St. Peter's Primary Bray Blog

Earlier this month we decided it could be interesting to learn more about the force and nature of hurricanes as the news was covering a lot on Hurricane/Storm Lorenzo.

We decided undertaking a STEM challenge might be a fun way to do this!

Firstly, we needed to carry out some research! We looked online for some footage of hurricanes and also read some helpful articles that advised people what to do in the event of a hurricane landing near them.

We learned that hurricane winds can travel up to 200 miles per hour and that hurricanes form in the sea. They also tend to have heavy rain. The centre of the hurricane is called ‘the eye’ and it has no clouds, wind or rain – we thought this was very interesting! We wondered if you got into the eye, would you be able to stop it? Hurricanes are ranked on a scale from 1 – 5 depending on how serious they are (5 is the most dangerous kind).

You should always stay inside during a hurricane and should also try to get to high ground.

After looking at some articles and videos on RTÉ news we found out that Hurricane Lorenzo actually turned into a tropical storm before passing over Ireland and that hurricanes don’t really reach us – thankfully!

Since all of our research was complete, the next stage was planning!

We were given our STEM challenge – ‘Imagine you are an engineer and have been given the responsibility of designing a hurricane – proof building. Since flooding can occur you need to make sure your building is high off the ground and due to strong winds, your roof needs to be wind resistant’. We were excited to start and discussed what the job of an engineer entails! We had 10 minutes to plan our own individual designs and 10 minutes to plan in our group. We were surprised that we all had such different ideas!

Then it was time to get cracking on actually building our hurricane – proof structures! We had the following materials and 30 minutes on the clock;

• 2 pairs of scissors
• 1 piece of A3 card
• 20 art straws (paper)
• 30 Cotton buds
• 1 ball of plasticine
• 1 metre of Sellotape
• 1 glue stick

We discussed what would help us in the challenge and everyone agreed that teamwork and cooperation would be really important if we were to complete the challenge successfully. We also talked about the challenge being a ‘fair test’. We said that this meant that each group had equal time, equal resources and equal teacher input.

Check out some photos of us at work!

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After our building time was up, it was time for some testing to take place!

We used a hair dryer and 100ml of water to test our hurricane structures. We agreed that the hair dryer needed to be placed 1 metre away from the structures and that we would use it for 1 minute. We poured in the water and each time we used the hair dryer, we put it on the highest setting.

Our results were as follows for the first test:

Group 1:  structure remained standing and did not fall

Group 2: structure remained standing and did not fall

Group 3: structure remained standing but fell with 15 seconds to go

Group 4:  structure remained standing and did not fall

We decided we should try again for another minute. These were our results:

Group 1:  structure remained standing and did not fall

Group 2: structure remained standing and fell with 25 seconds to go

Group 3: structure had already fallen in first test*

Group 4:  structure remained standing and did not fall

We discussed our results and concluded that the 2 structures that did not fall at all, had stronger bases and walls wrapped around the whole structure with no gaps. The roofs could also withstand gusts from the hair dryer, as they were bound well together with Sellotape and plasticine.

We really enjoyed taking part in the STEM challenge!

STEM for Fun with the junior classes started a couple of weeks ago. Here Junior Infants, Senior Infants and 1st Class were brought to the hall each week to work with teachers and parents to engage in Science, Technology, Engineering and Maths games and challenges.

This is a way for the children to engage in STEM skills in a fun and less formal way. We have been running STEM for Fun in the school for the last 4 year now and is always a favourite with pupils.

Throughout the year each class will get a 5 week block of STEM for Fun with thanks to our HSCL, School Completion, teachers and parents. Check out some of our pictures below (where the adults seem to be having just as much fun as the children!)

Enrolment for 2020-2021 will take place on Thursday (10th of October) and Friday (11th October) between 9am and 2pm in the school office.

Even children who have a sibling in the school MUST fill in an enrolment form.

Applications will only be accepted with:

• Completed application form (available below)
• Child’s birth certificate
• Proof of address (utility bill/bank statement
• You can view our admissions/enrolment form and admissions and participation policy by clicking the links below
•  Enrolment form 2019 2020 Admissions & Participation Policy 2019

You can find directions to our school here. The office is located just inside the main front door.

On Tuesday evening, our 6th class graduated from St. Peter’s after a very successful year (and particularly, a very successful afternoon where they became only the second class to beat the teachers in the annual soccer match!)

This class have been very special to all of us in the school and we wish them all the best for the future. Student of the Year was Nathan Douglas for his school spirit, hard-working nature and friendship to all. Sportsperson of the Year was Leon Reynolds, not just for his ability, but for his encouragement of others and leadership on and off the pitch/track. Jamie Ryan was also recognised for his stellar performance during the Teachers vs Students match and Maddy Farrell and Nathan Douglas were acknowledged for having perfect attendance all year.

Huge thanks to the staff of the school, who attended and helped out with the day and to the Parents’ Association, who organised the refreshments after the ceremony. Also, a huge thanks to Greg from Signal Arts, who created the outstanding mural representing the members of 6th class. It’s very special to us that Jodie is also included in the mural, and the setting of it this year was her garden, at the request of the class.

Congratulations and best of luck to the class of 2019!

Count On Me from St Peter’s, Bray on Vimeo.

In St. Peter’s, we use Class Dojo to communicate with parents, to share your child’s work and to encourage your child to work hard and to be a good classmate. I’ll be in touch with the code that you need to set up your child’s account ahead of their first day.

This year, 5th and 6th classes have been taking part in the Junior Entrepreneur programme. Over the course of the last few months, both classes have set up mini-companies, invested in their companies, sold their products and shared out the profits at the end of the process. Check out our videos of the process below:

On Monday, 5th and 6th classes travelled to the RDS to the showcase. We had an amazing day out and really enjoyed seeing other schools and their products.

5th and 6th class are at the @JEP_ie showcase in the RDS today. We’re very proud of our stands! pic.twitter.com/KJfn4oMIep

— St. Peter’s Primary (@StPetersBray) May 20, 2019

Welcome to our submission for the Discover Primary Science and Maths award for 2019. This is our 14^th year taking part in the Awards! Once again this year we are applying for the Plaque of STEM Excellence. This award is given to schools that carry out extensive work in science, technology, engineering and maths, all of which are very important in St. Peter’s.

This is the 5th year that we have had Junior and Senior Infants taking part in the award! It is great to see the young scientists have so much fun learning about Science and Maths. This year, we have had an even bigger focus on STEM across the school, with a whole school approach helping us achieve even more in this area. You can read all about it and see the evidence below. It has been great to see the improvements we can make towards helping our school incorporating STEM as a way of thinking, rather than as a stand alone subject.

All of the pupils are seeing and understanding that STEM is about the skills required to learn science, technology and mathematics, and how engineering and design processses and principles are used to achieve an outcome. As students of STEM, we need to identify a problem. We then create possible solutions to the problems, which we then go and test.

Yet again, a huge amount of work has gone into this application. Every single class in the whole school has taken part in this application, so a big well done to all the pupils and teachers! For the seventh year in a row, we are using our blog to submit our award and to link back to our activities that have taken part during the year. Our SFI Award application code this year is 2019/DSM/213.

Step 1: Science

For this step, we carried out six hands-on Science investigations under the four different strands in classes throughout the school. We also tried to include Maths in these investigations where possible, linking in with Step 4.

• Energy and Forces: 1st Class had fun learning all about static hot air balloons.  Read all about their experiment here.
• Living Things: 3rd Class investigated if their brain and their reaction times were affected by eating chocolate! You can read about the fun they had testing this out here.
• Environmental Awareness and Care: 5th Class wanted to find out about how effective the sun is as a renewable source of energy. They continued the chocolate theme, and designed and made their own solar ovens to melt some chocolate. You can read all about this here.
• Materials and Change: Junior Infants and Senior Infants investigated how they could protect Humpty Dumpty when he falls. You can find out how they got on here. 2nd Class were  experimenting with different materials to make earmuffs for them so that they could work in peace and quiet! You can read about this here. 4th Class also looked at materials and change, focusing on melting some chocolate, which all can be seen here.

Mr. Foley’s class went on a visit to Sealife here in Bray, which is a SFI Discover Centre. You can read all about the great time they had here.

6th Class took part in Science Blast 2019, and had great fun at the Science event held in the RDS in March.  You can read all about this and see some pictures from the day here.

Step 2: Technology

In the second step, we had to ensure that technology was used by our pupils. As a previous winner of the Junior Spider Awards, technology has become a part of every-day life in St. Peter’s. We were also awarded the Digital School of Distinction award, which showcased the effort and time we put in incorporating technology into our daily school lives.

Ms. Wemyss and her class have been using Bee-bots a lot this year. They have loved getting to play with them and programming them so that the bee-bot goes where they want on the mats. They even designed their own routes and tracks for the bee-bots to travel around. They have had loads of fun with them, and you can read about this all here.

Ms. Kane and her class used different materials for their designs and used tinfoil as a conductor of the solar energy to melt their chocolate. You can read about their STEM investigation here.

On top of all this, throughout all the other classes in the school pupils of every age have also used cameras, laptops, animoto, and this blog, as well as apps such as vine and twitter, to showcase the work that they have been doing during the course of the year. As you can see from our submission this year, we have continued to implement technology in our day-to-day teaching and learning, with Maths and Science at the forefront of this. You can check out all of our tweets from the year @stpetersbray!

Step 3: Engineering

For the third step of our application for the DPSM Plaque of STEM Excellence, we have had a big focus on the Design and Make element of Science. Our staff have worked previously in conjunction with St. Patrick’s College regarding professional development in STEM. A big part of this focused on the Design and Make process, and helped us make sure STEM was an integral part of our engineering activities. An example of how we look to incorporate STEM into our lessons can be seen here, where 2nd Class made their own noise cancelling headphones!

We also took part in Engineers Week 2019. Here you can read about 5th Class and 2nd Class working collaboratively, when they worked together in small groups to try to build a structure that was strong and tall.

Step 4: Maths

Throughout our Science investigations, all classes looked to incorporate Maths as much as possible. For example, 3rd Class had to calculate the reaction times of each person, and then find out the difference between the two times in their experiment and graph their results. You can read about this experiment here.

Another example of Maths being used in our experiments can be see here where 4th Class used mathematical skills in their experiment. They used a digital thermometer and a probe thermometer to measure and monitor the temperature as the chocolate began to melt. They also used stopwatches to accurately measure the time it took the different chocolates to melt.

Step 5: STEM Showcase

6^th Class took part in Science Blast 2019 this year on March 6th. This was our first year taking part in this Science Fair, having previously taken part in the BT Young Scientist Exhibition in the RDS each year.

This year they investigated the science of the playground. As always, they put a lot of effort into their submission, and presented it brilliantly on the day. You can read about their work here.

We hoped you enjoyed reading our submission for the SFI Discover  Primary Science and Maths Award!

This week in Science, we decided to find out whether or not our brains are affected when we eat chocolate.

Firstly, we watched a video about the brain and illusions and how sometimes we can trick our brain with illusions. We then tried to create our own illusions by tricking our brain into thinking we had a hole in our hand. This was done by rolling a lined sheet of paper and holding it up to our eye and looking through it, while moving our hand towards and away from our eye –  it did look like we had a hole in our hands!! 🙂

Next, we looked at a slide where there was different words saying different colours. We had to try say each word, being careful not to say the colour it was printed in. Then we tried the opposite – saying the colour the word was printed in, but not the actual word – sounds tricky huh? it was.

This was because the brain was making a lot of decisions. Rather than doing what you were used to doing, we had to think really hard to ignore the word and say the colour instead.

Finally, we tested our brain’s reaction time. This experiment lets you measure how fast your brain can see something happening and then react to it.

Step 1: Find a partner, a table and a ruler

Step 2: Next, have your partner hold the ruler in between your fingers (make sure your not touching the ruler though!!). Your partner should hold it at at the top and the 0 cm marking should be in between your two fingers and thumb.

Step 3: Drop the ruler without any warning and have your partner catch it. Check to see at which cm mark your partner caught it. If it is a low number like 8, this means your reaction time was really quick. But a higher number like 19 means you have a slower reaction time.

Step 4: Record your time on your sheet and switch places with your partner so they can test it.

Once we figured out what our normal brain reaction time was like, we now were going to test it against chocolate – the fun part!!

Step 5: Eat some delicious chocolate!! Wait 5 minutes for it to digest.

Step 6: Then repeat the whole process again.

When we compared our reaction time before the chocolate to our reaction time after the chocolate we found that over all, our reaction times had changed, except for 1 person whose reaction time had stayed the same.

Our findings were: 11 pupils said their reaction time was quicker after eating chocolate, 8 said theirs was slower after eating chocolate and 1 person’s time remained the same.

As a class, we discussed that many of us felt that we became hyper after eating chocolate therefore this could be why our brain’s reaction was quicker after eating chocolate. Some said they felt more relaxed after eating chocolate, as it was a comforting food so this could be why their brain slowed down after eating it. One person, whose reaction time remained the same, said it could be because they are used to eating chocolate so maybe it mightn’t have had an effect on their brain.

We really enjoyed carrying out this experiment especially as it involved us being scientists through researching, using technology, engineers through creating, testing and trialling and mathematicians with all our work calculating the reaction times, finding out the difference between the two times and graphing our results.

                                     Second Class and Materials 

Second class have been really busy learning all about materials. We have been examining how different materials are used in our environment.  

There is building work happening outside our classroom at the moment and it is a bit noisy. We decided we would experiment with different materials to make earmuffs for ourselves so that we can work in peace!  

Choosing Materials 

Everybody in the class decided they would bring different things from their house to test for our earmuffs. We collected: 

Paper towels, cotton wool, paper cups, tinfoil and wool pompoms. 

We knew we wanted earmuffs that were comfortable, hands-free and would block out lots of sound… 

Fair Test 

How could we test the earmuffs fairly? J suggested it would be a good idea to choose one ‘test sound’. We decided on a video of a drummer because sometimes the building work sounds a bit like this!

N said that we should choose three people to test all of the earmuffs. We agreed this was a great idea- it was time to design and make!  

Method 

We split into groups of three and quickly started testing different materials for their ability to block sound, and for their comfort on our ears. 

After lots of testing, we discovered the following things:  

• Paper cups are comfortable on our ears but they don’t block out the sound very well. 
• Tinfoil looks cool, but it doesn’t block out sound well either! Tin foil is useful for making the headset. It holds its shape really well. 
• Tissue is tricky to use, but it’s a good insulator of sound- especially when we tear it into little pieces. 
• Pompoms look great, but they don’t block out the sound very well. 
• Layering materials is a good insulator of sound. 

Conclusion 

All the groups worked really hard  and designed amazing earmuffs in lots of different ways.  

Our three testers tried out all of the earmuffs and picked which one they thought was the best at blocking the sound.

They voted unanimously for O’s pair. We were all impressed because O tore up lots of little pieces of tissue and used them to make ear muffs.  This blocked out almost all of the sound.

Tomorrow we are going to make a pair for all of us! 

Check out some pictures from our Design and Make session below.

Humpty Dumpty STEM Experiment

Here in Junior and Senior Infants, we had great fun reciting the Humpty Dumpty rhyme.

This got us thinking about how we could help protect Humpty Dumpty from cracking in the future. We decorated our individual Humpty Dumpty’s by using whiteboard markers to draw faces on our hard boiled eggs.

We then placed each Humpty Dumpty into a ziplock bag filled with different materials to cushion Humpty’s fall to see which material would best protect him. Before beginning the experiment, we discussed the different materials we would use to try to protect Humpty Dumpty from his fall. We decided to test marbles, cotton balls, feathers, shredded paper, bubble wrap and flour.

On our prediction sheet, we coloured either the whole egg or the cracked egg to show our predictions for each material. After each egg drop, we again coloured the cracked egg or the whole egg to show our results. Have a look at our recording sheet.

We had great fun predicting the outcome and recording the results for this experiment. We learnt so much!

These are the steps we followed for our experiment with Humpty Dumpty:

Material to be tested:

Marbles

Cotton balls

Feathers

Shredded Paper

Bubble wrap

Flour

Method

1. We used a permanent marker to draw a Humpty Dumpty face on each of the hard boiled eggs.
2. We then filled each plastic ziplock bag with a different material – marbles, cotton balls, feathers, shredded paper, bubble wrap and flour.
3. Next, we coloured in the prediction column on our sheets to show whether we thought Humpty Dumpty was going to survive the fall or not.
4. We dropped each of the bags from 2 feet. We made sure to drop each bag from the same height so the test would be fair. We sang the Humpty Dumpty rhyme as we dropped the bags each time.
5. We repeated the same procedure with all bags.
6. When all the Humpty Dumpty’s had fallen off the wall, we took a close look at what had happened to them.
7. We then coloured in either the whole egg or the cracked egg to show our results.