Profiles
How we earned our Discover Primary Science Award of Science Excellence
Mary Queen of Ireland GNS, Caherdavin, Limerick.
The girls from sixth class describe for us what they did to achieve the Award of Science Excellence.
STEP ONE: Activities from the Discover Primary Science classroom activity pack.
We did activities from the classroom activity pack that was sent to our teacher, Ms O'Connor, when the school registered for Discover Primary Science. We did a lot of the activities including Make a lighthouse, My reaction time, Paper helicopters and Magnetic car.
STEP TWO: Invite a speaker, visit a Discovery Centre
Limerick Institute of Technology kindly provided us with a speaker, Marie O'Callaghan who came to our school to speak to us and we went on field trips including one to Westfields to see a wetland habitat and another to the Forest Park at Curraghchase.
STEP THREE: Displaying our work at a science event
We displayed our work at the Limerick Institute of Technology display day with other schools that were involved in the Discover Primary Science project. It was a great day. We also had an open day in our school and invited parents to see our work.
STEP FOUR: Explorative activities
We worked on ideas of our own too. We made an electric buzzer and used it as an alarm by putting the button under a mat, so that it sounds when some one steps on the mat when entering the room. We had a laugh testing it to make sure it worked!
Sometimes things don't work out - like when the bulb went on our electric quiz! - and we had to try some activities more than once, but scientists learn from their mistakes. We learned science songs from Ms O'Connor. We became Science Buddies - We were the teachers and taught fourth class (shown on their way to music class below) about electricity. You need to understand what you are doing to be able to explain to others!
We had a Computer/ Science club after school, which helped a lot with our Discover Science Log. We made PowerPoint presentations with lots of details of our work and we included them on CD with our entry. We did our own science projects that we entered into the primary science competition run by Presentation Secondary School in Limerick and one of our projects went on to enter the ESAT Young Scientist and Technologist Competition.
Our science log
We recorded all of our activity in written logs and we took plenty of photos. We found PowerPoint presentations were also a good way of recording what we did.
So what did we think of Discover Primary Science?
The best thing was working with friends in groups. Ms O'Connor asked us to think of words to describe what we thought of the project and here are some of them:
Fun, enjoyable, interesting, variety, difficult, exciting, educational, challenging, different, brilliant, surprising, working together, involvement, creative, memorable
What our teacher thought ...
After the induction day no teacher need feel any fear about science. The emphasis is on group work and the project developed the curriculum skills of predicting, observing, recording and communicating. Identifying what went wrong is very valuable and children construct their own knowledge. Peer tutoring through "science buddies" builds respect between younger and older children.
SO GO AHEAD AND GET INVOLVED. YOU'LL ENJOY IT!!!
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