all then went outside and let the sun to power the solar cars. The gear ratios of the cars were 9:1 and 27:1. We discussed what difference the different ratios made in how the cars travelled. Why the 9:1 ratio travelled faster.

The teachers and students thoroughly enjoyed hearing what John had to say, and working with the solar cars. To quote: “You left us with a lot to think about and after you left, we had a great class discussion about what you’d taught the children during the afternoon. Lots of new vocabulary and big ideas to consider – thank you.”