Here is an update on everything that happened in room 6 in January.

New Year’s Resolutions

The girls wrote some New Year’s resolutions. I wonder if we’ll manage to stick to them?

Cursive Writing

We have been practising our cursive writing in our Write Here during term one. In term two Ms. McCarthy will be moving some girls on to cursive writing in their copies. Remember to have a good point on your pencil and to sit up properly when writing. We will continue to practise our letter formation, as some letters are harder to remember than others.

Bacteria Workshop

Cara and Clodagh from Designer Minds came to the class to do a workshop. We were learning about bacteria. We each got to grow our own bacteria in a dish.

My Life Solutions

Sarah from MyLife Solutions came to talk to us about friendship. She spoke about what makes a good friend. We identified what qualities we have that make us good friends. We then delved a bit deeper and thought about times we weren’t good friends and didn’t display these qualities. What we could do differently in future?

Catholic Schools Week

Catholic Schools Week started on Monday the 28^th of January. This year we focused on welcoming diversity. We completed a lovely activity where the girls wrote nice things about each other on a page. We discussed how we all have unique gifts and talents. No one is better than us at being us! We are unique and treat everyone with respect. God loves us all equally!

Gaeilge Verbs

During term one, we focused on learning the past tense ‘Aimsir Chaite’ (this is the red list on the glance card). At the beginning of the month we did a blitz revision of all the verbs we had learnt in term one.

Now we have moved on to learning the present tense verbs ‘Aimsir Láithreach’ (the yellow list on the glance card).

Present tense verbs will be learnt in the following order.

1. An Chéád Réimniú (A-R) One syllable verbs
2. An Dara Réimniú (A-M on the other side of the card) Two syllable verbs -a lot ending in -igh
3. Briathra Neamhrialta (1-11) There are 11 irregular verbs

Italy Day

Italy Day is fast approaching! Lots of hard work and dedication here in room 6! The projects are looking fabulous! I’m very proud of the work the girls have put in.

Just a reminder that there is no pressure to prepare food for the day!! If the girls are bringing in food I have reminded them it can’t be heated in school. Also they have to give parents plenty of notice, i.e. not on Thursday night!

Stations Games

As part of English stations we have been playing some fantastic games to develop spelling and oral language skills. Scrabble and Bananagrams are a hit and we try to make words with four or more letters. 30 seconds for Kids is a great oral language game. You have to describe an item without mentioning its name or saying rhymes with. Scrabble might be a nice game for the girls to teach you to play at home 🙂

As discussed in class this project will be done in groups. It will mainly be completed in school but you may be asked to do some research at home.

Projects will be displayed in poster format.

The topics to be included are;

1. Family life and homes
2. Roman army
3. Gods
4. Entertainment (Colosseum, Circus Maximus, baths etc.)
5. A timeline (don’t start this bit until next week- we have a bit more learning to do first)

You may begin researching your project. Decide how you will divide the tasks? Will one person take a topic each? Will each person do their own research and then you can combine it all together?

Remember each girl in your group should be able to talk about and explain the information on the poster.

If you have room at the end of the project you can add in your own sections e.g. Clothes, Emperors, Pompeii or Interesting Facts

The project is due 8th of February.

Italian day will be Friday 15th of February.

To help get you started;

https://www.ducksters.com/history/ancient_rome.php

http://www.historyforkids.net/ancient-rome.html

https://www.bbc.com/bitesize/articles/z2sm6sg

*Supervision when using the internet is advised.

The library is also a great resource to use when doing projects. See if you can find any books that we could use in your local library.

Congratulations to Sarah D., our new Class President.

Sarah C. will be Vice President.

Well done to all four candidates who gave very convincing speeches!

This term will run until the February mid term break.

A huge thank you to everyone who attended our production of Roald Dahl’s Little Red Riding Hood. The girls put in a lot of preparation, singing the songs and rehearsing their scenes. We hope you enjoyed watching it as much as we enjoyed performing it!

We were learning about toys in the past. We each did an interview with someone from home about the toys they used to play with. We also brought in some of the old toys our parents still had. We spoke about the Late Late Toy Show….to our AMAZEMENT we had a surprise visitor one Friday. Ryan Tubridy came in to the school. Fourth class asked him about his job presenting the Toy Show. He loves to read!

We wrote Limericks in class. They are five lined poems. The first, second and last line rhyme. The third and fourth line then rhyme with each other too. We wrote Limericks about snowmen, Christmas and winter.

We spoke about Christmas traditions around the world. Maybelene’s mum very kindly took the time to visit the class. She told us about Christmas in the Philippines. On our last day she made us some traditional Filippino food. It was delicious! Thank you! 🙂

On Wednesday the 19^th of December we attended a carol service in St. Gabriel’s church. The second and sixth class sang beautifully on the altar. We joined in with the songs we knew. When we came back to the school we went to the hall for Mrs. McCarthy’s annual raffle (Crannchur an Príomhoide). Mary and Ailbhe won prizes. The Parent’s Association gave us a box of chocolates to share around the class. 

Check out our lovely Christmas art! We drew reindeer and cut out penguins. Aren’t they cute?!

Thank you to Caoimhe who has finished her term as class president. Elections for a new class president will take place tomorrow.

Science Week 

We loved Science Week! Each day we made science discoveries!

Monday Mentos and Coke experiment: we created an explosion when the dimples in the mentos mixed with the carbon dioxide in the coke (there was a bit of a sticky mess after).

Tuesday We identified some famous scientists and discovered how their discoveries or inventions help us in daily life.

Wednesday We used the rest of the coke as a cleaning agent. We left two old dirty coins in the coke for 24 hours. The coke made the coins shiny and bright again. If this is what happens to the coins, we decided it can’t be healthy to drink coke everyday :O  

Thursday –Sound experiment. This month we are learning about sound. To make science even more exciting we decided we would swap teachers for each of the experiments, as students in secondary school do. In Ms. McCarthy’s class we were exploring sound and liquid. We made our own instruments with Ms. Davey and learnt how each makes their sound. Ms. McManus taught us about insulators of sound.

Friday – Scientist Visit Ailbhe’s mum visited during Science Week. She explained what she does in work. She makes medicine. We had no idea how much research and testing is involved in making a medicine. Did you know that it can take 10 years for a medicine to reach the shelves?! Sinéad gave us roles to play- a doctor, a doctor’s assistant and a patient. We used height charts, stethoscopes, blood pressure monitors and a peak flow meter. Sinéad’s visit was a lot of fun and we learnt a lot!

Knitting

A few of us have now finished our headbands and have started to knit teddies. A big thank you to the mums who come in on a Friday morning to help us!

Little Red Riding Hood

Last Wednesday we auditioned for the main parts of our Christmas play. Well done to all the girls who auditioned, we really have a VERY talented class. Unfortunately, not everyone could get their first choice but we have made sure that every girl will have a line in the play.

The three forth class teachers had a tough time working together to decide on the main roles Congratulations to Jenny, Keelin, Emer, Iris, Louise and Sarah D . We are happy for them and wish them well learning their lines.

Our class will be performing the play on Monday 10^th of December. We hope you can make it! 

Ms.Banks

On Monday our student teacher Ms. Banks will be teaching us. She will be teaching the class for three weeks from the end of November. 

Arranmore 

We have been learning about Arranmore in geography. We are comparing life in Arranmore to life in Dublin. We were very lucky to have a visit from Emer’s granny,Mary who grew up on Arranmore. She was able to answer a lot of questions we had. She showed us pictures of the island. They are hanging up with the travel brochures we created. We really enjoyed listening to Mary’s stories. We were fascinated to find out her yard in primary school was the beach! Mary told us that if we ever go to Arranmore we will be welcomed by ‘céad mile fáilte’.

Graffiti Classics

Last thing on Friday we made our way to the hall. A classical music group preformed for us. They played the violin, viola and double bass. We learnt knew musical terms such as arco (playing with a bow) and pizzicato (plucking the strings). Ava was invited up to play the double bass! They made listening to classical music fun! 

Recently we started reading our first novel, ‘The Butterfly Lion’ by Michael Morpurgo.

Morpurgo is a fantastic author! We will be exploring the book in different ways. Some of the roles we will be taking on while reading the novel are;

Word Wizard– find interesting or new words in the text

Artful Artist– visually depict anything about the story that engaged you.

Clever Connector– connect the text to your own lives, books, movies etc.

Discussion Director– write some good questions for your group, think of what you would like to talk about.

Summariser– write and share a short overview of what you have read.

Before midterm we focused on narrative writing. With our novel we will be focusing on a new genre of writing- recount. We will be writing diary entries based on our reading. Before writing we will discuss character feelings and work on summarising events in time order.

We will be reading this novel for homework over the next few weeks. The girls have been advised to read with an adult. The reading can be shared, with both student and adult taking turns reading. Discuss what you have read and ask your daughter questions.

Use new vocabulary you come across. I have given your daughter a vocabulary sheet to use with the novel, feel free to add new and interesting words to the list at home.

Some sample questions you might ask when reading at home;

Well done to all the girls on a successful E.U. Day. The standard of the projects and presentations was AMAZING! Super work girls- keep up the hard work!

The class had a great time presenting their work to all the parents and other 4th classes. Thank you to all who came 🙂 For those that could not make it, we will have the projects on display in the cloakroom during parent teacher meetings.

Maths Week 

For Maths Week we have been playing games at the start of each maths lesson. Here are some photos of what we got up to. The girls have really enjoyed the powerlines as it gets them thinking. Here is the link for anyone who wants to try at home:

http://www.primarygames.co.uk/pg2/powerlines/powerlines1.html

 Crazy Hair Day

On Tuesday we had a Crazy Hair Day. We were inspired by the story ‘I Should be on MTV or Something’. In the story the main character goes to a salon to get her hair done. We had some very unusual and unique hairstyles in the classroom on Tuesday!!

Brendan Martin Cup 

On Thursday we wore our Dublin colours. Katie Murray from Clontarf G.A.A. and some of her Dublin team mates visited the school with the Brendan Martin Cup. It was fantastic to see our female role models after their win! Some girls even got to ask questions. To top it all off the ladies got us a night off homework! Yippee! 🙂

Library

We have started visiting the school library. We visit the library on a Thursday. The girls have been borrowing books and recommending good books to each other.

Knitting 

We have started knitting! At the moment we are learning the basics and just knitting test patches. Once we have had a bit of practice, we will try to knit a headband to keep our ears warm in the winter.

Sam Maguire   

On Friday, Jack McCaffrey will be visiting with the Sam Maguire. We will wear our Dublin colours again. A visit from both Dublin teams in the one week….we can’t believe our luck!

This week we took a break from our Weaving Well Being programme, to discuss safety at Halloween.

We spoke about the dangers of fireworks and bonfires at this time of the year. The girls also discussed the dangers of crossing the roads, adding that long costumes and masks can cause accidents as well.

We discussed our experiences of Halloween and how to be safe this year. The girls then made some Halloween safety posters.