Fourth Class

Journal

Teacher: Ms. Wixted

Fourth Class Christmas Update

Nollaig Shona daoibh go léir! What a busy term this has been!

 

In English, we have been working on our Persuasive Writing. We wrote about our favourite hobbies, and used persuasive language to express why we believed it was the best sport. As we began to get into festive mode, the children wrote a film review on a Christmas film of their choice. They thoroughly enjoyed creating advertisements for these films afterwards, and children were then given the opportunity to share their work with their peers. We had great fun practicing persuasive language to argue which movie we thought was best!

 

In Maths, we came up with our very own gift guide for children of various ages, using Smyths toy catalogues. We had a budget to stay within per child, and used our Maths skills to investigate what we could get for the best value. The aim was to compile the most exciting list of toys for that person, while staying within budget! The boys and girls have finished learning and revising all their multiplication tables from 0 up to x12. All the hard work paid off and we did brilliantly in our tables test. We enjoyed putting our brains to work this term, exploring tricky topics such as long multiplication and problem solving! Ms. Wixted is very proud of us.

 

For Gaeilge, we have put in a tremendous effort learning the 11 irregular verbs in the Aimsir Chaite. We are a lot more confident using this tense and we certainly have expanded our vocabulary. It is wonderful to see our ‘teanga ó bhéal’ blossom as we can now form sentences more easily, independently. This was evident when we wrote our ‘Nuacht’ together,and the children had amazing ideas for sentences we could say as Gaeilge as part of the news. We have been busy exploring the themes of ‘Bia’ and ‘An Nollaig’ this term, listening to the excellent stories in Bua na Cainte and playing the interactive whiteboard games.

 

We celebrated Science Week this term. We began our week by investigating how water is transported through plants. We added food dye to various containers, and then added our white flowers. We were amazed when we came to school the next day to discover our flowers had changed colour! We chose a scientist of our choice to research and used the school laptops to learn various facts about them. On Friday we carried out some very cool experiments which included erupting volcanoes, skittle rainbows, exploding watermelons and lava lamps. The boys and girls worked in groups to present their experiments to the class. It was messy but we learned a lot about chemical reactions.

 

We love Art in 4th Class. This term, we created Japanese inspired paintings, melting snowman and carol singers (or people eating snowflakes, which is how some of the children interpreted it). The Amber Flag committee organised to send Christmas Cards to Croagh nursing home this year. The children were so enthusiastic that some of them wanted to make extra cards to send. The cards turned out very beautiful indeed and the pupils were chuffed to send them off!

 

4th class pupils worked very hard practicing their song singing for the annual School Christmas Concert. They performed a selection of Peace Proms and Christmas Carols for the matinée and evening show. It was a huge success and they all sounded amazing! Well done everyone!

 

We were delighted to be invited to the Salesians show ‘Back to the 80’s’ and we had a great time in L.I.T. We were also very excited to go and see ‘Aladdin’ in U.L. before our Christmas holidays. It was another great day out!

 

We would like to give a special word ofthanks to our wonderful SNA’s Sharon and Catherine who are in our classroom each morning and afternoon. They are super helpful and so kind to us and we are lucky to have them. Also, we are delighted to have Ms. Quinn and Mr. Sparling helping us with our learning and we would like to thank them for all the work that she does supporting us with our learning this term.

 

Have a wonderful, safe Christmas and we look forward to welcoming all of the children back to school in the New Year!

Fourth Class October Midterm Update

Oíche Shamhna shona daoibh!

 We have had a productive and enjoyable few months back at school. Rang a Ceathair has been very busy taking part in a variety of fun learning activities so far this year! After reuniting with friends in September, our class delved straight into work.

 

We started recount writing this term.Children wrote stories about things that have happened in their own lives. We thoroughly enjoyed sharing some funny stories about ‘The Best Holiday Ever’,before writing about it. 4th Class also wrote a diary entry about a day in their life, and we loved having some author’s chair time to listen to their writing. This term we explored the story ‘Cloudy With a Chance of Meatballs’,using the comprehension strategy of prediction to figure out what would happen next. We had great fun thinking about what food might fall down from the sky!

 

We have been learning all about the Aimsir Chaite (past tense) during our ceachtanna Gaeilge. The children are getting really good at remembering their verbs through fun games, such as the ‘verb game’. Our favourite song has been Ar a Slí, which is sung to the air of‘She’ll be coming around the mountain’. The children enjoyed some healthy rivalry between their tables in some singing competitions. We also enjoyed playing games of Deir Ó Grádaigh, or Simon Says to consolidate our learning of Mo Chorp/ My Body.

 

We have a talented bunch of scientists in Rang a Ceathair. We enjoyed learning about wild animals in Ireland and the various habitats they have. We also carried out an experiment to test which materials would be best to build a boat. We discussed which materials were waterproof and which ones would float in the water. Climate Action Week was really exciting! We had a ‘zero waste’ day on Tuesday where children brought in a lunch that contained no single use plastics or wrappers. We also took part in a‘no power hour’ on Thursday, and listened to a webinar which discussed ways to reduce food waste. The children had fantastic opinions on the reasons for climate change and what we could do to combat it. Well done everyone!

 

Rang 4 are delighted to have access to laptops this year! The children love exploratory learning- using teamwork, co operative skills and communication to produce amazing projects for a variety of SESE topics. These included Natural Wonders of Ireland, The Titanic, Animals in Ireland and The Celts. The children confidently presented their work to the rest of the class. I am really proud of what they accomplished.

Maths week was full of daily, interesting activities. 4th class had great fun playing games such as 4 in a row using dice to work out the product of numbers. We also carried out a Maths trail around the school grounds, filling out answers to questions based on observations of the school.  We took part in puzzles,riddles, crack the codes and games and at the end of the week there was a whole class maths quiz.

 

Our class have been practicing their songs for the Peace Proms Concert which will take place in the University Concert Hall next January. We love bopping along to the upbeat kids medley! We have also looked forward to our ‘Music Generation’ lesson each week, where we learned about dynamics, the various genres of Music and used body percussion tore-enact a horse race. We were very fortunate also to take part in some sign language lessons every Wednesday. The tutor was very impressed by the level of ability in the class and the children really enjoyed learning the new skills and showing off what they were able to do!

 

Check out the photos of all the fabulous art work the children created over the past few months: self-portraits, symmetrical pumpkins and some spooky scenery… The children learned all about warm and cool colour tones and how they can contrast beautifully in artwork. We then put our knowledge to use by painting some autumn leaves. Some of our talented students’work are presented below! We also had great fun at PE this term having access to equipment from Limerick Sports Partnership while we explored the strand of Athletics. We did lots of relay races, javelin throws and hurdle jumps. It was great fun!

 

Be sure to check back in for more updates from 4th Class!

Fourth Class Easter Update

Happy Easter Everyone! It has been a productive, enjoyable few months in rang a ceathair!

4thclass has been a ‘hive’ of activity since Christmas. We studied the anatomy and lifecycle of a honeybee which led to our writing of a detailed, scientific explanation of the different stages of a honeybee’s development. Another cycle which we learned all about, was the Water Cycle. We are now very confident in writing explanatory texts after lots of research on the laptops!

In Gaeilge, we became weather reporters! It was exciting to present the’ réamhaisnéis na haimsire’ os comhair an ranga! Sár Mhaith a pháistí! The children learned a very funny poem called ‘Dumpysaurus agus an chearc’ which they love to recite! 4th class are also excellent singers. ‘The Green Grass Grew All Around’ was a catchy song we sang in class. It gets confusing but we mastered it!

Pancake Day and Grandparents Day were also fun days which we celebrated! The children enjoyed yummy, chocolate treats thanks to 6th class. Did you see that we had a Litter Pick Up day too? We used pickers, bags and gloves to cleanup our school grounds! The place is looking great!

World Book Day was lots of fun! We dressed up as our favourite book characters and took part in a ‘Book Quiz’ in class. We then did a book scavenger hunt where we were given the task of finding information such as ‘item of food/clothing’ or an ‘interesting sentence’ in the books from our library! We listened to an audio book by Roald Dahl which was super relaxing while we designed bookmarks. Take a look at our origami monster bookmarks which we designed also!

Have a look at our Zentangle Easter Bunnies and ciseáin cásca which we created this week! Thanks also to Marian who has helped us everyday in the classroom!

Happy Easter from 4th class!

Christmas Show 2022

After two years of a hiatus, we were delighted to be able to bring back Kilcornan National School's annual Christmas show. Pupils from Junior Infants to Second Class put on a nativity based musical called 'Whoops A Daisy Angel', while pupils from Third to Sixth Class performed a selection of Christmas songs and songs from their upcoming Peace Proms performance. We are incredibly proud of all the pupils!

Thank you to the staff for their hard work in ensuring the pupils were extremely well prepared for the shows. Thank you to the Parents' Council for organising the raffle and providing refreshments for both shows. We are very grateful to the community centre for the use of the hall and to Mike O'Connell for all his work preparing the stage and providing lighting and sound. Thank you to everyone who supported the show, prepared the pupils and helped with staging and costumes.

Please find below a beautiful selection of photographs by Mary O'Shaughnessy. DVD's will be available in the new year from Fergal Nash.

Wishing you all a wonderful Christmas and a healthy and happy new year. We look forward to welcoming pupils back to Kilcornan on Thursday 5th January!

Christmas Show Photographs

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