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Ms. McHugh’s 5th Class in Room 25

What a busy first term this 5th class have had and we want to share with you all the news from room 25! In September, the children explored different examples of procedural writing and our focus was to look at how recipes are written and how they appeal to the reader to make a dish or bake a cake! This tied nicely in with our SESE unit of work on the Mayans. The children got creative and invented their very own Mayan recipes as part of our procedural writing genre and we combined these recipes to make our very own Mayan cook book! We got to use the laptops to type these up too. The Mayans led a very healthy and organic lifestyle and what they eat was foods that are making a comeback in the modern world we live in. Foods such as corn, maize, avocado and butternut squash were on the menu and the children created some mouth-watering dishes- everything from sandwiches, to soups to healthy Mayan salads! Yum! Safe to say they were a-maize-ing! Check out our selection of photos below to see the creative art work the children did in September too.

October came upon us quickly and this meant  the start of our team teaching in both numeracy and literacy with Ms. McCormack. The children learned all about lines and angles in maths and how to measure these using a protractor and of course developing and enhancing our much needed estimation skills! We talked about lines and angles in the environment and the different occupations associated with being able to identify, measure and read angles. Jobs in architecture, building, quantity surveying and teaching came to mind when we were discussing the basis of our lines and angles work! 

The children are also focused on developing their comprehension strategies during our literacy power hour which has been a real hit with both teachers and children alike! Every week we learn a new comprehension strategy such as predicting, visualising, making connections and questioning. This enables us to become far better and more engaged readers! The books we have read so far have created excellent insights into how good readers read and also how we can enjoy our own personal reading even further. Themes of emigration and war have been covered in some of the literature and we are all eagerly anticipating the rest of the Building Bridges programme with the kind help of Ms. Mc Cormack. 

Maths Week 2018:

The children in 5th class set their sights on DIT last week in which they engaged with laptops and ipads and other maths materials. The Murderous Maths workshop was a great way for the children to see maths in a slightly different way to that in the classroom. Lots of maths tricks and questions were posed to the audience during the talk given by the author of Murderous Maths and his bank of resources are available on his website for teachers and children to read about and try themselves! The children also participated in a maths trail in which they had to decipher information about car registration plates using many different operations such as multiplication, subtraction, division and addition. A little bit of art work was required when they were asked to name, identify and draw the 2D shapes and 3D shapes on teacher’s car! Who knew that maths is everywhere… even in the teacher’s carpark!! 

The children have been making a great effort in using their chuid Gaeilge i rith an lae gach uile lá sa seachtain. At assembly every month, Gaeilgeoir na Míosa is a prize worthy of a lot of recognition as it rewards that person who is using their Gaeilge neamhfhoirmiúil (informal Irish) throughout the school day and making a particular effort to remember the phrases learned in school that week. The children are making excellent strides in their reading, and speaking and of course learning the rules of the Aimsir Chaite (Past Tense). In September it was great to get to know the children based on the theme of ‘Mé Féin’ (myself) and using phrases to talk about ourself as Gaeilge is always a great start to the year.

As part of our ceol, the children are learning and playing their tin whistles each week. They are learning how to read notes on the stave as well as the value of those notes. New words such as crotchets and minims are being learned and a focus on clapping the rhtyhm of each piece of music is being well mastered by this talented bunch! Báidín Fheilimí is a real hit so far and most have been practicing hard to ensure their improving week in and week out. Cleactadh a dhéanann máistreacht (Practice makes perfect)! 

That is all for now, but please stay tuned as this class have another busy term of hard-work and positive learning after their well deserved mid-term break next week. Slán go fóil.

Ms. McHugh, 5th Class, Room 25. 

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