From early education robots, to coding cards to basic programming, digital learning begins in the infant classes and is adapted each year in response to new digital technologies. This year, we joined with Science Foundation Ireland in UCD to introduce 3D printing to senior pupils. The pupils installed UltiMaker via Flatpak for Linux on their chromebooks and used Cura3D to design and print personalised keyrings on the school 3D printer. With the right tools and opportunities to share their learning, pupils stay motivated, excited and engaged as they embrace digital learning during their time in Gortskehy.

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Our school community garden is taking shape. Each classroom has its own raised bed. All pupils planted seeds and we had a debate as to whether or not we should go organic. The motion to grow organically won and we are also looking forward to welcoming some hens to school in the coming days.

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October was a busy month in 3rd and 4th class. We began the month immersing ourselves in a STEM project based on rivers. We studied the journey of a river, to discover it has three parts. It has an upper, middle and lower course. We learned all about the source, tributaries, and mouth of a river. We learned about the River Shannon in Ireland and the amazing Amazon River in South America. We even created our very own model of a river. We used sand, stones, tin foil, food colouring and water to create it. We placed sand and stones at the edges of a tray, and ran the tin foil in a meandering way through it. We diluted water with blue food colouring in a jug and poured into onto the tinfoil. However, we discovered this wasn’t an accurate model of a river as it wasn’t flowing. We came up with a plan to punch some holes with a pencil at the ‘mouth of the river’ and it did the trick. Our model river began to flow out into the sea, imitating a real river.

We then turned our focus to building a bridge to cross the river! We put our engineering hats on and worked in groups to design a bridge that would work. The aim was to ensure our bridge designs would hold a toy car for 30 seconds. We used a variety of materials to create our bridges, One team used building blocks, another used Lego, we had another group using cardboard and recycled materials, one using lollipop sticks and sellotape and we had an edible bridge made from ‘Pringles’. We used team effort, discussion, reason and problem solving to design and create our bridges. It was an exciting experience for us and allowed us to work as an engineer for a short while!

The history of Halloween came in a timely way for us and we discovered that Halloween dates right back to the time of The Celts. We focused on our scary Halloween stories first, where the children drafted, edited and redrafted their stories. We drew illustrations to go with them and we digitally added them to our typed version. The children really enjoyed using their imaginations and the writing process.

We rounded of the month with some very enjoyable Halloween pumpkin paintings and a haunted village craft scene!

Wishing everyone a safe and happy Halloween from all of us in 3rd and 4th class!

We have been very busy here in first, second and third class in Gortskehy with Science and Engineering lately.

We sowed seeds in the classroom. First class sowed cress, second class sowed runner beans and third class sowed baby carrots. We are having great fun watching these grow.

We completed a project on The Leaning Tower of Pisa and we learned lots of interesting facts. We learned that it is a Romanesque building, and that poor foundations caused it to lean. It was designed by engineers. It is a huge tourist attraction and over 1 million people visit it every year. We used our Chromebooks to create a slide show in pairs. We cast our projects to the board and we enjoyed looking at each others work. We created our own version of the Leaning Tower of Pisa in art class using match sticks and cotton buds.

We have some big Manchester United supporters here in Gortskehy! We recently looked into the Munich Air Crash for history. It  was a terrible event for Man United. We worked as journalists and wrote newspaper articles about the tragedy. We wrote about the slippery runway and how the aircraft had difficulty taking off, resulting in the accident. We learned that Sir Bobby Charlton survived the accident and played many more matches for Man United. We worked in groups and created a presentation on our Chromebooks and we shared it on the board. Finally, we put our engineering hats on and created models of the aircraft using recycled materials and our imaginations!

During Engineers Week (March 2nd-8th 2019), we put our engineering hats on again! We used our imagination and our knowledge of the world and how things are made to create 3-D drawings. We had to think practically and use our problem solving skills to create these structures. We made everything from baby play gyms, to playgrounds, to underground drills, to water-parks, and lots more wonderful things.

We really enjoyed our recent work as engineers in the middle room. It allowed us to develop our creativity and problem solving skills. We had to share our ideas and work together as a team to come up with our amazing creations. We really enjoyed using the Chromebooks to create our projects and loved incorporating technology into our learning.

Who knows, we may have the next budding engineer in our midst here in Gortskehy – Watch this space!

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A snapshot of rang 1-3 at work

“Creativity is intelligence having fun.” Albert Einstein

We had great fun with our creativity and imagination celebrating science week in the middle room recently.

We learned all about Alexander Graham Bell and his wonderful inventions. We worked in groups to complete a mini project on his life.

We then decided that we were going to become inventors and design new things ourselves!

We worked together to come up with ideas. We then made a draft of our ideas on paper. We collected recyclable materials at home and brought them in to share with each other. We worked in pairs to create our wonderful inventions. We used our imaginations and we came up with things like robots that can do our homework, drones that can see everything, time machines, ice cream makers, electric bins, day and night tubes, a car that can drive itself and lots more interesting things!

We really enjoyed this project and learned a lot from it.

Who knows, maybe one of us will be a famous inventor like Alexander Graham Bell in the future!