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!

Over the past few weeks we have been exploring Lego robotics with Mrs. McDonald. We tried to link climate change and lego robotics together, it was fun.

We made robot vehicles and wind turbines that run on battery so there isn’t too much smoke or fumes on the Earth. We also made a water gate to stop rivers and lakes from overflowing with water.

I made a slide show presentation to show you!

Enjoy!!!

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As part of our Creative Schools Programme the pupils from the senior room took part in a sound workshop with Ed Devane today. Ed is an Irish multidisciplinary artist working primarily with sound. The children completed several activities throughout the day which included finding electro magnetic signals, working with a contact microphone to listen to sound vibrations, making recordings using an a digital audio recorder with various sounds from around the classroom. The class really enjoyed the day and are looking forward to the next stage of the workshop in early May.

Ed Devane

Website – www.eddevane.com

Instagram – ed_devane