1st Class News – November 2018 – Ms McManus

We are back in first class after a wonderful midterm, we hope everyone enjoyed a well-deserved break! We were kept busy in the weeks leading up to our week off with lots of Halloween activities and new topics to learn about.

One of our favourite weeks last month was ‘Maths Week’! Throughout the week, we focused on problem solving and using our maths eyes. Every day, we would use our problem solving skills to solve some tricky maths riddles. For example: Stephen, Liam, Carla and Sadhbh meet up. Each person shakes hands with every other person once. How many handshakes are there in total? As well as solving riddles, our class became mindful of all the wonderful mathematical shapes, lines and problems hidden around us in our everyday lives. We used pictures of lots of everyday items to create and solve mathematical problems, for example: Can you estimate how many smarties are on these gingerbread men? Some people in the class even used their maths eyes at home, and brought in pictures that we stuck on our maths wall!

Throughout October, we also focused on learning a little bit more about where Halloween comes from. We discovered that Halloween actually originated in Ireland and comes from a festival called Samhain, which was celebrated by the Celts. As some of the children in the class would be in different countries for the Halloween break, we decided to learn a bit about Halloween traditions around the world. We looked at different ways the festival is celebrated in China, Belgium, Canada, England, Spain and Mexico. Did you know that in Hong Kong, Halloween is known as the ‘Festival of Hungry Ghosts? Some people even burn pictures of money or fruit on this day, as they believe the images may reach the spirit world and bring comfort to the ghosts!

In art, we wanted to put our knowledge of Autumn to good use. We created these autumn scenes, using paint and cotton balls. We made sure to include all the usual colours we see in Autumn, and even added some falling leaves!

Category: First Class, Maths, Geography, Art | Comments Off

November 4 2018

Mischief Managed in Ms. Kett’s Class!

We have gone Harry Potter mad in Ms. Kett’s 6^th class and we’re currently starting the 2^nd book in the series. Although some of us have read them before, lots of us haven’t and we’re all thoroughly enjoying reading and disecting them. We are using the novel to inspire our art, teach us about story and character development and of course how to improve our own writing by using rich and descriptive language and a variety of adjectives and adverbs, a speciality of J.K. Rowlings.

As 6^th class is our last year in primary school we began the year by writing a letter to our teacher with some requests and hopes for the year ahead. We are very excited about confirmation preparation and of course getting ready for the big move to secondary school. With this in mind we’ve been having lots of conversations around SPHE topics such as – friendships, looking after ourselves and making good choices. We’ve also been discussing healthy eating and good habits and began our studies of the human body by looking at the heart and lungs. The brain is next – we can’t wait. In history we are currently learning all about the Georgian Era and looking at architectural evidence round our great city. We are drawing and constructing Georgian building and doors and are becoming increasingly impressed by the magnificient buildings from the past. We are going on our first tour next week to Henrietta Street museum and the Hugh Lane Gallery. We are excited and looking forward to many more educational (and fun) tours throughout the year.

This month we also produced a ‘Passion Project’. We researched and prepared these at home and presented them to the class on completion. The variety and standard of the projects was excellent and it was facinating to learn about each others passions in such detail. We learned a lot from each other; some baked brownies and cookies (very popular indeed) and explained the process, others chose football as their passion (surprise, surprise), other projects included the World of Disney, Harry Potter, Horses, Hockey, Parties and even The Immune System, to name but a few. They were all fantastic and very informative. We are looking forward to doing many more projects throughout the year ahead.

We’ve also been keeping our eyes peeled for signs of Autumn and in particular the amazing changing colours in our environment. We’ve learned about photosynthesis and the Season s at a global level. The wonderful autumnal colours have inspired more art.

Overall we’ve had a great start to the year and are looking forward to Halloween and the mid-term break now but also learning much more as the year unfolds. Slán.

Category: Sixth Class, Literacy, History, Science, Art, S.P.H.E | Comments Off

October 29 2018

Ms Livingston’s Senior Infants

Welcome to Ms. Livingston’s Senior infants. This month, our Aistear theme was The Vet. We learned all about how the Vet is very important in our community and what they do to help our pets. Each day we play at a different station which is based on our theme.

We made our own bread. We measured how much of each ingredient we would need. We put it in the oven to bake. It tasted delicious! We even got to take home a slice for someone at home to try.

We went on an Autumn Nature walk around the school grounds. We used a checklist and clipboards to record what exactly we saw. Some of the items we collected were conkers, leaves and pinecones. We brought some of them back into our class to put on our nature table. Then we wrote about what we saw, what we heard, what we smelled and how we felt when we were on out Autumn walk!

We also had a exciting last day before midterm, we dressed up in our Halloween costumes and bought lots of cakes in the cake sale!

Category: Senior Infants, Numeracy, Aistear, Art | Comments Off

October 23 2018

News from Ms. Dawson’s Second Class.

Welcome to Ms. Dawson’s second class. We’ve had a very busy first half term. In the last two weeks we made telephones out of tin cans and string. We decorated them and tried them out and we were so surprised when we could hear each other down the lines. They worked the best when we pulled the string very tight.

We had a project to design and make a kite and all kinds of shape and designs arrived in school last Friday just in time for the end of the hurricane. We had great fun flying them in the yard and trying to hold on to them. A few unfortunately needed surgery afterwards!

This week we are looking at Halloween traditions and games and interviewing our parents and grandparents about Halloween when they were young. We are also drawing maps of Halloween Villages. They are scary places to live in!!

We played conkers this week too, an old fashioned game where you try and hit and break your opponent’s conker. It was harder than it looked!

This week is Maths Week and we started our online maths programme, Mathletics. It is a lot of fun and we can even have maths challenges with children from around the world. We also went on a maths walk and looked for maths around our school. Shape jumped out at us everywhere!

If you’d like to enjoy a Disney cartoon from 1929, check out the skeleton dance on you tube. We danced and moved to it and are very impressed with technology from almost 100 years ago! It was a lot of fun!

Category: Second Class, S.E.S.E, Art | Comments Off

October 17 2018

Ms Aivalikli’s Sixth Class

September saw us focus on North America. We looked at American History through the ages and analysed how colonisation tactics changed from the Native American’s to the American Civil War. We also challenged ourselves by learning the names and location of each American State, we loved playing the states quiz! Our STEM project centred on Native American’s as we created 3D totem poles in groups. Our designs went from individual, paired to finally group plans. We were delighted to see our plans come to life.

As we progressed from Native American History to the Civil Rights Movement our novel Roll of Thunder Hear My Cry has been very moving. We decided to base our September Assembly on the impact of civil rights activities. We sang ‘A Million Dreams’ to inspire others to believe in change.

In P.E we enjoyed joining in with Joe Wicks, aka ‘The Body Coach’ and his initiative to get schools moving. We especially enjoyed when he gave our class a ‘shout out’ live on his YouTube channel.

Lastly our Gaeilge topic in September was Mé Féin, we put together conversations and created short Scratch clips, in which we made our characters have a comhrá as Gaeilge!

In October we’re looking at Georgian Dublin, we are especially looking forward to our tour of 14 Henrietta Street! We will be sure to write about it soon!

Category: Sixth Class, S.E.S.E, Art, Physical Education | Comments Off

October 14 2018

News from Ms. Wood’s Junior Infants

September has been a busy month in Ms Woods’s Junior Infant’s class. We are all getting used to school, making new friends and learning lots of new things.

We are learning our Jolly Phonics sounds and nursery rhymes old and new. Our theme for Aistear was ‘Homes’ so we have had a week based on Goldilocks and the Three Bears and The Three Little Pigs and two weeks based on ‘The Scarecrow’s Wedding’. Activities include role play while using new words, construction, art and craft, sequencing activities and much more. In Maths we are exploring number and doing pattern.

We are learning to write new letters in sand, on whiteboards, in marla as well as on paper.

We love gymnastics and ball skills and we are always having fun while learning lots.

Category: Junior Infants, Literacy, Aistear, Art | Comments Off

October 14 2018

News from Mr. Dunne’s Third Class!

It’s been an absolutely wonderful start to the year in Room 13, with plenty of interesting and exciting things just one month in. Recently, we’ve been doing plenty of discussion on the changing autumnal weather. We went out on a nature walk to have a search for as many beautiful colours we could find, and took some souvenirs back in with us! We then did some observational drawings which can be seen decorating the hallway just outside our room.

We also worked on creating self-portraits and the results are just amazing! There are some very talented artists up here in Room 13…

We’ve been doing the daily mile each day (depending on the weather!), and we recently carried out an investigation into how exercise affects our pulse rate. In other science-y news, we created some old-fashioned cup telephones to investigate how sound travels! We had great fun doing this, and we were all surprised at how well the sound travels through the string. Amazing!

That’s not all, each week we have been debating RTÉ News2Day’s question of the week. Each week, the children’s news show poses a ‘Question of the Week’ and we have a whole-class discussion and debate, write our opinions and send them in! So far, two of the children in our class (Isabelle Forde and Alan Morley) have actually had their answers read out on the news.

Lastly, we have been working really hard on our family projects. Have a look at a few of them below, and see the fantastic imagination and creativity brought to these projects!

We will update again soon, and thanks for reading our blog post!

Category: Third Class, Literacy, S.E.S.E, Science, Art | Comments Off

October 14 2018

News from Ms. Black’s Junior Infants

We have settled into school and made lots of new friends. We work and play really well together. We are learning letters and enjoy singing the jolly phonics songs. We have been making repeating patterns in maths and learning our numbers and counting sets.

We learned lots about Autumn and made lovely colourful autumn trees . We have collected lots of leaves, acorns and conkers. We learned a poem about a squirrel called Whisky Frisky!

We have enjoyed the story about The Scarecrow’s Wedding and did role play, construction and art activities based on it. We made fabulous scarecrows and they even have repeating patterns on their clothes.

We are doing really well at GAA football skills, our coach Steve is very impressed. We are looking forward to Halloween and will make some scary Witches and funny pumpkins.

Category: Junior Infants, Literacy, Numeracy, Aistear, Art, Physical Education | Comments Off

October 5 2018

There’s a Starman waiting in the sky – 5th Class in September

Mrs Lennon’s fifth class have had a busy September.

We are delighted to be together in a new class with many new friends.

In Gaeilge we have been practicing our Mé Féin comhrás and we enjoy chatting about ourselves ‘as Gaeilge’.

We have also learned to draw ourselves, and were quite surprised to discover the true proportions of our faces!

In science we did a fun experiment called ‘Hanger Clanger’ where we learned about how sound travels.

Hanger Clanger

We have been rehearsing for our National Children’s Choir Concert which will take place in the National Basketball Arena in March. Our favourite song so far is Starman by David Bowie.

We have learned about the Beaufort Wind Scale and were able to calculate wind speeds during Storm Ali.

In History we learned about the Aztecs and we designed holiday brochures for Irish Counties in Geography.

Our County Tourist Information Brochures

We enjoy our gymnastics with Jay every Tuesday and have also been learning how to play cricket with Diarmuid from Cricket Ireland. Ms Basquille has been coaching us in running techniques on Fridays.

Check back next month for some more fifth class news!

Category: Fifth Class, Gaeilge, Science, Art, Music, Physical Education | Comments Off

October 3 2018

September News from Ms. Olson’s Class!

What a start to a fantastic new year in Senior Infants! Our monthly theme for September was ‘All About Me’ and we thoroughly enjoyed learning about families, our bodies, our school and of course recognising how special and unique we all are!

During Aistear time, we had great fun playing in the Doctor’s Surgery role play corner. We had to sign patients in at reception and instruct them to wait in our waiting room, before being seen by the doctor in the treatment room. We were also very excited to play ‘Teach your Monster to Read’ on the class computers and we’re definitely getting the hang of using the mouse and the keyboard now.

In English, we have been working really hard to learn all our Jolly Phonics and to develop our blending skills. We read ‘Owl Babies’ by Martin Waddell and ‘The Smartest Giant in Town’ by Julia Donaldson and learnt how to predict, question, summarise and make connections! In Maths, we have been super busy sorting collections of objects into sets, making patterns and partitioning for three, four and five. We also carried out some data investigations and recorded them both on paper and using our interactive board. In Gaeilge, we learnt many phrases in relation to ‘Mé Féin’ and ‘Lá Bréithe’ and sang some new songs and rhymes.

In S.E.S.E, we made family trees, identified the names of our body parts and went on a tour of our school before creating a big map on the classroom floor of our journey. In Drama, we played some fun games and read ‘Elmer’ by David McKee. Poor Elmer was sad that he was different from all the other elephants but we helped him to feel better by finding a solution to his problem! We like to start our day with a song, so we have been singing some lovely songs in Music. We are currently learning a song in preparation for Halloween – it is called ‘There was an old witch..’ And last but not least, we have made some beautiful artwork in Senior Infants. We drew and painted our self portraits and made some lovely Wassily Kandinsky inspired autumn trees!

Category: Senior Infants, Literacy, Numeracy, Aistear, S.E.S.E, Art, Music, Drama | Comments Off