🥳🥳🎉🧪🔭🔍👩🔬🎉🎉
Congratulations to everyone at Scoil San Lionard! You have been awarded the SFI Curious Minds Platinum Award 2024 for the excellent STEM work you carried out during the school year. This is the highest level of award and your log book of evidence shows clearly that it is well deserved. The many photographs show learners of all class groups actively engaged in learning and developing their STEM skills. Every step has exciting work and I see a bright future for the many budding scientists and engineers in the school. I was impressed by the parachutes, energy from potatoes, robots, and using eggs for teeth!! It is great to see learners in the outdoor classroom and they looked happy investigating the hedgerow. You could check out the curiousminds.ie living things section where you will find an excellent lesson plan and creative ideas to make the hedgerow investigation a valuable learning experience incorporating all the STEM skills. Learners will always remember visitors to the school and trip to other venues…and you had lots of variety in the Bubbly Show, Lego Workshop and the SETI Carlow K’nex Challenge. You concentrated on improving communication this year and the reflections from the whole school community show that you made great progress in this outcome. Learners reported via their video clips how they carried out their STEM work and gained confidence in explaining their work to other class groups. Teachers reported that having a particular STEM focus for the year made them more confident, increasing morale and their quality of teaching. They had a common role seeing themselves as facilitators in the learner’s journey. Teachers saw the value in older classes explaining their work to younger groups, building confidence and communication skills. Parents noted an increased enthusiasm in their children for STEM , coming home and telling all about their work at school. They thought that their children would go down the path of STEM in future subject and career choices. Well done on your achievement! Keep up the good work!