Welcome to Year 5 / 6

As part of our “Crossgar past and present” topic we had a fantastic walk around the village with Councillor Callum Bowsie. Callum is part of Crossgar Historical society and he shared his knowledge of the village with us all. The pupils asked some brilliant questions and we look forward to Callum returning to school to teach us about the history of our school.  
#smallschoolbigheart.

P5/6 had a great day of Shared Ed with our friends at St. Joseph’s. We looked at symbols that mean something to us and had a local artist Martina Clawson teach us some new printing techniques. We will use our next session together to put our printed symbols together to create two murals for our schools.
#smallschoolbigheart

Today we welcomed Sarah Shields and Mr. English from Mutual Energy and GMO  (Gas Market Operator) to talk to our P5-7 pupils about energy. They discussed sources of energy from the past, presentday energy sources and future energy insights and ways we can conserve and use energy more wisely to be better for the planet. 
#smallschoolbigheart
#mutualenergy

P5/6 had a very enjoyable visit to Downpatrick library today where they learned all about the amazing historical section of the library. The librarians were able to help us glean some extra information on some important places in our surrounding area though the old maps, and newspaper articles from the archives. We learned that the last body archived to be pulled from the water of the Titanic disaster was a local man from the Rockschapel Road James McGrady, who worked as saloon steward. He was listed as body 330 and was found by the crew of the SS Algeria on May 25th 1912. This was 40 days after the disaster incurred. He is buried in Fairview cemetery in Halifax, Nova Scotia. The pupils listened so well and showed great interest. Thank you to Downpatrick library for having us.
#librariesni 
#smallschoolbigheart

P5/6 participated in an online lesson via Zoom celebrating Katherine Johnson the “amazing mathematician” who worked for NASA. We learned lots about her life, about palindrome numbers and other mathematical processes that she used to help get astronauts safely into space. 
The children learned about the film Hidden Figures that is currently on Disney+ showcasing her life and that of the other black women who worked for NASA at that time.
#smallschoolbigheart

Today it was P5/6 turn to start their Shared Education journey with St. Joseph’s. 
We enjoyed some games outside, some icebreakers and we created our Shared Education Charter together. We look forward to displaying these in our schools.
#smallschoolbigheart

P5/6 enjoyed some practical maths using weights and the pan balances today. They used their estimating and measuring skills to work out what mass the objects are.

P5/6 had a wonderful morning at Downpatrick library learning about the services our local library provides. We enjoyed stories, word searches and choosing our own books to borrow until our next visit. 
We loved browsing the wide range of books and hearing about Libby (the online app for audio books) available to us. We are now excited to get reading our borrowed books and reach our reading targets. 
#smallsschoolbigheart

Congratulations to our We Really Shine Award Winners for contributing so well to our Polar Lands topic and to completing fabulous problem-solving work in Numeracy.

It was great to get outside and enjoy some fun in the snow with our classmates this afternoon. 

Congratulations to Luka who played a huge part of Kilmore U-11’s who won the DYFL U-12 cup last night. You train so hard each week with your wee team, it is lovely to see you all experience success.  

Thank you to our PTA for organising a special visit from Father Christmas at this very bust time of the year.

P5/6 had a very enjoyable morning painting Christmas reindeer under the guidance of Colours Pottery Ballynahinch. 
A huge thank you to Glasswater PTA for organising and providing such a lovely festive, creative experience.

#smallschoolbigheart

We are really thrilled for our “We Really Shine” award winners who won awards for various reasons including representing our school in sport, displaying brilliant manners and kindness. Persevering in subtraction and division within Numeracy. Well done everyone!

We enjoyed singing our way through the village and spreading some festive cheer on our Daily Mile. We took time to appreciate the decorations and ornaments and lights and counted all the Santa Claus decorations we could find. Fifty Two Father Christmas’ today on our daily mile. It was a lovely bright morning for a walk.

Flavahan’s Cross Country success for Emily. We are so proud of you. #smallschoolbigheart

P5/6 have been getting into the festive spirit and have enjoyed decorating our sustainable  Christmas tree with natural materials to help us focus on being more environmentally friendly.

Year 5/6 have been learning lots about the Aurora Borealis (Northern Lights) they have enjoyed creating their own views of the phenomenon from their windows using oil pastels and paint. What a talented bunch!

Congratulations to Emily who was ranked in 5th place yesterday in fly and qualified for the Irish Minor Schools in Dublin NAC in March 2026. We are incredibly proud of you #smallschoolbigheart

We have been working hard as part of our partnership with Nerve to develop our skills in Coding. We have had lots of fun writing code and debugging when we have faced mistakes in the code we have written. We have work collaboratively and used lots of thinking skills to help solve problems. This has also taught us lots about resilience.

#smallschoolbigheart

Our school councillors have been working hard to organise a pyjama day and bun sale for Children in Need. They even managed to paint our faces with spots!

#smallschoolbigheart

Our amazing certificate winners.

#smallschoolbigheart

We were invited up to the new Down High building to see their production of High School Musical and what a treat it was. Well done to the staff, pupils and team who put on such a great show for us and other local primary schools.

Lots of fun 'Bending the Rules' to raise funds for our school. Well done to our fantastic PTA who made today such a brilliant day.

It was certainly a team effort.

#smallschoolbigheart

We were delighted to welcome Simon Welby from Lick Gelato to come along and talk to us about the Gelato making process as part of our Food Glorious Food Topic. He and his wife Joanne surprised the whole school with free gelato or sorbet. What a treat. Thank you Lick Gelato.

#smallschoolbigheart

Lots of practical measuring as part of Maths Week Ireland. We loved taking our learning outdoors and getting "hands on" as we got to grip with measuring!

#smallschoolbigheart

Primary 5/6 have been working on lots of coding this week as part of National Coding Week. This tied in so well with our procedural writing and recipe exploration. We learned that if you do not follow the steps correctly when cooking you will have a potential culinary disaster. 
In coding if we don’t write the algorithm correctly then we cannot get our sprites in Scratch Jr to do what we want them to do. We need to fix (debug) our errors or re-write the code to patch our errors. We had lots of fun using mathematical language whilst developing our ICT and thinking skills. 

Well done to our amazing certificate winners. You are all really shining!

#smallschoolbigheart

As part of our 'Food Glorious Food' topic we have been learning about the history of chocolate. We have researched where cocoa comes from and been learning about the production of chocolate through the years. Today we sampled some hot chocolate as we have worked so hard!

All the pupils who participated in our class elections for our school council are to be commended. The campaign was not an easy one as the standards were very high.
All of the children listened well and shared fabulous ways to improve our school.

The way the children congratulated others, even when they faced defeat, was just wonderful to see and showed high levels of maturity.
P5 and P6 we are immensely proud of you all.
We will continue to support our elected representatives with suggestions and ways to make  Glasswater P.S. the best it can be!

We made fruit kebabs and enjoyed greatly munching them with our friends. Later this week we will produce some procedural writing from our experiences.

As part of our Food Glorious Food Topic we have been creating pictures  of fruit and vegetables in the style of Rachel Larsen. What a creative class we have!

We had to be very specific with our instructions to guide our robots safely around the playground. We enjoyed problem-solving through using direction and angles.

P5/6 enjoyed their first coaching session out in the sunshine. Not only  were the children improving their football skills but they were also working on their fitness levels and their communication skills.

Happy Smiley Sunny Days

The boys and girls enjoyed some treats to cool off in the playground today. #smallschoolbigheart

Year 6 Cycle Skills Workshop

This bunch of Year 6 pupils enjoyed an afternoon with Sustrans instructors, Ann and Martin, learning how to cycle safely and look after their bicycles. 

Year 5/6 had ‘snow’ much fun with their friends in the playground today! #smallschoolbigheart

Year 5/6 enjoyed a visit from Carl from the Northern Ireland Fire and Rescue Service. He told them all about the work of the fire service in our community and reminded them of some important fire safety tips for their homes. 
 

#smallschoolbigheart

P5 love getting outdoors and keeping fit!

Do you have any ideas for this page? Why not let your Teacher know!
Have you seen the Kids' Zone? Play games and visit some cool websites. You can vote for your favourites.