Paper rollercoaster design

Today 5th class finished maths week off with the paper rollercoaster challenge.

Challenge: The group were challenged to make the tallest rollercoaster which would function without a problem. Groups were given 3- seconds to complete the challenge. Look below to see our creations.

Process: The groups explored using different shapes - looking at tunnels and open tracks. They then faced the problem of supporting these rollercoasters using paper and selotape alone. We agreed that we would use marbles at the beginning of our work to ensure it was a fair test.

Results:

When testing this we agreed that groups would be given three turns at working their rollercoaster to demonstrate how well it worked. Where rollercoasters did not completely work, we measured the descent from beginning until the marble popped out.

The winning rollercoaster to function totalled 1 metre and 10 cms with an impressive ability to support itself. We did question the independence of this structure as we queried whether the tracks did indeed touch the sink bowl for support when under pressure but as you can see in the picture below the rollercoaster was able to hold its own weight when the marble was travelling.

Conclusion:

Groups who worked concurrently on building the track and supports were most successful. Many really long tracks failed to hold the marble for its journey as they were not supported well enough.

Maths Week games and Challenges

This week we are enjoying completing some maths games and challenges. This morning Ms Ward’s groups had great fun completing the emoji equations and shape memory games on the whiteboard. The resources are all available on mathsweek.ie and you can give these challenges a go for yourself by visiting their website. Our 5th class group were most fond of the emoji equations.

Meanwhile some of our senior pupils put their furniture assembly skills together in making our new flat pack furniture.

Marshmallows and Spaghetti STEM challenge in 4th and 5th

4th and 5th class were tasked with designing and making a tower using only spaghetti and marshmallows. The challenge was to design and make a tower to hold a copy book on top for 10 seconds, with the tallest tower being rewarded with some Cadbury Heroes. Groups were given 30 minutes to complete the task.

We were thrilled to see that 7 our of our 9 towers were successful in supporting the copy book for the 10 seconds, some for as long as 6 minutes before we took the copy off. It then came down to seeing which tower was the highest - with our highest tower measuring in at an impressive 46cm. Look at a video we made to show the last ten seconds of our tower holding the copy book.

Making weather instruments in 4th & 5th class

Today 4th and 5th class made some weather instruments to measure the weather. Among our creations we have a wind vane, a barometer and a rain gauge.

Wind vane: We used some laminated card to catch the wind and some straws/lollipop sticks to hold these on. We will place our different vanes in different areas around the school to compare parts that may be more and less windy and to see if the vane is always pointing the same direction in all locations. Will the wind change direction much during the day/week.

Barometer: We also made a barometer to measure the pressure in the atmosphere. We used a balloon, a straw, a glass jar and some paper card.

Anemometer: We designed and made an anemometer to measure wind speed and direction. We used some paper cups to catch the wind and spin. We will count the number of times the cups spin around to make a full rotation. To help us with this, we coloured one of the cups black.

Rain gauge: We used a plastic bottle with the top cut off to make a funnel. We marked our measurements on the side. We were very resourceful and borrowed some spoons from the staff room to dig a hole to sit the rain gauge into.

We will be observing our instruments carefully this coming week and recording our weather at the same time each day to ensure we are as accurate as possible.

Discovery Primary Science Award 2021

We are delighted to announce that we have been awarded our 7th Discovery Primary Science Award - an award given to schools in recognition of an outstanding commitment to the teaching of science, STEM, maths and engineering. Below is what the committee had to say on our application:

“Well done Nun’s Cross National School. A very comprehensive log of all the activities undertaken in each class in each category during the year and clearly presented and labelled. So many wonderful examples of STEM - your Viking video, your Earth Promises, your use of the new ipads, your artwork associated with projects (penguins, stained glass, lego rainforest models. You seemed to get great value from SeeSaw - particularly liked the kitchen measuring video with the little puppy looking on!
You should certainly apply for the Badge of Excellence next year. it has a slightly different focus but well within your capabilities
Congratulations on this year’s award.”

— Discover Primary Science & Maths Team

Below is a sample of some of of our work across the school which has helped us achieve our award!

Congratulations to the children and teachers on their achievement!

Spring Is In The Air

We are so lucky in Nun’s Cross to have such a beautiful outdoor space for the children to explore. We appreciate in more than ever in spring, when we can take full advantage of learning in the outdoors.

The infants have been busy hunting for the signs of spring and watching the life cycle of the frog unfold before their eyes. They have been busy sequencing the life life of a frog and have produced some wonderful frog pictures during one of their art lessons!

Problem Solving in 1st and 2nd

We have been working on problem solving in 1st and 2nd class. The children are split into pairs or small groups. The groups are comprised of children from both 1st and 2nd class who work together to solve each of the problems.

During problem solving, we follow the RUDE strategy.

Read the question

Underline the important information

Draw a picture to help us solve the problem

Estimate what our answer will be before solving it

Problems are much easier to solve when we work in teams, and the children really are working well in their teams.

Science Week in 1st and 2nd Class

Happy Science Week!

In 1st and 2nd class we have been learning about space which provided so many opportunities for science week.

We started this week by looking at astronauts and their spacesuits. Spacesuits are designed carefully to help the astronauts survive their space adventures. Having learned about primary life support systems, control modules and much more, the children were challenged to design their own spacesuits for travelling.

We also learned about space travel and looked at the distinctive shape rockets have. We discovered that rockets are aerodynamic and the cone or point at the top of the rocket allows the air to flow more easily around the rocket to help it fly. The children then designed a spacecraft in groups that they thought would be suitable to get to space. Some of the groups found that their lego did not allow them to create an aerodynamic shape, so they designed alternative spacecrafts.

We also spent some time learning about Neil Armstrong and will learn about some more space explorers this coming week. Stay tuned for space explorer projects coming soon.

Bubbles in 4th Class

As part of science week 4th class carried out a range of fun science experiments but the one which wowed us the most was their outstanding bubble making contraptions.

In case anyone wants to make one of these fantastic bubble blowers, you can follow the procedure below:

1. Cut an empty drinking bottle in half.

2. Get a clean sock, and wrap it around the open end of the bottle.

3. Soak the bottom end of the sock-covered bottle in bubble mixture.

4. Take the bottle out of the bubble mix and blow.

Who knew design and make could be so much fun.

Science Week In Junior Infants

The Junior Infants are learning all about light and dark this month and included in our topic is colours! As part of science week we have discovered that if we mix the primary colours they make new colours and these are called secondary colours. We had great fun experimenting with the colours and created colour wheel caterpillars in our classroom!

And of course it wouldn’t be science week if there wasn’t some exciting experiments along the way too!

We did the skittles experiment. Our teacher told us that she was going to add water and we had to predict what we thought would happen. Our guesses ranged from chocolate bursting out of the skittles to the water changing colour! We added the water and observed for a while and we discovered that the colour from the skittles dissolved in the water and the water turned all the colours of the rainbow!

And we had to have an explosion! We made our very own volcano. We learned about acids, which taste sour, and bases, which make bubbles! We added vinegar, which is an acid, to baking soda, which is a base and the chemical reaction made our volcano erupt!

Space Explorers In Junior Infants

The Junior Infants are exploring the topic of light and dark this month and their play topic is Space! There is a lot of fun going on that some might say is out of this world!

We created our very own rockets so that we can blast off in to outer space!

We have made our own alien play-doh!

We followed some tricky instructions and made some very impressive UFO and Alien pictures!

We have learned all about how shadows are formed and we had great fun exploring the shadows that our toys can make. We discovered that the shadow changes depending on where the light shines from. We traced around our toys shadows and tried to guess what toys matched each shadow

We have learned all about sources of light and where light comes from. Did you know that the moon is not a source of light, but that it just reflects the light from the sun? Look at all of the sources of light that we brainstormed together! We are a clever bunch!

STEM Challenge in 5th & 6th class

This week 5th & 6th class were tasked with making the longest possible paper chain using only one sheet of a4 paper and staples. There was great perseverance shown by the class and amazingly, the longest paper chain was over 7 and a half metres long. Very impressive work indeed!

Maths Week in 3rd Class

During Maths Week, 3rd class were very busy solving riddles, using their ‘maths eyes’ to spot maths in the environment, participating in an ‘all about me’ maths activity, playing board games, making a ‘human clock’ outside and learning how to tell the time on an analogue clock. Well done everyone!

Maths Week in 5th and 6th Class

We had a great week celebrating Maths week in 5th and 6th Class. We developed our problem solving skills by creating mazes outside on the basketball court - most seemed ‘impossible’! We also explored Maths outside with lots of different Maths trails which provided so much learning. We developed codes using Caesar Cipher and tried to prove and disprove the theory of the Vitruvian Man. All while learning how to do long division in 5th Class. They deserve a medal! Well done to everyone!

Maths week in Junior Infants

The Junior Infants have been busy working on patterns for maths week this week.

We looked at some places where we might find pattern and discovered that lots of animals have patterns and its what helps us to recognise them. We also realised that lots of our clothes have patterns on them - can you see the patterns in our clothes?

We made our own patterned socks!

Sometimes patterns repeat themselves! We learned that repeat means to do something again and once we could identify a pattern we were able to repeat it over and over to make a repeating pattern. We had lots of fun making repeating patterns on peg boards, with a variety of manipulatives and in our art too!

Of course, it wouldn’t be maths week in Junior Infants if we didn’t make maths hats! I think you will agree that the creative skills of this years hats are outstanding! Well done to all the children for their efforts!

During assembly, we shared our creations with the rest of the school with our maths hat parade!

Maths Week 2020

This week we are celebrating Maths Week 2020. We are enjoying playing maths games, solving maths puzzles and integrating maths into as many other subjects as possible.

“Today in Ms Ward’s class we enjoyed grappling with the E puzzle as designed by the English puzzler Henry Dudeney. ”

With this puzzle players began with their 4 coloured counters on their end of the E. The aim of this puzzle is to get the same coloured counters to the opposite end of the E first. Players played against one another to test strategy and game reading skills. Some players were able to complete this task successfully while others adopted a strategic defensive approach and were unable to succeed in completing this. We then re-did this challenge to work together as partners in completing this puzzle.

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“We also played some PE games like ‘hit the target’ where we through and kicked different sized balls against the target board. We added together our scores at the end of each round.”

World Book Day stop motion challenges in 5th and 6th

Today we celebrated World Book Day in school. In 5th and 6th class some of us dressed up as our favourite book characters.

We also had great fun in re-creating our favourite books/stories using stop motion. Have a look at some of our work below…

Spring Planting

The Junior Infants are learning all about spring this month and as part of their topic they have been looking at the different parts of a flower. The looked at some real plants and saw the bulb, the roots, the steam, the leaf and the flower. We planted these flowers then outside our classroom so the bees can enjoy their nectar and we can enjoy their beauty!

ESB Science Blast 2020

Bright and early this morning a group of 27 5th and 6th class students boarded a bus to the RDS Simmonscourt to showcase our Science Blast Projects. Our project title was ‘can we design and make marble runs which last for 60 seconds exactly?’ Having worked on these projects over the past 5 weeks, we tried our best to take great care in transporting them to ensure they would work for the judges.

Science Blast is an initiative which is sponsored by the ESB and run by the RDS. This year 496 projects were submitted to the Dublin showcase, with other showcases taking place in Belfast and Limerick. There are 12,000 students participating throughout the country, with schools from 25 counties involved. The showcase is run over 4 days, where 200 judges appraise the work done by students in all participating schools. It is the younger sibling of the Young Scientist which runs for students in secondary school.

Once we arrived, we were immediately tasked with setting up our display and testing the projects to ensure they all survived the journey without damage. We were very pleased with how our display came together. We were then reminded of the rota for the stall as we had to ensure there was always a team at hand to woo the judges and visitors. On display, we had our projects for demonstration, our project progress folders and our group trailers on the process. It was clear to see that the children really stepped up to the mark and presented their projects excellently to all passing visitors. The confidence and courage shown by the students was highly commendable.

The general feedback we received was a sense of amazement at the projects and the amount of time, patience, perseverance and skill they all took. Lots of passing teachers were taking pictures and hoping to carry out a similiar challenge in their classes.

When the judges visited, we really did ourselves proud in presenting our work. It was a tense time as the judges did not take our word for the marble runs lasting 60 seconds, and they took our their phones to check up on our work.

One of the highlights of the day was when the ESB camera crew visited us. Luckily our boys who were on duty weren’t camera shy and represented us so so well. Well done boys :) We will be keeping an eye out on ESB social media to see if we make an appearance. But just incase we don’t …

There was a great atmosphere at science blast and we spent our free time arranging and enjoying pizza parties, visiting the exhibitions of other schools and participating in the presentations entitled ‘circus science’ and ‘invisible worlds’. We also got to visit some really cool exhibitors which were run by the ESB, the explorium and a quiet room etc. There were virtual reality stations and also numerous challenges where the children would win prizes.

Science Blast Marble Runs Progress: Week 2

As our second week of marble run engineering comes to an end, we are happy with our progress to date. Some groups began their projects from scratch this week as they learned the importance of a slow moving marble and the importance of slope, material and friction. Some groups have started working on the presentation of the marble runs, and others realised that we will have a limited amount of space to showcase our projects in the RDS. This will have a huge impact on what can be done within the limited space.

Tomorrow we will be showcasing all of our projects to the parents from 2.30 pm where we are hoping to get some ideas and feedback from parents to re-energise our efforts for next week.