STEAM

STEAM

A huge thank you to all our parents and friends who gave their time and shared their knowledge over the past five weeks of 'STEAM'.

You have truly inspired us.

Our final STEAM Term week did not disappoint!

Some of our parents hosted a 'We Love STEAM' Science fair and it was so much fun. We got to make pin wheels, learn coding with Braille and understand how it translates, Virtual reality and how computers work, all about Chromatography, understand what a dentist does and how they make moulds of your teeth, the science behind music, all about famous female scientists and so much more.

We also had workshops on Irish Art, Podcasts, how to make rockets and what it means to be a Vet.

To top it all off, each class made a video on the 'flight' theme for STEAM!

This all follows on from Week four with a visit from Susan who works at Google. She spoke with us about women working in digital media.

We held our own annual 5th Class Science Fair. We had such a fun day, dressing up as crazy scientists and showing all the younger pupils our experiments. We made erupting volcano's, lava lamps, bouncing eggs, ooblek and much more. There was a lot of oil, water, vinegar, flour, food colouring and glitter everywhere!!!

We had an amazing Music workshop with Mrs Walsh. One thing she taught us was how to breath properly so you can get the best out of your voice when singing.

At Assembly that Friday, Henry McKean from Newstalk came in to chat with us. He explained how they work and record their interviews. He even interviewed some of us discussing 'Brexit'.... we wonder will we be on the Radio???

Week three of STEAM term was a great success too. We were visited by UCD doctorate students, Thomas and Abeba who talked to us about AI. They explained that AI is not just robots and self-driving cars, but also predictive texts, and suggested searches. We use AI every day and we didn't even realise it!

Padraig Murphy came to visit us with his colleague Emer. They told us all about their work fixing aeroplanes. Mr Murphy showed us a cool time-lapse of an aeroplane being modified for a new airline company. He told us that when we build IKEA furniture or play with Lego, we are working as engineers!

We had a big surprise that week also, Brendan Brennan and his colleagues Maralise and Darragh, came in with a special visitor. Her name is 'Pepper' and she is a robot. She works at ICON with Mr Brennan. She told us about what ICON do and all about their clinical trials - the process of which takes seven years! Did you know it takes over €1.2 billion to develop a new medicine?

'Pepper' also gave some of us a hug, fist pumps, held our hands and waved. She explained too the importance of getting a good nights sleep. The technology is amazing.

Another day Dr Yvonne Canavan, a neurophysiologist, explained to us that our brains create waves and EEG's are used to monitor a person's brain activity.

We also had a variety of workshops this week on 'Skin Care' with Mrs Galligan, 'Writing' with Sinead Moriarty, 'Wellbeing' with Rosemary Walsh and the process of 'making an ad' with Paul Holmes.

Lets not forget our previous weeks workshops: Maths and Engineering with Mr MacEoghain and Mr Loughrey and our wonderful talks on 'Women in Leadership' from Eimear O'Halloran, 'The Eye & Brain' from psychiatrist John O'Donovan and 'The Eye' from Professor Cassidy.

And of course, our 'Fly your Kite' workshop where everyone got to understand the dynamics around kite flying but most importantly got to make their own!

'A Question waiting to be answered'

One key message that we showed at assembly in Week two and that we hope permeates throughout our STEAM Term is that questions are just as or even more important as answers! We hope that with our many guest speakers, workshops and material within the classroom that we will inspire your children to ask these questions that have not yet been answered.

The link attached below powerfully highlights our message and we thought you would enjoy viewing it.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=W1K2jdjLhbo

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