School Tour - Brittas Bay

What a fantastic day at the beach for our school tour! We took off for Brittas Bay in a bright pink double decker bus! Firstly we had free play with all our friends at the beach, then we were in groups and moved to different areas for different activities; we made sandcastles and dug lots of holes, we had our snacks, we raced up and down the sand dunes, we roasted marshmallows (they were yummy!), we paddled in the sea (it was cold!), we looked at the shells and stones and we played rounders and football. We got hot chips delivered out to us and we really enjoyed them. It was lots of fun, especially when we nearly had the whole beach to ourselves! To top it all off we had ice-cream cones before getting back on the bus and heading back to school. Ms. McDonagh was very happy with how well behaved we all were. What a great day!
Have a look at some of our photos from the day.

Happy Easter!

Thanks to Harry for the beautiful Easter cake he made for the class today. There wasn't a crumb left!

Happy Easter to all! I hope everyone enjoys the break. We look forward to a very busy and exciting final term when we return!

Fantastic Foxes

Have a look at the wonderful foxes we drew today. We used oil pastels.
We have just finished reading Roald Dahl's 'Fantastic Mr. Fox' as a class novel.
We have already got lots of compliments on these fantastic foxes!

Eco Week Drama

It is Eco week this week. This morning we went to the library. We went to see a drama there by Down to Earth Theatre Company. The drama was called 'Turning the Tide'. There were 4 actors in the play. There were two seagulls called Anto and Mabel and they made fantastic sounds that sounded just like seagulls! There was a boy called Hero and an angry, mean man.

        We thought it was hilarious. The main message from the play was not to throw rubbish on the beach and that the birds and animals who live there are put at danger from all the rubbish. At the end the seagulls and Hero helped clean up the beach and stop the angry man from littering.

        We know not to litter and to Reduce, Reuse and Recycle! We really enjoyed the drama. What a busy day, we also have swimming later! We also used the tablets this morning to work on money. 

Questioning

We are also learning about the comprehension strategy called Questioning. We are still practising using this strategy in school.

If we ask questions before, during and after we read it helps us to think more about what we read, help us to organise what we are thinking and find certain information we need to help us understand what we read. If we ask ourselves questions as we read it helps us to focus on the text.

We are making up our own questions as we read. Some of these questions can be answered in the story, but some are not, and that is okay because we can read between the lines and make some predictions, or we could try and find out the answer by researching it more.

We are using 'I wonder' questions a lot. Our hand signal for this strategy is a 'W' with our hands to show 'I wonder'.

We have been enjoying a lot of books in school as we work on using our strategies. Here is one of the books we have used for questioning:

Alexander and the Terrible, Horrible, No Good, Very Bad Day by Judith Viorist

We are also finding that we are getting very good at using all of the strategies we have learned while we listen to a story or read by ourselves. We use our hand signals and share our predictions, connections, visualisations and questions in class. We can use these strategies to help us understand anything we read.

Watch us on News2day!

We appeared on News2day today at 4.25pm on RTE Two!
We had such an exciting day taking part in the 'Alice in Litterland' workshop and then we met Conor from News2day who recorded parts of the workshop and found out information about it.

Here is a link to Friday's news if you missed it. We are so proud. Well done to everybody! Enjoy watching!

Mad as a Hatter!

We have been busy turning everyday items from the recycling bin into imaginative hats!

Photos and more information to follow soon . . .

Making Connections

The strategy we are learning about and using this week is Making Connections.

We have been making great connections this week to a wide range of texts. We are doing great work at home too. Good readers consider how a text relates to their own life experiences and knowledge. When we make connections with a text it helps with our understanding. It helps us make a clearer picture in our head. We become actively involved and it helps us to remember what we have read and ask questions about the text.


There are three types of connections we can make:

Text to Self Connections - these are our personal connections to the text. Sometimes we can make connections with our own life.

Text to Text Connections - sometimes a story can remind us of something else we have read. They might have a similar character or theme. We can make links between two sections of the same book too.

Text to World Connections - this is when we can make a link between the text and knowledge we get from somewhere else such as films, environment and newspapers.

This is our hand signal to show when we have a connection to make.

We made an anchor chart to remind us about making connections and why we make connections too.

We are very good at using the strategies we are learning when we read!

Visualising

We are concentrating on the strategy of visualising this week. 

Visualisation is a strategy that good readers use to help them understand what they read.  As we read we create images in our mind. We all create different images in our mind as our ability to visualise is linked to our prior knowledge and experiences.

We can use all the senses as we visualise; sight, taste, smell, sound and touch.

'Don't Stop' music

We have learned this song called 'Don't Stop'. It is originally by a band called Fleetwood Mac. We have been singing along to this version by Niamh Farrell who is from a band called Ham Sandwich (we always have a little laugh at the name of that band!) and the choir from Colmcilles. She has released the song to raise money for a charity called Haven who build communities for the people in Haiti.

We think its a feel good song and we enjoy it. We have put it up here after some requests to sing along at home! Enjoy!

Prediction

A strategy is a plan. When footballers are playing a match they have a strategy in place, they have a plan of action. Good readers have a plan when they read as well.

The strategy we are learning about this week is predicting. Predicting is when we think about what might happen next in a story. We use the title, pictures, our prior knowledge and the information the author gives us as clues to make a good guess about what the story might be about or what might happen next. We can make predictions before reading, during our reading and after reading.

If we make predictions about the story we want to find out what is going to happen and check if our predictions were right. We know that our predictions will not always be right and that is okay.

This is our hand signal that we are going to use in school when we have a prediction to make. We can use it at home too when we are reading. We make the letter P with our hands.

The Titanic

We did a lot of work on the Titanic in November.

We did a KWL chart and wrote down what we already knew about the Titanic and what we would like to find out. In small groups we researched the information ourselves using books we got from the library. With our groups we did a project to show what we learned and displayed the information on a chart.