Halloween fun!

Here's an idea of what we got up to today.

In History, we looked at the history of Halloween traditions, including, the name for Halloween, trick or treating and Jack-O-Lanterns.

In Irish we looked at some new vocabulary relating to Halloween. 

Gardaí Kate and Dave then visited us to give us some very important messages about staying safe this Halloween.

We ran lots today, both as part of our MarathonKids and the yearly Halloween fun run!

In English, we wrote some scary Halloween stories called 'The Creature Under the Haunted House.'

We enjoyed lots of sweet treats and a party at the end of the day to celebrate Halloween!!!

Tomorrow we are going on an educational tour to Drogheda where we are hoping to learn some of the history of Drogheda. A fun and eduactional day out!

Here are some photos of all the fantastic Halloween costumes in our class:

Safety at Halloween

Today our local Gardaí Kate and Dave came in to give us a very important talk on Safety at Halloween.

We watched a video which highlighted the shacking dangers at Halloween time, particularly.

Following this video we had a long chat about how we can stay safe this Halloween and also encourage others to be safe

It's so important that we take care this Halloween, especially in relation to fireworks, bangers, bonfires, dressing up and trick'r'treating.

Ask your child what important lessons they learned today from Kate and Dave. 

Literacy Station Teaching

Every Monday morning, we have Literacy Station teaching for an hour.

Mrs. Callaghan and Ms. Rooney assist us with our learning.

We split up into three groups with a teacher guiding us in each group.

Here's an idea of what we get up to:

Mrs. Callaghan is focusing on letter writing-by the end of our 6 week block the children will have lots of skills needed to write different types of letters.

In my group, we are working on improving reading fluency with the class. We look at the necessary reading skills needed to be a fluent reader and put them to practice using interesting reading material on the ipads.

Ms. Rooney is working on a programme called 'Building Bridges of Understanding.' Through different stories, this group develop essential comprehension, prediction, connection and understanding skills.

Literacy station teaching is a great way of learning. We work in small focus groups with the teachers for 20 minutes per group. At the end of the hour, we have covered three main areas of literacy.

Our next block of station teaching will focus on Maths.

Maths Trail with Junior Infants! 20.10.16

Lots of fun today exploring all the Maths in our school grounds. We turned on our Maths eyes to pair up with the junior infants and taught them lots of maths. We looked at shapes, colours, size and counting!

Well done to all the boys and girls in 5th class for creating such interesting questions on the Maths Trails. The Junior Infants loved it as much as we did!

Here are some pictures-what a beautiful day!

Maths Week 19-10-16

This week is Maths Week. 

Today, we had lots of fun with Maths games and challenges. 

Some of the fun activities including a simple guessing how long 1 minute was, we closed our eyes and sat down when we thought one minute was up. One girl got it bang on 1 minute and two others were 2 seconds off, it's a lot trickier than you think!!

Following that we tried to complete a shape challenge, see picture attached, some of us were successful. Basically we had to fit the triangular shapes into the square which sounds easy! Try it yourself at home, the children brought home the shapes.

 Finally, we worked on area. using dice and some grid paper, we tried to cover as much area (Length X Width) as we could. this game was similar to the computer game of Tetris.

Tomorrow, we will be completing a Maths Trails with Junior Infants and on Friday, we'll be doing our own challenging Maths Trail. 

When we are learning about Maths, it's always good to relate it to our environment. We try do this as much as possible to make our learning real. 

The more that you read, the more that you will know!

Every Monday, we take part in 'Buddy Reading' with Ms. Farrell's Junior Infants class.

This is an excellent opportunity for our class to engage in reading to a younger audience and put their reading fluency skills, we are learning in class to practice.

It is lovely to see the class working with the younger children. They are fantastic readers and really exercise their use of expression, creating a sense of curiosity for the younger kids.

As you can see from the photos, we use the ipads to do our reading and at the end of the reading we often teach the younger children some ICT skills using different games like the matching game above.

Reminder: Please check and sign your child's reading log weekly. (Supplementary reading log) In 5th class, your child should be aiming to finish one of these books within the week. Once checked and signed, they can change their book in school. Please ask your child what part of reading we are focusing on in class. This week we are focusing on reading with expression.