First Class have been very busy in January and February.
In P.E, we have been practising our dancing skills! Recently we learned the steps to lots of folk dances including Cuckoo dance, Come to Me, An Damhsa Mór and La Vinca. Have a look at some of our moves!
In Geography, we learned all about South Africa. We wrote all about the climate, the culture, the Zulu tribe and some of the beautiful animals that live there. We also made our own South African flags! In art, we made our own African Zebras using crepe paper, wool, chalk and moss.
We also learned all about Ireland and its landscape. We learned the names of the provinces and some of the counties, and had great fun trying to find them on the map! We designed our own Celtic letters using our names.
In History, we were learning all about Nelson Mandela. We learned that he was famous for bringing equal rights to everyone who lived in South Africa. We wrote all about his life, and how he spent 27 years in prison!
In Science, we used magnets to test if items were magnetic. We even tested our magnets through materials like plastic and wood!
Our writing genre for January and February was ‘Procedural Writing’. We learned all about writing instructions. We made yummy jam sandwiches and tasty rice crispie buns with our teacher!
Literacy Lift Off
Ms. Kilmartin’s First class has been very busy for the last six weeks completing the Literacy Lift Off program. We had great fun!
We got a new book every day during Literacy Lift Off. We first read our book with Mrs. McCabe, before reading it at home. We practised our prediction skills, as well as figuring out lots of new words!
At the familiar reading station we read our books from the night before, with Ms. Kilmartin. We practised becoming quick readers and talking about the story, as well as learning lots about punctuation, grammar and spellings.
At the writing station, Mrs. McCullagh helped us to write a sentence based on our familiar book. We got lots of practise with letter formation and spelling tricky words!
Our phonics station was very busy! We practised our spelling and dictation on our whiteboards, and learned lots of grammar too. Mrs. Cronnolly also helped us with our spelling tests every Friday.
At the word work station, we used magnet boards and letters to practise our word building strategies with Mr. Kilbride.
We got to use the ipads every morning to practise our spelling and grammar on the Spelling Bee app!
Children in First Class took part in the Operation Transformation “10 @ 10” campaign. They engaged in running and jumping activities as well as a fun dance class! It was a great way to start the day. All of the children had great fun as you can see in the pictures below!
November & December 2016
In History we have been learning about toys in the past. We interviewed our parents and grandparents to see what games and toys they played when they were the same age as us! A lot of the mammies and grannies played with dolls and teddies while the daddies and grandads played with tin cars and toy soldiers. Some of us even brought in our parents and grandparents special toys. We had great fun looking at the different items.
For the month of November we have been learning all about Space! We can tell you lots about the Sun, Moon, Solar System and constellations. For Science Week we experimented with different mixtures and made 3D moons with shaving foam and glue. It was a little bit messy but we had great fun! Ms Kennelly came in to teach us a fun lesson for Science Week. We were given dirty water and had to try to clean it. It was great fun.
This month we have been very busy!!! We have been writing fun Christmas fairy-tale stories. We made beautiful Christmas decorations using lollipop sticks which are hanging proudly on our Christmas trees. We talked about advertising at Christmas and we created our own advertisements of our favourite toys.
September & October
First Class has been very busy since coming back to school after the summer holidays.
Our writing genre for September and October was “Report Writing”. We went on a nature trail with Ms Shine to look for the signs of Autumn. When we came back from our trail we wrote about it. In poetry, we decided to write an acrostic poem using our own names – this was great fun!
In SESE we have been learning about people at work in our locality and mapping important buildings in Bealnamulla and Monksland.
We recently took part in Maths Week where we enjoyed lots of fun activities which included a Maths Trail, bingo, board games, maths art and we even made numbers with our bodies!
Have a look at the pictures below to see what else we have been up to!