STEM challenge number 1: Design and make a paper aeroplane which can float. 6th class passed this test with flying colours 🙂 !! They were tasked with designing and making a floating paper aeroplane. With a homework pass at stake for the winning design, we had some heavy negotiations about the best and fairest test to grade our designs. We decided that our floatplanes would need to carry/hold 5 marbles when floating. We worked in pairs to design and make a paper floatplane. It was important to use waterproof materials for this task, but also to ensure our designs could also function as planes. ...
5 May
Senior Infants have been taking part in an after-school club based on STEM. Carl Dempsey from Salesforce has been helping out with the club and we’ve really enjoyed welcoming him to our classroom. All of the sessions were based on nursery rhymes or fairytales. We measured this tower and it was the tallest! Session 1 was based on Humpty Dumpty and materials. Humpty Dumpty likes to sit on high structures so we got into groups and built walls as high as we could. The walls had to stand by themselves by the end of the five minutes. We learned a lot about what makes structures sturdy –...
5 May
STEM for Fun with the junior classes started a couple of weeks ago. Here Junior Infants, Senior Infants and 1st Class are brought to the hall each week to work with teachers and parents to engage in Science, Technology, Engineering and Maths games and challenges. Check out some of our pictures below (where the adults seem to be having just as much fun as the children!)
10 Apr
You may have noticed the new noticeboard outside 5th class focusing on their recent adventures in Design and Make. It’s all part of Ms Sexton’s course in STEM (Science, Technology, Engineering and Maths) and as you can see from the Prezi – the students of 5th class had all of the good ideas in this lesson! Click on the title of the post to check out our Vines and see what happened when we tested them – watch Adam’s closely!
12 Mar
Today we were reviewing electricity. We started with Think-Pair-Share where we discussed what we already know about electricity – a good way of warming up our brains! Next we examined a concept cartoon that Ms Sexton got at her STEM (Science, Technology, Engineering, Maths) course. We discussed what we thought about the cartoons and we generated questions and theories about it: The switch turns the lamp on and off It doesn’t matter where the switch is on the circuit because as long as there’s a power source and a bulb, they’ll light. I don’t think that the small wire...
5 Mar
As part of their teacher’s course on STEM (Science, Technology, Engineering and Maths), 5th class have been developing their skills in thinking like a scientist. Yesterday, we focused on observing and inferring and tracked our lesson on Twitter. We used Storify to collect all of the Tweets for the lesson into one story – check it out underneath!
18 Apr
Welcome to our submission for the Curious Minds (previously the Discover Primary Science and Maths) Award for 2024. This is our 19th year taking part in the awards, once again, we are applying for the Plaque of STEM Excellence. This award is given to schools that carry out extensive work in Science, Technology, Engineering and Maths, all of which are very important in St. Peter’s. We are delighted that this is the 10th year that we have had Junior and Senior Infants taking part in the award! It is great to see the young scientists have so much fun learning about Science and Maths. Each...
25 Feb
We have been learning about the environment and climate change in 6th class and are busy working on our Science Blast submission. As part of our research into climate change, we studied some shocking facts about the way it affects different countries. We have been learning about Malawi and the economy there. We watched some great Donal Skehan clips about a visit he took there and heard some interviews with locals regarding the changing climate over the past number of years. We saw how drought affects crop yields and how heavy rain can also be responsible for destroying products. We also...
18 Nov
This week in school, we celebrated science week. The theme we were looking at was ‘HUMAN?’. We have been learning about the respiratory system and exploring how our lungs work and help us to breathe. We made a model lung using balloons, plastic bottles and plastic bags. The bottle acted as our rib cage, the balloon was our lung and the bag worked as our diaphragm. Take a look at our lungs! Our model lungs We also looked at how humans have worked to make advances in medicine and helping humans. We created our own version of a bionic hand. We looked at how bones, tendons...
13 Oct
3rd Class celebrated Space Week with different activities each day. We learned all about the earth and the different layers that make up the planet. We then molded our own planets out of clay and painted the layers from core to mantle. While learning about the moon we decided to check out how craters are formed with a fin experiment involving flour, cocoa powder and various sized marbles. We tested out which type of cola would make the best “Rocket Fuel” with the coke and mentos experiment. We figured the cola that produced the highest fountain would have the greatest...
