November 4 2018

Mischief Managed in Ms. Kett’s Class!

We have gone Harry Potter mad in Ms. Kett’s 6th class and we’re currently starting the 2nd 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 6th 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.

 

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October 29 2018

Ms Ryan’s Second Class

Welcome to Ms. Ryan’s 2nd class! What a term we’ve had! At the start of the year we went on a mini-beast hunt around our school. We looked closely for minibeasts in different habitats and recorded what we saw and where we found them. Some of the minibeasts were not so mini!

We have been learning all about our locality in SESE. We created maps of Shankill and discussed the bridges in our area. This was so interesting as we didn’t notice how many different types there are. We learned all about how they stay up and what they are used for. We even tested a few types of bridge structures using paper to see which could hold the most weight.

Last week was Maths Week! We had lots of fun challenging each other on Mathletics for our homework. We also challenged other children in the school and around the world! We discovered maths all around us both at home and in school with scavenger hunts and a maths trail. For art we created some spooky symmetrical monsters.

Let’s hope the year continues as successfully as it started. Happy Halloween from Ms. Ryan’s class!

 

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October 29 2018

Mr Donnelly’s Fourth Class

The last few weeks have been absolutely hectic! If we weren’t playing maths games and solving puzzles for Maths week or doing our homework in unusual places for “Roamwork4homework” (see our twitter @zaptower), we were swimming in Loughlinstown pool or experiencing a bit of culture at St. Joseph’s of Clooney’s musical “Footloose”. You see?! Flat out!! Happy Halloween everyone!!!

      

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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.

 

 

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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 on News from Mr. Dunne’s Third Class!
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 on News from Ms. Black’s Junior Infants
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

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!

  

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May 9 2018

April was an Eggciting Month in Senior Infants!

What a busy month we’ve had in Senior Infants! Our monthly theme was ‘The Sea’ and we had great fun exploring this topic.

In English we read the stories, ‘The Snail and the Whale’ and ‘Sharing a Shell’ by Julia Donaldson and discovered that Julia is a big fan of rhyming words just like we are! We love ‘Rhyme Time’ in our class each morning! We found some very interesting words for our word wall and we liked writing our own adventures for the Snail and the Whale. We also wrote about a time when we went to the seaside (real or imaginary!).

In Maths we had great fun learning about capacity. We sorted different sized containers and estimated and measured how much water, sand and different materials could fit into them. We also decided which containers would be best for holding different materials. Ms. Olson played a trick on us in our last capacity lesson – she poured water from a small container into a larger container and asked us if the containers had the same amount of water in them or whether they were different! Ms. Olson managed to trick quite a few of us (hehe!).

We had great fun in S.E.S.E this month. We learned about ‘The Titanic’ and constructed our own Titanic models in Art. We investigated different materials from the seaside including sand, pebbles, stones, sea glass, driftwood and even seaweed. We were able to touch the materials and feel the difference that water had on them. For example, when the seaweed was dry it felt quite crunchy and hard and when wet it was slimey and slippery! We also did a floating and sinking experiment and made predictions about which objects would float and which would sink. We learned about some interesting sea animals too. Did you know that an octopus has blue blood? We were very lucky to receive a Big Grow package from our friends at Innocent. We grew some lovely cress, spinach and peas and made sure to water them everyday.

In Music, we learned the song Apusski Dusky and performed it for the Junior School at assembly. We also listened and resonded to songs from The Little Mermaid – ‘Under the Sea’ and ‘Part of Your World’. In Art, as well as our Titanics, we made jellyfish mobiles and newpaper sharks and in Drama, we helped ‘The Rainbow Fish’ decide what to do with his shimmering scales.

                                  

We had great fun in our Aistear stations this month, in particular, we really enjoyed our time in ‘The Pirate Ship’. We also loved our time at the water and sand play station. We love getting messy!

However, perhaps the biggest news we have from Senior Infants this month is: We welcomed four beautiful ducklings into the world! We incubated the eggs for 28 days and on the 25th and 26th April 2018 we welcomed James Pond, Smash, Sir Quacks-a-lot and DJ Tiny into Senior Infants. At two weeks old, they are now too big to come to school anymore and they are off to a lovely new farm home in Enniskerry to be with some other ducks. We’ll miss their little chirps in the classroom!

That’s all from us here in Senior Infants, we hope you’ve enjoyed reading our blog post!

 

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December 13 2017

A Busy Month in 5th Class!

This November in Ms. D’Arcy and Ms. Ní Mhurchú’s 5th class we did quite a lot! “Mum’s the word” – but we’ve been reading a lot of Shakespeare lately. That’s just one of the phrases that the Bard introduced to everyday life. Other phrases you’re probably familiar with are: “Not slept one wink”, “Fashionable”, “A wild goose chase” and “All’s well that ends well”. Old Spike Milligan has been broadening our imaginations with his crazy poetry including “On the Ning Nang Nong”

Our minds have nearly exploded with all the knowledge we’ve learned about Pompeii and Rome! We’ve made our own volcanoes erupt and wrote stories about life as a gladiator. We thought long division would divide our heads altogether but it surprised us by being very simple.

We also learned how to sketch and draw our classmates with fantastic results. In Gaeilge we’ve been using the APOE system which is an easy way for children to create sentences as Gaeilge. We’ve also been working hard on our Briathra Neamhrialta!

We hope you’re on your best behaviour, because if not – who you gonna call? PEACE PROTECTORS! A group of us in fifth class have been given the responsibility to help out on yard and we have cool high viz jackets so we can be easily seen.

We all felt like winners when Sam Maguire came to visit. We even got to touch him (never washing our hands again!). What a busy month it was! – and December is set to be even busier. ..

 

 

By Ava Mulcahy and Jennifer O’ Dwyer

 

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