Welcome to Year 5 / 6

PlayBoard P5/6 Session 4: Better together! In Session 4 today we  thought about how interacting with a variety of different people can have such a positive impact on our mental health and wellbeing. It also helps us to develop a culture of understanding and acceptance for a brighter future in our communities. We learnt about how our brain quickly sorts people into groups, based on the perspectives we have gained through our own experiences. Today, the OUR Generation team introduced us to the term ‘Cross community’. We are excited about meeting with our friends from St. Joseph’s Primary school and created a collection of picture tiles representing our community. These will be made into a giant mosaic along with theirs, and we are looking forward to seeing it completed. We looked at some optical illusion pictures and used funny perspective glasses to realise that not everyone views the world in the same way. It’s really interesting! Learning to communicate our perspectives and cooperate helps us be Better Together! Meeting St’ Joseph’s  at the next session will be a really great opportunity for us to practice being resilient in approaching new people and being empathetic towards their differing viewpoints. Over the last four sessions we have had the chance to learn to risk assess ourselves during play. Risky play helps us to learn to balance and develop a sense for height and depth. It gives us the chance to work together to solve problems and to control our own play. Today we added blindfolds so that we could learn to trust our friends to guide us safely.
#SmallSchoolBigHeart
PlayBoard NI

Session 3: Me, My connections and my community with  Playboard, Our Generations today. The boys and girls had lots of fun.

In Session 3 we learnt that the groups we belong to make up our communities and the common interests we share brings us together. This helps me to develop my social identity. The more groups I can be a part of, with a variety of different people, the bigger the picture of the world I will get. It will help me be more confident in the future meeting new people, and be more empathetic to their views and backgrounds.

We thought about what the past and present of our communities looked like and realised that although there are some really good things about ours, there are also things that we would like to be able to change in the future. It’s great to feel like you can contribute to something new and exciting.

We started to have a think about what PEACE meant to us and how we could have peaceful relationships within our groups and communities. We helped the OUR Generation team hunt for all the pieces of the Peace puzzle, we did it!

We have loved dressing up in our play sessions, but not as superheroes! When we are given open ended materials and clothing items, you will be surprised at how many people we can be. Roleplaying is not just for younger children, as we older kids start to explore communities and perspectives of others, it allows us to step into their shoes, literally, and see and act like they do. This helps us to develop empathy with others and think about how they can be cared for in the community.
#smallschoolbigheart

We enjoyed a workshop lead by Donna and Danny from Nerve Belfast on the behalf of Ofcom. We learned to look carefully at images and videos to determine if they had been created using AI. We then enjoyed using Adobe express to create images for us based on our criterion. The images created greatly amused our class. Their knowledge of AI astounded us all and the pupils were able to tell us about some of the ways they are already using AI safely.

#smallschoolbigheart

We had a wonderful morning out at Queen's University Belfast. We learnt some invaluable first aid and lifesaving skills and graduated with flying colours from the Future Nurses Programme. A massive thank you to one of our parents, Elizabeth, for involving our school in this project. Our boys and girls have thoroughly enjoyed the whole experience!

Today, our P5/6 class brought their “Crossgar: Past and Present” topic to life with a special visit from Dermot and Oriel Nesbitt. They shared fascinating maps and personal stories about growing up in Crossgar and Kilmore, giving the pupils a real sense of how life used to be.

Oriel also showed photos from her own school days here in the 1950s, along with a picture of her mother, who attended primary school in Crossgar before her.

The pupils thoroughly enjoyed interviewing our visitors—asking about their favourite shops, where they played as children, and how the village has changed over time. It was especially meaningful to hear Oriel share that she began her P1 journey in our very classroom over 70 years ago!
Thank you to Dermot and Oriel for giving up your time, for researching lots of information for us and sharing personal photographs with us. This has helped cement our knowledge of our village. 
#smallschoolbigheart

Today we had our first play session with PlayBoard NI as part of the “Our Generations – Spaces to Be Programme”, and we loved every minute of it. The sun made a welcome appearance as we enjoyed bubbles, dressing up and role play, getting creative with junk art, using sports equipment, cooking in the mud kitchen, building Lego, playing Jenga and making rice stress balls.We particularly enjoyed learning new ways to support our mental health and valued the freedom of being outdoors, working together and socialising with our friends. A huge thank you to Jess, Myrell and Niamh for facilitating such a fantastic session. P5/6 are already looking forward to the next one!
#smallschoolbigheart

Today we welcomed Noel Lyons from Arc21 and Shauna from Newry, Mourne and Down Council to deliver recycling workshops for the children. Everyone had great fun learning about recycling and sustainability, and we were all able to repurpose materials to create something new. It was a fantastic, hands‑on learning experience for everyone involved.
#smallschoolbigheart

A huge thank you to our school PTA who organised our sponsored bounce, team games, Easter craft and Easter Hunt today. Thankfully nobody cracked under the pressure!

🪏P5/6 spent a sunny session in the garden, taking part in the spring clean and planted donated plants along with the potatoes they had been excited to watch chit.🪏

🇫🇷P5/6 have really enjoyed learning French over the past couple of weeks.
Madame Henderson from Saintfield High School has been visiting. She has been teaching us greetings, simple phrases, and colours.
Thank you, Madame Henderson, for sharing your knowledge with us.🇫🇷
#smallschoolbigheart
 

P5/6 enjoyed exploring in the village of Crossgar with our friends at St. Joseph’s. We photographed parts of the village and then created Messy 3D maps of the village using recyclable materials. We also enjoyed eating our lunch outside today with St. Joseph’s pupils.

The children were all so engaged and worked so well together, collaborating and using their ideas to represent our village. We look forward to our next trip together to Spa Woods after Easter.

#smallschoolbigheart

P5/6 had a brilliant shared education trip out to Airtastic Lisburn. We enjoyed the challenge rooms and were great at problem solving, communicating together and working as a team when participating in Laser Tag. 
#smallschoolbigheart

A huge thank you to Callum Bowsie who came to school this afternoon to teach P5/6 about the history of our school. We learned how to source historical information through old maps, photographs, old newspaper material, word of mouth and through census documents. 
We thoroughly enjoyed learning more about our village and the role schools play throughout history. 
Thank you for coming to share with us Callum.

Nursing Matters Workshops

Our Key Stage 2 pupils enjoyed lots of interactive activities at the Nursing Matters workshops facilitated by the School of Nursing and Midwifery at Queens University. They learnt lots about their bodies, how to administer CPR, the importance of good hygiene and handwashing, as well as thinking about possible pathways of nursing as a career! A great morning for all! Thanks to Elizabeth for bringing this super opportunity to Glasswater alongside a wonderful team of nurses. 

#smallschoolbigheart

Our “little runner girl” in P6 headed off with her cheer squad today to Mallusk Playing Fields for the Flahavans Primary Schools Cross Country League Final. Although there was no podium finish for her this time, the experience was undoubtedly one that she will take into her next few events.

All of us at Glasswater PS are immensely proud of you. This was our first ever participant in the finals and we’re sure you will be back next year to take on the challenge again. 

#smallschoolbigheart

P5/6 had a brilliant final library visit to Downpatrick library . We got to meet Kelda the guide dog and Joy explained about the digital services provided in the library and how we can stay safe online when researching or playing games. We enjoyed interactive quizzes in groups and once again loved browsing and selecting books we could borrow.
#smallschoolbigheart
Libraries NI

We welcomed both St. Joseph’s P6 class and Martina Clawson back to Glasswater to finish off our murals and enjoy a capybara drawing competition.

This was a fabulous collaboration with lots of artistic talent in show.

Today we enjoyed our pancakes on Shrove Tuesday. Choosing our toppings and delighting in the scrumptious flavours.

The corridor outside our classroom smelled like a bakery. It was very inviting!

#smallschoolbigheart

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.