June 11 2019

May News from Ms. Olson’s Class!

Our theme for the month of May was ‘The Sea’. We had great fun during Aistear time as we had a pirate ship in the classroom! We had to sail our private ship and go on the hunt for treasure! We also made pirate ships out of Lego and engaged with lots of messy play in the form of water and sand play! Towards the end of the month we did some paper weaving and made woven fish. They turned out really well!

  

   

In English, we read the story, ‘The Snail and the Whale’ by Julia Donaldson. We focused on using our comprehension strategies including summarising and questioning. We also worked on our rhyming skills as Julia Donaldson’s books are great for learning about rhyme. This really helped us when we came to write in our PAT rhyming word families book. We also read ‘Winnie Under the Sea’ by Valerie Thomas. We thought this story was really funny. We wrote a summary of the story in our copy books and Ms. Olson was so impressed with our handwriting and spelling!

In Maths, we had lots of fun learning about capacity. We played with sand, counters, cubes and water as we investigated the capacity of different objects. We read the story of ‘Goldilocks and the Three Bears’ and had to decide which bowls and cups to use for the three Bears by estimating and measuring which container held more / less. We even had a little popcorn party and had to decide which was the best container to use to share out the popcorn! We also started subtraction in May which is amazing because subtraction is really First Class work!

In Gaeilge, we learned lots of nice poems, songs and phrases surrounding the themes of ‘An Teilifís’ (Television) and ‘Siopadóireacht’ (Shopping). In S.E.S.E, we spoke about a trip to the seaside and wrote about a time that we went to the seaside and what we did there. We also learned about the Titanic. We were very lucky because two boys in our class brought in some fact books about the Titanic that we had a little read of. It was very interesting. We watched some underwater footage of the Titanic and were amazed that there are still some plates in the cabinets in one of the dining rooms!

It was Active Schools Week at the end of May and what a week it was! On Monday we had martial arts and circuit training. On Tuesday we had Sports Day. On Wednesday we had GAA and dance lessons and on Friday we got to go on four bouncey castles. It was such a fun week!

    

In Music, we learned some nice songs including ‘Apusski Dusski’ which is a song about a sardine, ‘Jackie the Sailor’ and ‘Chuaigh mé go dtí an Trá’. We also listened to some songs from ‘The Little Mermaid’ and discussed the mood of the songs. We also got a visit from Music Generation which was very cool. They showed us some instruments including the Cello, the Violin and the Piccolo. They also played us a few pieces of music. It was very enjoyable. Finally in Art we made lots of cool pieces. We made newspaper shark collages, paper plate jellyfish and egg carton Titanics! Check them out! Thanks for reading our blog, we cannot believe we only have a couple of weeks left in school before the holidays and before we become big First Class!!

 

Category: Senior Infants, Literacy, Numeracy, Aistear, S.E.S.E, Art, Physical Education | Comments Off on May News from Ms. Olson’s Class!
May 28 2019

An Interview with Mr. Allen!

Recently the boys and girls of the 5th and 6th class soccer teams have had a lot of success. That is why I have interviewed Mr. Allen, their coach to find out how they are getting on.

I wanted to get some background information on Mr. Allen and see how long he has been a coach. I wondered had many of his teams won before and if there were any exciting games coming up soon.

 Mr. Allen has been coaching the girl’s soccer team for one year now. He has been coaching the boys’ soccer team for 3 months. The boys’ last match was on Wednesday the 10th of April and they won 10-nil which was an amazing result. The girls’ last match was on the 2nd of April and they drew 2-2 which is also a great result.

If the boys win their next match they will be in the league quarter final and that goes for the girls too. This is amazing. We are so lucky to have Mr. Allen so dedicated to both our boys’ and girls’ teams.  Mr. Allen also told me that the boys are also in the cup semi-finals. The boys have not lost any of their matches so far and the girls have only lost two.  These are both incredible records. These records are in place because of Mr. Allen’s work and also the boys and girls who train so hard and are always ready to play a match. Mr. Allen’s favourite part about being a coach is giving boys and girls the opportunity to play sports on a team for their school.

We hope that we will be able to bring some more good news soon!

By Anna

Mr. Allen’s 4th class

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April 16 2019

February News from Ms. Olson’s Class!

In February we learnt all about animals. We had great fun playing in our Veterinary Surgery role play corner during Aistear time. In English, we read the story, Farmer Duck, written by Martin Waddell and we practised our summarising and sequencing skills. We loved reading this story as it was very funny!

In Maths, we learnt about weight. We had lots of fun sorting different objects according to weight and playing and measuring with balances. We even got to bake some tasty buns!

   

   

In Gaeilge we learnt lots of phrases and songs relating to the themes of  Éadaí  (Clothes) and ‘Sa Bhaile’ (Home). In S.E.S.E we learnt about farmers and vets, animals and their young and how to care for our pets. We also did some report writing on ‘Our Pets’.

In Drama, we read the story ‘Cleopatra Silverwing’ by Adria Meserve. This story follows the life of a beautiful butterfly who loves doing cherry dip flips and loop-the-loops! One day she decides to go on an adventure instead of doing what she’s told – a storm is brewing and she is told it’s time to head home. We pretended to be Cleopatra doing her stunts and we came up with solutions to her problems that she faced on her adventure. In Music, we sang some lovely songs related to our animal theme – ‘Who Built the Ark?’ and ‘Please Mr. Noah’. In Art we made some cute little piggies out of cardboard tubes to celebrate Chinese New Year and we made animals out of clay!

   

Finally in P.E we learnt a dance to the Lion King’s ‘I just can’t wait to be King’. We did dance lessons with Ms. Casey for six weeks and at the end, we performed this dance for all the children at Junior Assembly. You can check out our dance on Twitter @MsOlsonsClass.

 

Category: Senior Infants, Literacy, Maths, Gaeilge, Aistear, S.E.S.E, Art, Music, Drama, Physical Education | Comments Off on February News from Ms. Olson’s Class!
March 27 2019

Interview with Steve Davis, GAA Ballskills Coach in St Anne’s.

Q. Where in the school do you teach your classes?

A. In the junior and senior yard.

Q. What skills do they learn?

A. They learn the solo, pick up, kick pass, hand pass, high catch, chest catch and the punt kick.

Q. Are the skills hard, medium or easy level?

A. They are medium level.

Q. Do you do any warm up games?

A. Yes, flush the toilet, stuck in the mud, the traffic light game and tag.

Q. Are your classes good at it?

A. Yes. Very good at it.

Q. Do they get lots of exercise?

A. They do, most of the drills involve moving.

Q. What is your favourite skill to teach?

A. The punt kick.

Q. Do they enjoy it?

A. Yes, they do enjoy it.

Q. Do you enjoy it?

A. Yes.

Q. Is it fun!?

A. Yes, it is great fun.

Steve says:

It is great to see boys and girls learning new skills whilst having fun. It’s great to see so many boys and girls from St. Anne’s school playing for Shankill G.A.A club during the week and during the weekend.

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March 11 2019

Back to School with a Bang in Senior Infants!

January was an interesting month in Senior Infants because we learnt all about Egypt! We had lots of fun during Aistear time. We enjoyed playing in the Airport Role Play corner where we pretended to be going on our holidays to Egypt. We liked building pyramids out of Lego. We pretended to be archaeologists digging for buried treasure during sand play and we worked as a team to create cool mummies and sarcophaguses.

 

In English, we spent a lot of time on narrative writing as we entered the Write a Book Project. Our book was about a little boy and a little girl called John and Jojo. They went on a school tour to an Egyptian museum and managed to travel back in time to have a scary encounter with a mummy! It all turned out ok in the end though!

In Gaeilge, we learned many songs and phrases around the topics of Bia (food) and Éadaí (Clothes). We loved playing little language games using picture cards in pairs because we were able to talk to our friends using the simple phrases that we’d learnt. In Maths we revised pattern and data. We made lots of different patterns using shapes, camels, pegboards and unifi cubes. We did a survey of our class to investigate what everyone’s favourite toy was and then we recorded the data by making bar charts.

  

  

In S.E.S.E we learnt all about Egypt. We learned about Egypt’s landscape, rivers, mountains and cities. We learnt about Egyptian food and animals that you might find in Egypt such as camels, cheetahs, crocodiles, hyenas and cobras. Then we learnt about Egyptian pharaohs such as Tutankhamun and Cleopatra and about pyramids and mummies. We found it all very fascinating!

In Art, we wrote our names in Egyptian hieroglyphs and we made pharaoh pictures using our photographs. We also made Egyptian golden necklaces using dyed pasta! They all turned out really well!

  

In Music we’ve been learning lots of songs as we always start our day with a song. We particularly enjoyed learning the song ‘Over in the Meadow’ and we loved performing it for our Grandparents on Grandparent’s Day. In Drama, we read the story ‘The Girl with the Red Slippers’ which is an Egyptian version of Cinderella. We had great fun pretending to be ballerinas and acting out the different parts in the story. Finally, we have been doing dance in P.E with Catherine Casey and we learnt a dance from the Lion King. You can check it out on our twitter page – @MsOlsonsClass

Category: Senior Infants, Literacy, Numeracy, Gaeilge, Aistear, S.E.S.E, Art, Drama, Physical Education | Comments Off on Back to School with a Bang in Senior Infants!
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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November 18 2018

School Tours in Ms. Kett’s Sixth Class!

Another busy month in 6th class – we can’t actually believe how quickly time is flying by.

The highlight of the last few weeks has to have been watching the girl’s team battle courageously and determinedly in Croke Park and our school tour to Henrietta Street and The Hugh Lane gallery.

We are so proud of the girl’s team and we really respect them for getting out there, staying active, giving their all and representing us and St.Anne’s in such a positive way. Team sports are such a brilliant way of staying fit and healthy but also, committing to a team teaches us to work together, respect and support each other and handle life’s ups and downs and highs and lows in a way that we can’t be simply told about or taught in a classroom. It is invaluable experience that teaches us resilience and important life lessons.

Our tour to Henrietta Street was another day of learning and fun. We arrived at the building in the heart of Dublin city and immediately upon entering, were transported to another time and place. We had really interesting guides who explained to us the history of the building and gave us a good understanding of the lives of the families who lived and sometimes sadly died there. We learned about the different stages in it’s history, which reflected the history of Dublin through the years. It’s journey from a prosperous and flambouyant townhouse during the Georgian Era in Dublin to the slums and tenaments of Dublin’s darkest days, to an example of a family’s home during the 1930s until its last occupants left in the late 1970s. It was a facinating and nostalgic tour that opened our eyes to life in our city in the past. We would highly recommend it to everyone – young and old.

   

We had a fantastic last day before mid-term with dress up and cake eating fun and we are looking forward to the run in to christmas now 🙂

                       

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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!
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October 17 2018

News from Ms Hughes senior infants class.

 Our class has had a great start to the school year. I am so impressed with this group of kind and hard working Senior Infants. In fact these guys are so kind that our class ‘Kindness Cape’ is getting worn out from all the wear it’s getting!
Much of our learning has centered around our ‘Aistear’ play themes On The Farm and The Vet. Each day we play with a different play centre related to our theme. It’s great fun and we are getting really good at planning our play and tidying up afterwards.
We are very active in school with weekly Ball Skills and Gymnastics and we also love our in class ‘Gonoodle’ and ‘Cosmic Kids Yoga’! Physical activity is important as our brains need a break after all of the hard work in class.
We have recited lots of funny poems, become weather reporters, gone on a nature walk and baked apple crumble. This week we started to make some Halloween art. We are looking forward to seeing what learning and fun the rest of term brings!
 
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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.

  

 

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