News from Ms. Rigby’s First Class!

We’ve once again had a busy few weeks in room 3. We had the most wonderful day for Grandparents day. We enjoyed performing and also asking loads of questions. We also performed at assembly. Our performance was all about the extra homework we were given. We weren’t too impressed when Ms Rigby gave us extra homework. The extra homework was to smile a little bit more.

We’ve also started group work projects. We found it a little tricky at first but we are getting much better. We have been working together to make presentations on different dinosaurs for the whole class. We’ll show you them when they are done.

We also had a great week for world book day. We were lucky enough to have Mr Fingleton read to us! We thought the books were very funny!

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January 23 2019

News from Ms. Rigby’s First Class!

It has been quite a while since our last blog post. We had a busy few weeks leading up to Christmas. We had an amazing performance at our Christmas play and everyone was so proud of us. We sang with beautiful singing voices and we said our lines using our stage voices.

We came back from Christmas with a fresh attitude to work. We have been focusing on the theme of toys and have even invented our own toy. We had to make sure our toys were unique enough for someone to want to buy one. We had some great ideas like an edible unicorn doll that grows back when you eat it! We will post some pictures of our work in our next blog post!

We’ve also been very lucky to start ball skill this term with Steve. We’ve had two weeks so far and we have really enjoyed it!

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January 14 2019

First Class – Ms McManus

After a really lovely break, we’ve started to settle down in first class after a crazy and fun lead up to Christmas! One of the first things we did as a class, was discuss New Year’s Resolutions. We brainstormed some ideas that we knew we could stick to for the whole year, and everyone chose one to write up as a reminder. We’ll let you know how they’re going throughout the year!

Just before the break, we learned all about Christopher Columbus and his explorations. We learned about his life as a trader and chatted about how difficult life would have been as an explorer, before the invention of airplanes! Once we felt we knew enough about Columbus, we created fact files so that other people in our class could come and learn about him too!

Our first art lesson of the year focused on a printing technique called ‘pointilism’. We used cotton buds to fill outlines of our favourite toys with colour. It took a long time and the boys and girls had to be very patient, but I think the hard work paid off!

Pointilism Examples:

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December 13 2018

First Class – Ms McManus

During the month of November, we spent a lot of time learning about space. The whole class showed such a big interest in space and had such amazing knowledge on the topic, that we even created a space table! Every morning, we would spend a few minutes discussing any new objects or creations that were brought in and placed on the table. We loved to spend any free time we had picking up some new knowledge from the amazing things people brought in.

A really important person we learnt about during the month was Neil Armstrong, who was the first man on the moon. Did you know that Armstrong was just 15 years old when he got his first pilots license? He was also part of the National Aeronautics and Space Administration, or NASA, for many years. To help us remember these facts and to help us understand his life better, we created these ‘Neil Armstrong Timelines’

Before we started working on the topic of space, we wanted to show how much we already knew! We created a KWL in our copies, and a lot of us wanted to learn more about the planets. We started our lesson by creating large pictures of what we thought all of the planets might look like, and what order they might be in. Having discussed everyone’s different ideas, we learnt a rhyme to help us remember the order of the eight planets:

My Very Elderly Mother Just Served Us Noodles

Once we had learnt a little more about the planets, we created these space pictures! Can you believe we put black paint over our beautiful colouring? It was a little scary but we think it paid off!

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November 21 2018

News from Ms. Rigby’s First Class!

We’ve had another great few weeks in Room 3. We have been so amazing that we even won a hot chocolate party!

We’ve been busy with our new playground idea called circle of friends. Circle of friends is a circle of children from our class who have a corner of the yard for themselves where they can play with blocks, chalk and a ball. We are encouraged to use positive hands and kind words when playing. This is the only rule to being part of the circle. We have really enjoyed this and have found that we are mixing really well and making new friends. The circle has become bigger each week. We really think that we are playing much more kindly because of the circle and we hope the benefits of it will last a long time. We then made a friendship recipe as part of SPHE to remember what makes a great friend.

We also went to space recently and wrote postcards home. This was a really fun activity. Some of us really used our imagination and it was very believable that our postcards were actually from space.

The Sam Maguire came to visit us last week. We were all so excited. Maybe someday we will have the opportunity to win it. We just haven’t decided if that will be playing for Mayo or Dublin yet!

Category: First Class, S.P.H.E | Comments Off

November 8 2018

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

October 11 2018

Ms. Rigby’s First Class are a Talented Bunch!

We’ve had a great few weeks in first class. We were honoured to be chosen to be the first class to lead junior assembly. We had to practice really hard and we set a very high standard for everyone else to follow. We were so proud of our amazing performance. Our performance was all about talents and how each of us have different talents. We really are such a talented bunch!

Something really exciting happened this year. In first class, we get to go to the library every Tuesday. We walk so quietly to the library and choose a book at our level. We are so good at this because we had a class discussion before our first library session. We made some great informative posters to help us remember our library rules.

Our first theme of the year was all about clothes. We found it interesting especially when studying Clothes of the past. We can now tell you all about clothes from the 1900’s, 1960’s and the 1980’s. We also discussed what clothes we wear in different seasons. We’ve now moved onto the theme of autumn and we have already learned so much. In pairs, we created amazing sensory poems. We also read a lovely story called ‘Don’t hog the hedge’. We got to meet many animals who hibernate throughout this story.

Thanks for taking the time to read all about our work so far this year. We really are having such a fantastic time in Room 3!

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October 3 2018

First Class and Ms McManus – Learning about Clothes!

This September, First Class have been learning all about clothes. We have even been writing stories about clothes on Fridays! We focused on the different clothes that would be suitable for each of the four seasons. In Spring, we usually wear light clothes sometimes made of cotton, but we usually need a light jumper too. In Summer, we wear shorts, t-shirts and lots of sun cream! In Winter, we like to wrap up in woolly scarves and jumpers. Finally, in Autumn, it is important to keep our raincoats close by, especially in Ireland! We spent some time in Science testing which materials would be best during a rainy Autumn, by checking if they were waterproof. We found that plastic, tinfoil, and rubber were the best materials for keeping water at bay! In art, we designed our own tshirts and hung them up. Check out our líne éadaí!

Category: First Class, Gaeilge, S.E.S.E, Science | Comments Off

November 13 2017

Interviews in Mr. Donnelly’s Class

This is what Mr Donnelly’s 1^st Class have been doing for the past few weeks. They have been making chests with foam paint and they also drew their own haunted houses. We also asked two students what their favourite subject was and they said it was Art and Maths. Mr Donnelly’s favourite subject is science.

Category: First Class, Media Team, Art | Comments Off

November 13 2017

Art in Ms. Rigby’s Class

Ms Rigby’s 1^st class have been doing a lot of art. For Halloween they made silhouettes. They are now planning their Winter Art. We asked two children what their favourite subjects were and they said Irish and Maths. Ms Rigby’s favourite subject is Maths.

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