STE for 3rd Class

Curriculum Mapping Student Devices
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This course introduces primary pupils to core STE concepts through hands-on exploration of living things, materials, forces, energy, light, simple technology and engineering design. Pupils investigate human organs and habitats, conduct fair tests on melting, dissolving and friction, learn about renewable energy, map inputs and outputs, develop computational thinking with Scratch, and follow the full engineering design process from empathy and problem-finding to prototyping, testing and improving real solutions.
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Open the year by naming the main organs of the body and where they sit, then investigate how one organ works, keeps healthy and reacts to a stimulus, before turning to classifying Irish plants and animals and meeting a first simple food chain. The first lesson sets the year's 'STEM eyes' tone: STE is the long story of people figuring out how the world works and making things better.

STEM Eyes on the World
STEM All Around Us: the Story of Figuring Things Out
The Main Organs of the Human Body
One Organ up Close
The Heart: Feeling Your Pulse
The Lungs: How We Breathe
The Eye and Reacting to a Stimulus
Sorting and Connecting Living Things
Sorting Irish Animals by Their Features
A Branching Key for Irish Plants and Trees
Living Together: a Habitat and Its Food Chain

From the properties and states that make a material right for a job, through the class's first fair test (melting ice), to gentle heating and cooling, dissolving, conductors and insulators of heat, and a first look at materials and the environment. This module is where the fair-test working-scientifically skill is first taught in full and modelled tightly.

Properties and States of Matter
Sorting Materials by Their Properties
Solids, Liquids and Gases
Heating, Cooling and Gentle Change
Our First Fair Test: Which Place Melts Ice Fastest?
Heating and Cooling: What Melts, What Stays?
Dissolving: What Disappears in Water?
Conductors and Insulators of Heat
Materials and Our Environment
Materials and Our Environment: Sort the Classroom Waste

Investigate everyday forces (push, pull, friction), use fair testing to compare them, build simple machines (ramps and levers), sort renewable and non-renewable energy and watch stored energy change to movement, then explore light: sources, reflection, the spectrum and magnifying. The fair-testing skill met in Materials is revisited here with forces.

Forces and Simple Machines
Pushes and Pulls All Around Us
Make It Move: a Force Fair Test
Friction: Which Surface Grips Most?
Simple Machines: Ramps and Levers
Energy: Sources and Storing
Where Energy Comes from: Renewable or Not?
Storing and Changing Energy
Light
Light: Natural and Artificial Sources, and How We See
Light: Reflection, Colour and a Closer Look

From what digital and non-digital technologies do for us (and their advantages and drawbacks), through inputs, processes and outputs, to first computational thinking (unplugged precise instructions and patterns) and a first run of real coding in Scratch. Pupils meet how technologies work and then write, run and debug real Scratch programs.

What Technology Does and How It Works
What Does Technology Do for Us?
Inputs, Processes and Outputs
Computational Thinking and First Coding
Thinking Like a Computer: Precise Instructions
Decompose and Spot the Pattern
Coding in Scratch: Sequences
Scratch: Loops, Events and Finding the Bug

Build the foundations of the design process: start with a user and their need, sketch a clear plan, build and test a prototype, and improve it, through structures and a first short design-build project on a real problem for a real person.

The Design Process: Empathy, Plans and Structures
Engineers Start with the User: Empathy
Drawing a Design Others Can Build
Build a Strong, Stable Tower
Test a Structure Fairly: Which Shape Is Strongest?
Find a Problem Worth Solving
Make It Better for Someone: a Design-build Project
Build the Prototype
Test, Improve and Share

Open the year by naming the main organs of the body and where they sit, then investigate how one organ works, keeps healthy and reacts to a stimulus, before turning to classifying Irish plants and animals and meeting a first simple food chain. The first lesson sets the year's 'STEM eyes' tone: STE is the long story of people figuring out how the world works and making things better.

STEM Eyes on the World
STEM All Around Us: the Story of Figuring Things Out
The Main Organs of the Human Body
One Organ up Close
The Heart: Feeling Your Pulse
The Lungs: How We Breathe
The Eye and Reacting to a Stimulus
Sorting and Connecting Living Things
Sorting Irish Animals by Their Features
A Branching Key for Irish Plants and Trees
Living Together: a Habitat and Its Food Chain

From the properties and states that make a material right for a job, through the class's first fair test (melting ice), to gentle heating and cooling, dissolving, conductors and insulators of heat, and a first look at materials and the environment. This module is where the fair-test working-scientifically skill is first taught in full and modelled tightly.

Properties and States of Matter
Sorting Materials by Their Properties
Solids, Liquids and Gases
Heating, Cooling and Gentle Change
Our First Fair Test: Which Place Melts Ice Fastest?
Heating and Cooling: What Melts, What Stays?
Dissolving: What Disappears in Water?
Conductors and Insulators of Heat
Materials and Our Environment
Materials and Our Environment: Sort the Classroom Waste

Investigate everyday forces (push, pull, friction), use fair testing to compare them, build simple machines (ramps and levers), sort renewable and non-renewable energy and watch stored energy change to movement, then explore light: sources, reflection, the spectrum and magnifying. The fair-testing skill met in Materials is revisited here with forces.

Forces and Simple Machines
Pushes and Pulls All Around Us
Make It Move: a Force Fair Test
Friction: Which Surface Grips Most?
Simple Machines: Ramps and Levers
Energy: Sources and Storing
Where Energy Comes from: Renewable or Not?
Storing and Changing Energy
Light
Light: Natural and Artificial Sources, and How We See
Light: Reflection, Colour and a Closer Look

From what digital and non-digital technologies do for us (and their advantages and drawbacks), through inputs, processes and outputs, to first computational thinking (unplugged precise instructions and patterns) and a first run of real coding in Scratch. Pupils meet how technologies work and then write, run and debug real Scratch programs.

What Technology Does and How It Works
What Does Technology Do for Us?
Inputs, Processes and Outputs
Computational Thinking and First Coding
Thinking Like a Computer: Precise Instructions
Decompose and Spot the Pattern
Coding in Scratch: Sequences
Scratch: Loops, Events and Finding the Bug

Build the foundations of the design process: start with a user and their need, sketch a clear plan, build and test a prototype, and improve it, through structures and a first short design-build project on a real problem for a real person.

The Design Process: Empathy, Plans and Structures
Engineers Start with the User: Empathy
Drawing a Design Others Can Build
Build a Strong, Stable Tower
Test a Structure Fairly: Which Shape Is Strongest?
Find a Problem Worth Solving
Make It Better for Someone: a Design-build Project
Build the Prototype
Test, Improve and Share

Curriculum Mapping

See exactly how this course maps to official curriculum specifications

NCCA STE Education Specification (2025)
Curriculum Area
Outcomes
Nature of STEM
S1.3.1
Living things
S2.3.1 S2.3.2 S2.3.3
Materials
S3.3.1 S3.3.2
Energy and forces
S4.3.1 S4.3.2 S4.3.3
Technology
S5.3.1 S5.3.2
Engineering
S6.3.1

The curriculum does not include official reference codes for individual learning outcomes, so we have assigned a code scheme to make it easier to identify and track coverage.

What Students Will Learn

Learning Goals

  1. Identify STEM in everyday surroundings and recognise how human ingenuity has shaped familiar objects and environments
  2. Describe the main organs of the human body, explain their basic functions, and investigate how organs such as the heart, lungs and eyes respond to stimuli
  3. Sort and classify living things and materials using observable properties, and construct simple keys, food chains and habitat maps
  4. Conduct fair tests to explore states of matter, heating, cooling, dissolving, friction, and the insulating properties of materials
  5. Investigate forces, simple machines, energy sources and light through practical exploration and experimentation
  6. Understand how everyday technology works by identifying inputs, processes and outputs, and develop computational thinking through unplugged activities and basic Scratch programming
  7. Apply the engineering design process by developing empathy with users, creating annotated designs, building and testing structures, and iterating on a prototype to solve a real problem

Learning Outcomes

  1. Identify and locate the main human organs (brain, heart, lungs, stomach, intestines) on a life-sized body outline.
  2. Measure and compare their own resting and active heart rate and explain the observed change.
  3. Construct a working lung model using a bottle, balloon and diaphragm sheet and demonstrate how breathing works.
  4. Sort Irish animals and plants using observable features and construct a simple branching identification key.
  5. Build and interpret a food chain for a school-ground microhabitat.
  6. Carry out fair tests to compare how quickly ice melts in different places, which materials dissolve in water, and which materials insulate heat best.
  7. Sort materials by observable properties and classify them as solid, liquid or gas.
  8. Sort classroom waste into recycle, compost, reuse and landfill categories and design one practical reduce-or-reuse action.
  9. Identify pushes, pulls, friction and simple machines (ramps and levers) in everyday situations and demonstrate their effect through practical tests.
  10. Distinguish between renewable and non-renewable energy sources and map those used in Ireland.
  11. Sort light sources as natural or artificial, demonstrate reflection using mirrors, and split white light to show a spectrum.
  12. Classify everyday devices as digital or non-digital and map them as input-process-output systems.
  13. Give precise step-by-step instructions to guide a partner ‘robot’ and debug errors in those instructions.
  14. Decompose familiar tasks into ordered steps, identify repeating patterns, and use sequences, loops and events to create simple Scratch programs.
  15. Interview a partner to identify a real user problem, produce an annotated design sketch, and build and test a stable prototype structure.
  16. Follow the full design process to create, test, improve and present a working prototype that solves a chosen school or yard problem.

What You'll Need

Required Equipment

Equipment used in some of the lessons in this course. Items can be shared among students.

IWB/Projector/Large Screen
IWB/Projector/Large Screen

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