Profiles
How we earned our Discover Primary Science Award of Science ExcellenceGlenbeg National School, Dungarvan, Co Waterford
The boys and girls from all classes at the school were able to tell us how they learned a lot, had a lot of fun and won an award in the process!
STEP ONE: Activities from the Discover Primary Science classroom pack
Every class in the school did activities from the pack. Junior and Senior infants made snake Spirals and hung them over the radiator in the class room. The warm air makes them dance. If the radiator is off they don't move.
Senior infants and first class made boats from play dough and investigated which shapes sank and which ones floated. We used peas as passengers and one boat held 52 of them! We tested balloons, pens and straws to see if they would float or sink. In second and third class, we made paper helicopters and tested bigger and smaller ones. The smaller ones fall faster as the big one catches more air with its bigger propellers. We made acrobatic clowns too. We found that he could only balance on our fingers when we stuck coins to his hands. We took our own fingerprints, found our dominant eye and even built bridges with ridges so they could hold more.
In third and fourth classes, we used red cabbage to dye cloth and worked on indicators of acid and alkali. We used bread soda and vinegar and the colour of the cloth changed. Fifth and sixth class made lighthouses and enjoyed making an electric circuit as well as lots of other work.
STEP TWO: Invite a speaker, visit a Discovery Centre
Sixth class made periscopes with a speaker from Junior Achievement who visited the school and learned all about reflection of light. We earned a certificate of successful completion for the 'Our Universe Programme'.
We went on a lot of trips during the year to find out about science. We went to a bubble show in WIT and a man put me inside a giant bubble. He showed us what to use for making bubbles; water washing up liquid and glycerine. He told us that if you put helium in a bubble it'll go up but with air it will go down. He even made a square bubble by dipping a cube into the mixture, but bubbles always end up as spheres!
STEP THREE: Displaying our work at a science event
We have displays of our science work for parents in the school lobby on an on-going basis.
STEP FOUR: Explorative activities
Fifth and sixth classes made a tsunami, a volcano and now we would like to know more about tornados! We are also interested in colour, sunsets and why the sky is blue. Science is everywhere! We use the Eureka magazine from the Irish Independent for more ideas.
Juniors and Seniors learned about trees and collected things in the yard for the nature table like helicopters from the sycamore tree. Senior infants and first class learned about hedgehogs and animals hibernating in winter. Some classes planted tulip and crocus bulbs and watched what they needed to grow; light, water and soil.
Two of us won the K'nex competition in the school and went to the K'nex Challenge in Hasbro in Waterford where we designed and made a space station with a lift and a restaurant.
In school, we worked in pairs and made space buggies that had to have two doors, carry four people and carry a bottle of water.
We went to the Science Bus in Waterford and during science week we went to a workshop in WIT on the human body; we saw that the smallest person in the world was only the same height as the femur (upper leg bone) of the largest person!
What we thought of Discover Primary Science...
Fun, spectacular, fantastic, interesting...absolutely brilliant!
What our teacher thought ...
Enjoyable, beneficial and fun for all the pupils, a great success in our school
SO GO AHEAD AND GET INVOLVED. YOU'LL ENJOY IT!!!
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