Citywest ETNS Third Class - Martha's Class

Citywest ETNS Third Class

End of Term 2!

4/8/2022

Wow it is the end of term 2! We have had such a busy few months in our classroom. Here are some snippets from our term.

Dublinia School Trip

On April 1st, we went on our first school trip in two years! We travelled on the Luas into town to visit Dublinia museum. There, we learned more about the Vikings and Medieval times in Ireland. It was such good fun!

Gratitude Letters!

We learned all about the attitude of gratitude this term. It is important to feel grateful for all of the little things we have in our lives. We decided to write letters to people who are special to us to thank them for different things. It was so nice to deliver our letters!

Pointillism Art

Earlier in the term, we learned about France during our Geography lessons and we incorporated our learning with our art lessons. We looked at some examples of pointillism art and created our own versions of the Eiffel Tower in Paris.

Team Work.

We did a lot of work together this term. We helped each other with reading, writing, maths, gaeilge and other learning. We like to work in pairs and teams in our classroom. We are great at giving each other compliments about learning and tips to make learning even better.

Reading and Writing

We have done some super reading and writing this term and have made some new displays in our library and corridor.

What a super term! We are looking forward to term 3. We hope that everybody has a safe and fun spring break! :-)

Happy New Year!

1/17/2022

New Year Art and Resolutions

Happy new year everybody! We are excited to start 2022. After watching some new year celebration videos, we were inspired to create some new year firework art using black paper, chalk and oil pastels to celebrate the new year in our class room. We also used Jamboard on our chromebooks to create some new year goal posters. We wrote five goals for 2022 and added some pictures.

Stone Age Poster Projects and Presentations

We worked cooperatively in duos or trios this week on some stone age projects. Each group had to research a specific topic relating to the stone age and create posters with facts and pictures. Then, each group presented their facts to the class. We worked so well together and learned lots more about the stone age!

Felt Decorations!

12/22/2021

We made some winter decorations and cards to deliver to our neighbours TLC Nursing home. We are very proud of our great sewing and hope that all of the staff and residents of TLC enjoy our winter gifts!

Kenning Poems and Cave Scratching!

12/20/2021

We learned how to write Kenning poems during our English lessons. Kenning poems have clues to what the poem is about. Each line is two words long and usually the line ends in er. We wrote some kennings to describe ourselves.

We did some stone scratching to finish off our cave art work. We found stones and covered them with chalk. Then we scratched designs into them with paperclips. Check them out.

Published Class Books!

12/18/2021

During our chromebook lessons, we used the website Book Creator to publish our fairy tales into wonderful ebooks! Some of us even recorded our voices reading the book. You can read some of the books by clicking on the images below. Click on the sound icon to hear us reading the story.

Cave Art!

12/15/2021

Today we created our own cave art. First, we looked at lots of examples of cave art to get inspired and then we got started. We used our stained paper, charcoal and oil pastels. Some of us stuck the paper to the bottom of our tables while drawing so that we could feel like we were really in caves. Have a look at our work.

Stone Age!

12/14/2021

We are learning about the Stone Age at the moment! It is fascinating!

Real Stone Tools!

We got to feel and look at some replica stone tools made from flint, quartz and other types of stone. We recognised arrow heads, spear heads, axes and knives.

Paper Staining!

Today, we stained paper with tea and coffee to make it look like the walls of a cave. We are going to use it to recreate some cave art in our classroom later in the week.

Fairy Tales, Learn Together, Art and Graphs!

12/7/2021

Fairy Tale Fun!

We have been working hard on our story writing over the past few weeks. First, we read a famous fairy tale, Little Red Riding Hood. Next, we created story maps to help us to remember the story. After practising saying it aloud with actions, we then wrote the story for our write portfolios and made mini books for our library. After that, we got really creative and changed the story to create new ones! Each of us created our own fairy tales that follow a similar structure to Little Red Riding Hood but have totally new characters. They are super interesting stories and we are very proud of ourselves!

Age Equality

In Learn Together, we have been learning about age equality. We have been finding out how age can create barriers to equality and we have been learning about different people and organisations who support older people. We learned all about the organisation called Alone and we interviewed Aoife, one of our sixth class teachers, about her work as a volunteer for Alone. She visited our classroom and we asked her lots of questions about who she worked with and how she got involved. She was very inspirational and now we are thinking of different ways that we can help elderly people in our community.

Drip Art and Mountain Colour Mixing

We have been having fun with painting in our classroom. We tried out some drip art and created colourful rainbow rain showers. We also made some mountain peaks with a limited palette of two primary colours and white. Our challenge was to make each peak a different colour.

Graphs

We are learning about data in maths and have started gathering information and making our own graphs. Check out our block graphs representing the pets in our class.

A Busy Month!

11/5/2021

We have been so busy in our classroom over the last few weeks! We are having fun with our learning and getting better at working cooperatively in pairs and teams.

Drama

We have been learning about Dublin city during our Geography lessons and we combined our learning with some fun drama. We pretended to be tour guides on a Dublin tour bus giving lots of fun facts and information about the city.

P.E.

We have been practising our different football skills during our P.E. lessons including dribbling, shooting, defending and tackling.

Line Art

During our Maths lessons, we learned about the different types of lines including horizontal, vertical and parralel lines. We decided to do some line art after learning so much about lines. We made these cool optical illusions. We used straight lines to create a curve. It was so much fun.

Cooperative Learning

In our classroom, sometimes we work independently and other times we work in pairs and in groups as part of a cooperative team. We have been practising some strategies to help with our teamwork. We use Rally Coaching when working in pairs. One person speaks about their learning and the other person coaches and checks that they are doing each step correctly and then they praise the person who is learning. After that, we swap so that everyone gets a chance to be the coach and the student. We used this strategy with our Buddy Reading and with our Maths. Check out our pictures.

Science

In Science, we learned all about how the lungs work in the body. We found out facts and wrote some information in our copies. We also brought in plastic bottles and Martha gave us balloons so that we could make a model of the lung. The top balloon acts as the mouth and lungs and the bottom balloon is like the diaphragm. When we pulled the bottom balloon down (the diaphragm) it allows the top balloon (the lung) to fill with air.

Painting

This week we have been doing lots of painting. We looked at the abstract paintings of Wassily Kandisnky and were inspired. Last year we painting concentric circles like Kandinsky's famous painting. This time, we used the same idea but innovated it. First, we painted other 2D shapes using the same techniques and in our second try we did it with the first initial of our names.

Spreading the Love

10/6/2021

We had such a lovely afternoon in our classroom! We have been learning all about restorative practice during our Friendship Keeper lessons. Last week, we learned about love bombing which is when we can surprise people with little bursts of love and kindness. We planned a big love bomb for our teacher Andrea from second class. We prepared cards, messages and posters for her and then invited her to our classroom to surprise her with a big cheer and our gifts! Andrea had a lovely surprise and we really enjoyed spreading love to our community! We can't wait to spread more love and kindness in our community!

Our Friendship Keeper mascot is the giraffe because the giraffe has the biggest heart of all the land animals and a long neck to see things from others' perspectives. Check out our mascots and giraffe drawings.