Portstewart Primary School partnered with St Colum's Primary School
Portstewart Primary School along with St. Colum’s Primary School are excited to embark on a whole school STEM based project entitled ‘Marvellous Movers’. The children from both schools will be challenged to work collaboratively to design and make moving vehicles from recyclable materials. In addition, our Key Stage 2 children will explore and investigate how to power their vehicles using a renewable source of energy. The money awarded through the scheme will be employed to source components and scientific instruments to enable the children to carry out the project successfully.
The overall aim of the project is to engage our children in stimulating and challenging learning opportunities that will ignite their passion and interest in STEM through enquiry based learning. This approach will place the children at the centre of the learning process, developing their independence, decision making and problem solving skills.
As Eco-Schools we endeavour to make sustainability an integral part of school life, addressing environmental issues in the school and local community such as reducing waste and saving energy. This project aims to raise the children’s awareness of alternative sources of energy and to provide them with the opportunity to develop innovative ideas and uses for discarded materials.
Living in Northern Ireland we are faced with significant societal challenges. Our vision is to build positive relationships between children and staff in our schools and multi-faith community through the medium of Science and Technology (STEM). It is our hope that this project will form a firm foundation for future collaborative projects across the curriculum. The project will culminate in a public exhibition of the children’s work from both schools in celebration and recognition of their success and collaboration. This will incorporate video shorts taken throughout the project alongside an ‘open scrapbook’ and participants’ reflections on their learning outcomes.
Louise Gilmore -Project Lead is a graduate from St. Martin’s College, Lancaster where she studied Primary Education and Religious Studies. She has 16 years teaching experience both in rural and urban settings. She is currently a foundation stage teacher and ‘World Around Us’ Co-ordinator at Portstewart Primary School. Louise is heavily involved with the teaching of Music throughout the school and has led choir to competition level. She has worked hard to raise the profile of science and technology by co-ordinating whole school STEM challenges such as ‘Building Bridges’ and ‘The Great Paper Plane Challenge’ where each pupil from P1-P7 designed, made and tested their own paper planes and competed against each other. She also worked with Primary 7 pupils on the ‘Rocket Science’ experiment earlier this year. This experiment provided the children with the opportunity to learn about plant growth, to collect data and to use data gleaned from the experiment to ask and answer scientific questions. Louise is passionate about enquiry based learning and has created innovative and exciting projects for the children she teaches. Her vision is to build positive relationships between children of differing faith communities through the medium of Science and Technology. It was whilst attending several STEM related courses ‘Sounds Like science, Looks like science’ and ‘Skillful Science’ that she established links with staff from St. Colum’s Primary School who agreed to collaborate on a joint science and technology based project for the ‘Rolls-Royce Science Prize’.
Dr Lucy Greene has been teaching for 16 years and is currently with the P7 class in St. Colum’s where she is also ICT Co-ordinator. She enjoys taking this class to participate in outdoor learning through team building challenges as part of their residential trip in Woodhall each year. Lucy has completed the ‘Skillful Science’ and ‘Sounds Like Science, Looks Like Science’ courses last year where some of the Rolls Royce Project Team met for the first time. She started her scientific career in a local University studying Biomedical sciences. During the course of her PhD she investigated the cognitive development in adolescent schoolchildren and continued her research into the aetiology of childhood obesity. Lucy is a living role model for young girls in Primary school to develop their interest in science. Lucy also attended an ‘ICT to inspire’ course last year which promotes the teaching of ICT across the curriculum. She is passionate about enriching the learning experiences of children by providing opportunities for research, practical problem solving and enquiry based activities in real life contexts to encourage them to explore and begin to understand the world around them. She hopes that by participating in our Marvellous Movers project it will stimulate an interest in science which reaches far beyond primary school.
Grainne McGoldrick has been teaching Primary 6 in St Colum’s Primary School for two years. Previous to that she taught P2 for four years and prior to that taught PE to ‘A’ Level in secondary school for four years. Grainne believes in bringing lessons to life enriching the learning process with an array of techniques including role play, movie making and introducing special guests to the classroom. Some examples are live sheep in the classroom in an enactment to bring the legend of St Patrick to life; bringing in a marine biologist and nursing salmon eggs in class until they were ready to release in the river as fry. Grainne likes to use the natural resources around us to help learning such as trips to the local Portstewart beach; one trip focused on a beach clean up to encourage environmental awareness. Her pupils come to expect fun in class which in her experience proves to be the most fruitful base for learning. Grainne has also recently completed the ‘Skillful Science’ and ‘Sounds like science, Looks like science’ courses to develop her skills in teaching through enquiry based learning through the world around us and will bring this to the project team.
Gayle Murray is the Primary 3 teacher at Portstewart Primary School, where she has taught for 14 years. She is a local girl and attended the primary school herself as a child. Gayle graduated from the University of Ulster with a BA Hons Degree in Primary Education, specialising in Science. She has used this expertise to help develop STEM skills within the school, leading to teams winning the ‘Sentinus Science Prize’ on two separate occasions. Gayle strives to ensure that her teaching is child centred and aims to engage the children in learning which is fun, active and flexible. Through her teaching she aims to support pupils in acquiring appropriate skills and developing strategies for independent, enquiry based learning in Science. Through the ‘Marvellous Movers’ project she hopes to highlight how technology and maths can be used to support learning in science and technology activities with other areas of learning. Gayle is Eco-Schools co-ordinator and along with her eco team successfully led the school to achieve their second Eco-School Green Flag at the beginning of 2016. The school has worked hard over the past 6 years to reduce their impact on the environment, through the waste that they produce, in particular, focussing on recycling and reusing where possible. Gayle is excited to be part of a project that raises an awareness of environmental issues whilst developing STEM skills and cross community relationships.
Michele Shaw is in her 26th year of teaching, she currently takes a Primary 5 class in St Colum’s Primary School; prior to that she taught P3, P6 and P7. She was Maths Co-ordinator for 7 years in St Colum’s and is currently the Designated Teacher for Child Protection and the Pastoral Care Co-ordinator. Michele has a special interest in women in science and feels very passionate about getting young girls interested in this area and alongside other members of the team completed the ‘Skillful Science’ and ‘Sounds like Science, Looks like science’ courses last year. Michele has always been an advocate of natural science and her hands on approach manifests itself this year on the P4/5 garden which she is developing to encourage the children grow fruit and vegetables. Michele loves to encourage the children to create designs and models relating to her topics: rockets in autumn, the Egyptian pyramids and Little monsters. Past pupils sing her praises as an amazing teacher who combines a wealth of knowledge and creativity to spark their imagination.
Heather Quiery business Graduate and Chartered Marketer, runs her own Business Consultancy and is a Parent Governor at Portstewart Primary School. Heather brings project management and marketing skills from over 20 years in industry including 3 years spent working in children’s publishing in London. She has particular interests in Outdoor Team Development, Co-Operatives and Shared Education in Northern Ireland. As a Governor she has been assigned the ‘World Around Us’ area of the curriculum. Her role in the team will be to help co-ordinate the project and to help organise the final exhibition of work. Heather will also liaise with industry and press to promote the project and raise awareness in the community.