A huge congratulations to all classes, staff, pupils and parents for participating in our Discover Primary Science and Maths Programme this year. Due to your participation and hard work we have just been received our first Discover Primary Science and Maths Award.

Our Discover Primary Science and Maths Programme was organised by Cróna Glynn. A lot of time, preperation and hard work went into planning and organsing the programme and presenting our Discovery Log for review. The Discovery Log was a key aspect of the application for an Award and  provided all the evidence the judging panel needed to demonstrate that Powerstown Educate Together National School  met all of the criteria for an Award of Science & Maths Excellence.

Our Letter of Achievement:

[gview file=”https://www.powerstownet.com/wp-content/uploads/2013/05/Discover-Primary-Science-Award1.pdf”]

5 steps completed by Powerstown ETNS to achieve the award:

 Step 1 – Greenwave

We provided evidence that ALL CLASSES in the school were involved in Greenwave (logging the signs of Spring) AND EACH CLASS completed 2 other hands-on activities relating to the Energy and Forces strand of the Science curriculum.

 Step 2 – Visit a DPSM Discover Centre, invite a science speaker or engineer to your school

Junior and Senior infants visited a DPSM Discover Centre – Imaginosity, during Engineer’s Week.

We invited a science speaker in to speak to us about birds. Mike Glynn did a workshop with each class in the school. A big thank you to Mike for helping us get our reward.

We also invted two engineers from the Air Corp in Baldonnell, Lt Col Michael Moran and Lt Paul Mc Deromtt to speak to us about their work as engineers and pilots in the aircorp.

Engineering Students from Blanchardstown I.T. also came to do a comprehensive workshop with pupils.

 Step 3 –Host a Science Event:

We hosted 3 Science and Maths events during the year. In October we had Maths Week, in November we had Science Week and in February we had Engineer’s Week. A big thank you to all parents who helped us by coming in for experiments and to all visitors who came in to speak with us during these weeks. 

 Step 4 –Maths in the classroom.

Maths played an important part in all our experiments. Senior classes did experiments all about Bernoulli’s principle and amazing traingles just to mention a few. Junior Classes experimented with floating and sinking, slopes, magnets and air, and classified, sorted and recorded their results.

  Step 5 –Science Themed Week

This was our Flight of Fancy Week in February for Engineer’s Week.

Also included in our log was:

Children’s accounts of their own work.

We used lots of photos to record work in class, trips, events and visitors to the school.

A number of samples of each child’s work and records during science and maths activities.

Our fantastic log can be viewed in the front hall! Come and take a look at all the fantastic work the children have done.