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.

Maths Week – 13th to 21st October 2018

Next week is Maths Week! We will be playing lots of fun games and solving problems in class. For maths week we will not be doing our usual Mental Maths homework. Instead we will be given problems to solve and fun acitivities- time to get our thinking caps on!

Every Friday we do maths stations with Ms. McCarthy and Ms. O’Toole. It’s nice to get hands on with maths. Forget the copies and books! We spend three weeks at each station.  The stations are based on measurements;

1. Time

2. Weight (we’re all excited about baking cookies in this group)

3. Capacity

4. Length

Fractions

We are learning about fractions in school at the moment. We each have a sheet in our folder with a fraction wall on one side. On the other side are some activities we can try at home if we want to do some extra work on fractions. We have been using fraction sets in school to explore equivalent fractions and order fractions. Here are some websites where we can explore equivalent fractions;

http://www.sheppardsoftware.com/mathgames/fractions/memory_equivalent1.htm

http://www.sheppardsoftware.com/mathgames/fractions/equivalent_fractions_shoot.htm

Maths is all around us! Keep Maths Week going at home by asking your daughter maths related questions in daily routines. Use the clock and calendar, count up how much the shopping list will cost, weigh ingredients or observe shapes around you. A few posts back you will find a post on division. In this post I have linked tables games which the girls can play.

We have been learning about the lungs this month in science. We have learnt lots of new words associated with the lungs such as; diaphragm, bronchus and windpipe. We labelled diagrams in our copies.

On Tuesday we had a visit from Caoimhe’s dad. He is a lung doctor and was able to answer lots of our questions. He explained that the lungs are like the luas, they transport oxygen around the body. 

We found Dr. Butler’s talk VERY interesting! After his visit teacher asked us to write a paragraph about what we discovered…..some of us wrote over an a4 page, we had so much to say!

The girls loved learning about the lungs and have found it very interesting. It is great to see them take such an interest in science at a young age. Next week we will be making our own lung model to demonstrate how the lungs work 🙂

This week in maths we are continuing with division. We have spent time as a class looking at different ways to solve division sums- grouping, repeated subtraction, inverse of multiplication.

As I said at the information morning, a good knowledge of tables really helps in maths. At this stage the girls should be able to understand the inverse operation relationship between multiplication and division.

Useful vocabulary to use with this topic:

sharing, share equally between/among, grouping, sets, equal amount, repeated subtraction, divide, left over, remainder, how many times, exchange, divisible, factor, divisor, dividend, quotient

32 ÷ 8 = 4

32 is the dividend

8 is the divisor

4 is the quotient

Useful websites to help with learning tables:

1. https://www.timestables.com/
2.  http://www.sheppardsoftware.com/math.htm#mixedoperations
3.  https://www.topmarks.co.uk/maths-games/7-11-years/times-tables

*Please ensure your child is monitored when playing on the internet as some links may navigate away from the site

During October we will be learning about the European Union and countries within the E.U.

As part of geography the girls will be presenting their first project. Each girl has been given an E.U. member country to research.

The project will be bound in school and should be presented on a4 sized pages. We have started our research in school. We have started a fact file which should be used as a guide when completing the projects. We will create the front page of our project during art.

When continuing the project at home, please be advised that this should be a simple project in your daughters own words. It should be no more than 5 pages (including the fact file completed in school). It is due Friday the 19th of October 2018.

I have included a number of websites you may find useful when researching at home. The public library is another great source of information.

http://www.ducksters.com/geography/europe.php (scroll down to find your country)

http://www.oddizzi.com/teachers/explore-the-world/places/europe/ (countries along the side)

http://www.scienceforkidsclub.com/european-countries.html

https://europa.eu/kids-corner/countries/index_en.htm

*Please note: adult supervision is advised when children research projects online as external links may not be suitable.

We would love to invite the parents in to view our presentations.

E.U. DAY will be held on Wednesday, 24th of October between 9-10a.m.

Following up on our information morning I wanted to give a list of suitable titles and authors for fourth class. Reading is very important!

Even in fourth class the girls should be reading aloud to an adult and also should be read to by an adult. A great way to do this is sharing the reading.

Discuss the book with your daughter by making predictions, inferring what will happen next or analysing characters.

Authors

Roald Dahl     J.K. Rowling    Michael Murpurgo    David Walliams

Marita Conlon-McKenna       Enid Blyton

(Jacqueline Wilson has some fantastic books for this age group, but do be aware that she also writes for teens and some of her books are inappropriate for primary school).

Books

Here are some excellent books that 4^th class girls have recommended;

1. Harry Potter series
2. Billionaire Boy
3. Heidi
4. Percy Jackson series
5. The Secret Garden
6. Mallory Towers
7. Diary of a Wimpy Kid
8. Wizards of Once
9. The Nine Lives Triology
10. Tom Gates
11. Wonder
12. Auggie and Me
13. Black Beauty
14. A Series of Unfortunate Events
15. Katy
16. The Heros of Olympus
17. The Faraway Tree
18. Matilda
19. Goodnight Stories for Rebel Girls

Be aware of your own daughter’s ability when helping her choose books. Read the blurb together and discuss the choice.

Summer stars have some great tips on how to choose a book with your child, engaging reluctant readers, reading development etc.

http://www.librariesireland.ie/summer-stars/supporting-childrens-reading-information-sheets/

Vocabulary

When children come across new words in different contexts they develop a stronger understanding and a more detailed vocabulary. Try using new vocabulary from the reading in daily conversations.

Every day we will uncover a new word. Our ‘Word of the Day’ will be given as homework where the girls will use it in their own sentence. Over time we will develop our word bank together.