Profiles
How we earned our Discover Primary Science Award of Science Excellence
by Monkstown Educate Together School, Dublin.
The boys and girls from Monkstown Educate Together School allow us to take a closer look at some of the things they did to achieve the Award of Science Excellence.
STEP ONE: Activities from the Discover Primary Science classroom activity pack.
We all did a lot of the activities from the Discover Primary Science pack. Here we are working on "Dyeing with red cabbage soap and vinegar and "Diving drops, sinking feelings".
When working on some of the activities from the pack we did some more research of our own and used Powerpoint to show what we found out about bridges, helicopters and lighthouses.
STEP TWO: Invite a speaker, visit a Discovery Centre
We went on the Enterprise train from Connolly Station to W5, it was our best school tour ever, we were able to play with everything. We sat on a seat and we pulled a rope and the seat went up and down. We went to a workshop on sound called good vibrations.
We also invited a speaker to our school, Dr Christopher Bean from UCD Earth Sciences Department came to talk to us about earthquakes and tsunamis.
STEP THREE: Displaying our work at a science event
We had a parents evening in our school and our Principal took the opportunity to explain to the parents about the new science curriculum and our work.
STEP FOUR: Explorative activities
We did our own investigations into bubbles and we looked at wildlife in our school garden.
We even made models of our digestive systems with coloured clay.
Our science log
We recorded all of our activity in a big logbook and we took plenty of photos. Digital cameras are very useful for recording work.
So what did we think of Discover Primary Science?
What we liked best about science was discovering things and working in teams. We showed younger classes, it was hard to make them listen sometimes! It helped with other subjects, like Maths (measuring), English (writing our log books) and Art (making things).
Some of the words we used to describe the project are:
Cool, interesting, fun, great, brilliant, fantastic, Science-tastic, children, deadly, wicked, excellent, unusual, different, I loved it, fabulous
What our teacher Rosie thought ...
Registering for DPS is an incentive to do science, I planned the activities and gave each teacher a pack. I assembled the items needed for each activity in a separate box and this made set-up easy. We devoted a staff meeting to science and teachers tried out the experiments themselves. Once colleagues tried it, and had the equipment, it was easy and motivating.
Teachers got hands on experience and all the activities supported the curriculum. The open evening is a good way of finding expertise in science that you may not know is there. We found some excellent speakers who are parents. I would recommend DPS, it's an easy way to do science. We adapted the activities for younger children and all classes participated.
IT'S SCIENCE-TASTIC!
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