St. Peter's Primary Bray Blog

Hello, we are Ms. Brennan’s 2^nd Class. This is our first time to do the Discover Primary Science and Maths Project. We are really excited. We completed part two of the project where we designed and made experiments from the Materials strand. We did the  ‘Which Ball Is The Bounciest’ test.  We hope you enjoy reading our project!

Which ball is the bounciest?

What you need

• A variety of balls
• Metre stick
• Hard surface on which the balls can bounce
• Grass surface on which the balls can bounce

Here we are, showing you the balls we used!

Skills we used for this experiment

1. Predicting

2. Observing

3. Investigating

4. Experimenting

5. Measuring

6.Recording.

What we were taught before we did the experiment

Balls bounce because they are elastic. When a ball hits a hard surface its shape changes – the part touching the ground flattens slightly. It recovers its original shape quickly and bounces back up!

Questions Ms. Brennan asked us

1. Would you use a ball of plasticine to play tennis or ping pong? Why not?

No – because a ping pong ball is bouncy and plastic and a plasticine will just stick to the ping pong bat or tennis racket. If you went to serve the ‘ball’ it would just fall. – Codie and Casey.

2. Do you think the squashy ball will bounce well?

Not that well. Maybe a little bit. – Dylan M and Kayden CD

3. What sort of balls do you think will bounce best?

A tennis ball. I see it on TV when they bounce it on the ground it bounces really high – Dean T and Caoilynn.

4. Does anybody watch tennis on TV?

We do. We know Andy Murray from Scotland. You can play on grass or on clay we think. – Kia and Caithlin

5. Why do you think they change the balls after every 7 games at Wimbledon?

I think they change the balls because every time you bounce/strike a tennis ball, it could lose its shape a little more and it will not be as bouncy! The balls lose their bounce, because some of the air has been knocked out of them, i.e. they are slightly softer) – From Dylan F and Dylan M.

The Experiment

1. First we predicted which of the balls was the bounciest, making it low, medium or high bounce!

2. Then we discussed how we might do a fair test to see if our guesses were right. We asked ourselves questions such as “What are you going to do? What do you think will happen?” How will you make it a fair test?” We dropped the balls from the same height, onto the same surface. The balls were dropped and not thrown.

3. Some heights were difficult to measure. We guess-timated the height of the bounce. We also used words to measure the height.

(i) the bounces were recorded as ‘low’, ‘medium’ or ‘high’ and put in three different piles;

(ii) Two balls were dropped together by the same child (the easiest way to drop balls at the same time!) and their bounces were compared.

(iii) We used charts on the wall to measure height.

(iv) We also used pieces of wool cut to each height, and we hung the pieces of wool to compare.

5. We recorded our results, and we compared these lengths with our predictions. They compared our results with other groups.

We explained our scores.

Proof of our work!

Which surface was best?

The wooden floor was best for bouncing!

The Maths in our project

1. Number: Comparing and Ordering

2. Measures: Length (standard or non-standard)

3. Data: Represent data (e.g. bar charts for different balls on same surface or same ball on different surfaces)

Proof of our work!

Here is proof of our inside test!

Here is proof of our outside test!

Conclusion

We made average bouncing heights from our guess-timates. Here they are!

1. Aviva Bouncy Ball – 43.8cm

2. Green ball with holes – 40.6cm

3. Red sponge ball – 10.2cm

4. Squishy yellow ball – 34.6cm

5. Star bouncy ball – 52cm

6. Yellow sponge ball – 39cm

7. Red plastic bowling ball – 50.4cm

8. Basketball – 53.4cm

9. American football – 28cm

10. Rugby ball – 50cm

If we were doing this again we would make sure we only used balls of the same shape and of same size. This would be a fair test.

The basketball was the bounciest, is it is full of air!

Thank you for reading our project. We hope you enjoyed it! We look forward to doing another project again soon.

It’s no secret that we’re big fans of using online resources to improve maths among our students – previous Wednesday for Parents topics have covered place value and fractions and we’ve been really involved in the Mathletes Challenge using Khan Academy. We also use online resources to revise and learn more about other subjects – and today we’re focusing on SESE (Social, Environmental and Scientific Education) which is the name in the curriculum for History, Geography and Science.

Although there are many good websites for world history and geography out there – BBC schools is always a reliable one – it can be difficult to find good content on Irish history and geography for primary school students. And, particularly in the senior classes, students have a lot of questions and interest in the very complicated nature of Irish history.

Today’s Wednesday for Parents is all about one great site – Ask about Ireland but before we begin, we’d like to recommend two other resources if your child has a strong interest in Irish history. Firstly, if you haven’t seen our blogging friend Manny Man’s History of Ireland video, you should check it out here. His YouTube channel is also contains other animated history videos – A Brief History of the Conflicts in the North, World War 1 in 6 minutes and an excellent Q&A with a little school in Bray! The second resource we recommend is a book called ‘The Story of Ireland’ by Brendan O’Brien – it’s a very entertaining read and the illustrations keep  the reader glued to the story!

Ask about Ireland’s Learning Zone has two levels – primary and secondary. Although it’s not our main focus, the secondary section is ideal for project research and exam revision for older students. The primary section contains a wealth of resources for all age groups – from infants to 6th class. It’s a lovely mix of stories, information and activities with children’s voices used throughout. There’s enough content to fill months of ‘Wednesday for Parents’ so we chose five activities that might be of interest to you and your child:

• The full story: This is what I use Ask about Ireland for most frequently. It lays out the story of Ireland in chronological order – you can choose particular topics or work through from start to finish if your child wants to learn more about the overall history of Ireland. It contains pictures and videos throughout.
• Irish myths and legends: Do you remember all the great stories about Fionn, Oisín and Cú Chulainn? They’re brought to life using ebooks, audio books and pdf files. Every story also has a link to its Irish translation.
• Infant geography: There are a number of great activities to develop infants’ awareness of space and their environment.
• Then and now: Continuity and change is one of the most important sections of Junior History – this section on clothes for 1st and 2nd classes contains lots of pictures and suggestions for discussion – a great way to develop skills with your child!
• Wild games and activities: Is your child interested in nature and in the environment? They’ll LOVE this section. Lots to do and lots to learn!

As always, we’d love to hear what you think about the site – can you recommend any other activities or sections on Ask About Ireland? Let us know in the comments! You can find all previous ‘Wednesday for Parents’ here!

On Tuesday in 4th class we talked about the two best footballers in the world, Lionel Messi and Cristiano Ronaldo. We discussed what they were best known for. Abhishek said that Messi is known as “The King of Dribbling”.

We talked about why he is so good at dribbling. Abhishek said that it was because of his balance. When we talked about why his balance was so good, Mason noted that he was tiny and that this helped him.

We decided to investigate what it is that helps us keep our balance, as part of this year’s Discover Primary Science and Maths award. Mr. Foley explained that we all have a “centre of gravity”. Through our experiments, we investigated what effect our centre of gravity has on our balance.

For the first experiment, we had to sit down on a chair and try to stand up without leaning forward past our centre of gravity. We were surprised to find that it was impossible to stand up without moving our centre of gravity forward.

After that, we examined what happens when we lean too far forward or too far back past our centre of gravity. We found that we reach a point where we can’t stop ourselves from falling.

Tommy, Mason, Stephen and Jordan all tried this and fell back into their chairs. Mr. Foley leaned forward and fell to the ground. He stopped himself from getting hurt by using his hands when he fell forward to the ground.

These two experiments showed us that if we go too far past our centre gravity in any direction, we can’t stop ourselves from falling over!

We also decided to look at the difference a player’s height would make to their centre of gravity. We noticed how small Messi is and wondered would this help his balance.

The two tallest boys in the class stood beside the two smallest boys in the class. We noticed that the two smaller boys had a lower centre of gravity, and that their balance appeared to be slightly better.

We tried to do a test to examine this but it was hard to do as we could not make it a fair scientific test. We suspect that a lower centre of gravity will improve balance.

We did one final experiment to test our balance. We stood against the wall with our head, left shoulder and left leg against the wall. We then tried to lift our right leg up in the air. When we tried to lift it up high, some boys fell over. You should try this too and see what happens! (Be careful!)

We enjoyed learning about balance. We now know that Messi’s low centre of gravity helps him move in different directions quickly while still keeping his balance.

We are learning about Summer this month and can’t wait to see all of the beautiful bugs and animals and minibeasts again! We hope to see ladybirds, snails, caterpillars, butterflies, ants, bees, bloodsuckers and spiders! We decided to make our own minibeasts today because it doesn’t look like the Summer has come yet!

You will need:

a knife, an apple, peanut butter, chocolate chips and sesame sticks.

First ask an adult to chop the apple in half. Take out the stem and seeds.

Then you spread 6 blobs of peanut butter on the back of the apple.

Next you place chocolate chips on the peanut butter blobs ( they taste yummy – we tried a few before hand!!)

Finally make two holes at the front of the apple and put two blobs of peanut butter in the holes and poke the sesame sticks inside!

Yummy =)  Enjoy your ladybirds!

By Adam and Arturas (3rd class)

4th class started a new novel earlier this month called ‘Holes’. It’s by an author called Louis Sachar. So far, we’re really enjoying it and we spent this afternoon working on an activity online based on the novel. We also took the opportunity to share our thoughts on the book so far with the wonderful world of Twitter! We Storified our tweets so that we could share them with you too – and we also included tweets from Maria O’Sullivan, who is a fantastic librarian and always encourages our reading.

We’re looking forward to updating you on what we think when we’ve read a few more chapters!

Here in Ms. Mitchell’s class we are learning about Summer this month!
We are looking forward to spotting lots of changes in the world around us now.
We will be looking closely to see a change in the weather, people’s clothes, the food we eat, new flowers growing and all of the new bugs and animals that come out for Summer.

But before all of this starts to happen we all closed our eyes and used our senses to think of what happens in the world around us in Summer. We tried to remember all of the things that we see, hear, smell, feel and taste during the Summer. Next we shared our memories with our talk partners and then shared them with the rest of the class.

Ms. Mitchell made a wordle with us, of all of the things that happen or change during the Summer months.
Take a look for yourself!

We really hope that Summer starts to come soon, we haven’t noticed many signs of change yet!!

We’ve been working hard to record our signs of Spring using Greenwave. We really missed Mr Curran who retired last year as he’s always brilliant for noticing the signs of Spring! Here’s our dashboard:

Some of the classes have been following the weather forecast during News2day on the RTE player and discussing what the meteorological terms mean. (more…)

Bright and early on Saturday morning, primary and secondary students gathered in DCU to compete in the Mathletes Leinster finals. Among all the students were nine St Peter’s boys from 5th and 6th class, who had qualified due to their hard work and dedication. Only 500 students in the country from 5th class to 3rd year qualified so the St Peter’s team had a lot to proud of. Special mention to the parents, grandparents, brothers and sister who came along to cheer them on!

The day began with a team event designed by The Think Academy. The challenge was based on CSI techniques and required the groups to use maths to crack the case. The team that won the primary challenge included Eduard from 6th class. They won a partial scholarship each to a Think Academy summer camp. The students really enjoyed this part of the day and were really enthusiastic about the challenge.

The next part of the day was a time trial using Khan Academy. The students logged into specially created accounts and had to complete as many of the recommended topics as possible within 30 minutes. This challenge was followed by the final challenge of the day – a written test of 5 questions, which were based on the Weekly Challenge feature of Mathletes.

After the challenges were complete, the students rejoined their families until the presentation. Unfortunately, there were some technical difficulties and we will have to wait until Monday to hear the news about the provincial winners and the qualifiers for the national event, but there was some really exciting news when they announced the county winners for the Student Challenge – St Peter’s won both primary awards! Leon from 5th class and Eduard from 6th class won the prizes for best in County Wicklow! There was a great cheer from the Peter’s section of the audience when both names were announced.

The nine boys that attended on the day were fantastic representatives for the school – other teachers on the day commented on how friendly and helpful they were to other students and they were organised and listened carefully to all instructions. We’re really proud of them! Well done to Adam, Alan, AaronJ, Leon, Sam, Eduard, Lester, LukeR and Patryk!

Our nine Mathletes!

Thanks to all the families, who attended on the day – it was lovely to see such support and pride in our students – we also really appreciate the early start many of you had! Thanks to Alan, Aaron’s dad, for some of the photos and for all the travel advice!

Finally, thanks very much to Mathletes, the Think Academy, SOSventures and DCU for all the organisation on the day – Kelly from SOSventures was a great help in the lead up to the event.

Welcome to another edition of our online weekly newsletter – the St Peter’s Post! This week, we’ve been looking forward to the next few weeks – 2nd and 6th class are preparing for Communion and Confirmation and we’ve started recruiting for the choir for the Communion ceremony. We were also very busy on Twitter this week!

The main headlines from this week are:

• We were sent the video marking our win at the Junior Spiders from the organisers during the week. If you haven’t seen it yet, we’d love you to watch it here.
• Our new student council had their first meeting this week. Check it out here.
• 2nd class have been busy preparing for their First Holy Communion this week. They made recordings of their prayers to help them practise. You can find them here and here.
• 4th class recorded their Irish story ‘Mamó’ and described the process of recording it here.
• Well done to Adam and Nathan O’B from Ms Mitchell’s class. Adam’s work was chosen as ‘Work of the Week’ this week and Nathan was student of the week. Keep up the great work!
• Over the weekend, nine of our 5th and 6th class students took part in the Leinster finals of Mathletes (expect a post early on Monday morning) the boys were fantastic representatives of the school and we were really proud of them! Well done to them and thanks to all the families for coming along to support them – read the post about the preparations here.
• Our ‘Wednesday for Parents’ this week focused on feeling good for Summer – you can read all about it here.
• 2nd class podcasted their latest class novel here. It’ll make you want to read Zac Power!

In other news this week:

• Mr Foley and Paddy took four of our 6th class to the Bray Wanderers game on Friday night.

Congrats to Adam,Jordan,Jamie,+Dylan who are going to the @BrayWanderers match tonight with Mr Foley and Paddy #loi pic.twitter.com/YaSgdvhGTU

— St. Peter’s Primary (@StPetersBray) May 9, 2014

• Cyber coach has become really popular this week, with many classes using it in different ways – as they say on one of the videos – if you’re moving, you’re improving!
• We cracked the Twitter treasure hunt for Digital Art Week 14!

• Check out the ladybird house that Abi built:

First ladybird house in the yard of 2014 courtesy of Abi! #herecomessummer spot the football! pic.twitter.com/66EKDkX8ho

— St. Peter’s Primary (@StPetersBray) May 9, 2014

• Some of our staff took part in the Darkness Into Light events very early on Saturday morning – well done to Pieta House for all their amazing work.

• Well done to Oisín, who won the Lucan Multi-Counties Boxing Tournament last week. He’s also agreed to write about it for the blog next week so we’re really looking forward to reading about it then!

• 5th class started their new novel this week ‘A Little Piece of Ground’ and their new project using STEM (Science, Technology, Engineering and Maths)

• 2nd class had another great Roots of Empathy session this week. They were discussing Baby T’s visit from last week.

• We were delighted to get news that we were successful in our application for the Creative Schools Award! You can see our project here.

• We took part in the minute’s silence for the Famine on Friday. We learned more about the Famine using the sites here and here.

• And finally, just a quick photo from the Mathletes finals:

Finally in one place- our 2014 team of Peter’s @MATHletes_ie! pic.twitter.com/cHxnSsD5BU — St. Peter’s Primary (@StPetersBray) May 10, 2014

As always, you can find all of our previous St Peter’s Posts here and now, on the website, we’ve included space for the St Peter’s Posts so that visitors to the website can keep up with all of our weekly news. You can access the latest St Peter’s Post at the bottom of the front page of the website or you can click on this link to see them all!

This week’s work of the week is from Adam Hackman!

Adam scored 100% in both his spellings and tables test!

He worked extra hard to learn his 7 times tables at home every night!

Well Done Adam!!