Today the children from 1st and 2nd Class had a great day at the FIRST LEGO Junior 2019 ‘Mission Moon’ in the Salthill Hotel in Galway. They worked very eagerly in the build up to this day on models, designs, Core Values and research.
Congratulations to all pupils. We are very proud of you all. A special thanks to Chad Baldi from NASA for Skyping us and answering our endless questions! We hope to skype him again next term to give feedback on our project and learn more about the Mars Rover that he is working on.
Thank you to our senior students for sharing their engineering skills and knowledge and especially to Clontuskert’s dedicated staff for supporting our students in their work.
During the FLL Junior Expo, two students from the school spoke on behalf of the team to Paul Sneem who MC’d the event. They were filmed and their interview was shown live on screens around the event for everyone to see.
Thanks to everyone at Galway Education Centre for organising and supporting this amazing event.
Today we hosted visitors from Singapore in Clontuskert; Mr Sherwin Cheng, Mr Alvin Lim, Miss Tan Ming Ming, Mr Muhammad Farizal and Dr Zoe Boon.
The group are Vice-Principals from Singapore who are currently participants of the Leadership in Education Programme (LEP) at the National Institute of Education, Nanyang Technological University, Singapore.
The LEP is a full-time six-month programme that prepares Vice-Principals for school leadership. Participants on this programme are selected by the Singapore Ministry of Education. http://www.nie.edu.sg/leadership-professional-development/leadership programmes/leaders-in-education-programme.
The group are visiting Ireland as part of the programme and are led by Dr Zoe Boon, Senior Teaching Fellow, Faculty of Policy and Leadership Studies. They have already visited the Department of Education in Marlborough Street in Dublin and the NCCA; National Centre for Curriculum and Assessment.
On what motivated the group to visit Clontuskert School Mr. Muhammad Farizal said; “We were doing our research on schools in Ireland with strong innovation culture or teaching and learning practices and St. Augustine NS was one of the schools that the team felt that we should learn from. We are very impressed by the school’s high standards and therefore felt that the trip from busy Dublin to Galway would definitely be both useful and meaningful to understand more on the Irish education system.”
The group were given a tour of the school by senior students and visited each classroom where the students presented on the work they do in school and some of the many programs and innovations they participate in. Mary Callaghan prepared a traditional Irish lunch for our visitors with a homemade carrot cake thanks to Mary Kelly. Fr. Finneran, Chairperson of the Board of Management met the group and spoke to them of the work of the Board.
We wish our Singaporean visitors a successful trip to Ireland and look forward to connecting with them again in the future.
Today, some of our students were invited to Garbally College for the launch of the Galway, Science & Technology Festival 2016. We got to see how important Science & Technology are in the world today and to see how science & technology in the classroom can lead to great things in the future. We watched the Science show which was great fun and we learned lots, we can’t wait to try out some of the experiments on our friends. The 2nd, 3rd and 6th class represented our school brilliantly by exhibiting their Junior First Lego League projects.
Thank you to all involved!
Science Week takes place from 13-20 November 2016<a href="http://clontuskert.scoilnet.ie/blog/2016/10/18/students-and-writers-of-the-week-2/win_20161014_094807/"
Science & Technology Exhibition NUI Galway-Sunday November 27th 10am – 6pm. www.galwayscience.ie
Congratulations to 1st and 2nd Class who represented our school at the Junior First Lego League on Tuesday, 12th April in the Radisson Hotel,Galway.
The theme this year was ‘Waste Wise’.
Today we have been working on our Junior FIRST LEGO League models for 2016. The theme for this year is Waste Wise. We have been working in groups and have each decided on a robot to link with the work we have researched to do with waste management.
Today 1st to 4th class have been working hard on our Junior FIRST LEGO League project. To get us started in building we explored gears today.
We looked the clockwise, anti-clockwise action of two 24 teeth gears.
The we used an 8 teeth gear in between as an idler gear. When we use an idler gear the two 24 teeth gears rotate in the same direction, clockwise or anti-clockwise depending on our programming.
Next we geared down. We put an 8 teeth gear on the motor and a 24 teeth gear beside it. This causes the 24 teeth gear to be slower or gear down.
Then we geared up. This time this 24 teeth gear is attached to the motor and the 8 teeth gear beside it. This causes the 8 teeth gear to rotate faster.
We recorded the results of each experiment and drew a diagram to help us as we continue to build.
Eighteen students and twelve teachers from all of our Comenius partner schools in France, Spain and England came to visit Clontuskert, Ireland in May 2015. The schools involved were CRA La Serrania, Spain, École Edmond Bocquier, France, The Oaks Secondary, UK and Dryden School, UK.
This film gives an overview of their stay here:
Learn more about about the project on our group blog www.stage.scoilnet.ie
Congratulations to Ms. Scott and the Junior FIRST LEGO Leaguers for 2015 from 1st and 2nd class on their wonderful presentation tonight in the Radisson Blu Hotel in Galway. They have worked very hard on the theme of Think Tank over the past few months and it was fantastic to see their work coming together and all of the fun they had presenting.
