Fourth Class

Journal

Teacher: Ms. Wixted

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

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 took part in our very own Junior Dragon’s Den. The children used old cereal boxes as inspiration to come up with their very own cereal. They had to think of a brand name, flavour, price and about the nutritional value of their product. They then wrote out their persuasive texts in their copies and read them aloud to the class, aiming to convince their teacher and peers to buy their cereal. The children also had the challenging job of inventing a new toy this term. They typed up their own persuasive writing pieces on the school laptops, describing what their toy looks like, how it works, what age it is suited for and whether it is battery operated or electronic. They then showed their hand drawn pictures of their toy to the class using our classroom visualiser and read their typed texts aloud to their peers. It was very interesting to see their imaginations flow!

We explored shape poetry this term and we thought it would be very apt to write all about snowmen, based on the weather we have been experiencing. 4th class brainstormed lots of words and phrases associated with snowmen. We then used alliteration and similes to piece together a shape poem about a snowman. Have a read of our class poem below!

In Maths, we came up with our very own Christmas Dinner shopping list. We researched the prices of all our favourite Christmas foods on Tesco online. The aim was to compile the most delicious three course meal, 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. Ms. Mc Mahon is very proud of us!

In Gaeilge, we learned a new poem ‘An Fear Sneachta’ off by heart and had fun reciting it together as a class. 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. The children have worked very hard on their briathra neamhrialta since September. We are almost finished learning all 11 verbs in the three tenses. Maith Thú!

In Science this term, we engaged in some very cool experiments such as erupting volcanoes, skittle rainbows, raincloud in a jar and lava lamps. The boys and girls worked in pairs to present their experiments to the class. It was messy but we learned a lot about chemical reactions. We also explored magnetism this month. We played with magnets, investigating North and South poles and what attracts and repels magnets. We even attached magnets to toy cars and raced them in the classroom.

In art, we designed our very own Class Advent Calendar. Check it out below! We were rewarded with lots of nice treats and took part in fun, festive activities throughout the month of December such as sit with a friend for the day, make your own kahoot quiz, Christmas charades, tea and toast morning, hot chocolate and listen to spotify songs during lunch. It was super exciting to open a new advent window each day.

We love Art in 4th Class. We drew Christmas owls as part of a directed drawing lesson and displayed them on the classroom windows. The Amber Flag committee organised to send Christmas Cards to Croagh nursing home this year. The children in 4th used old, recycled Christmas cards to redesign their own cards using a picture extension technique. 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 Panto ‘Mamma Mia’ and we had a great time in L.I.T. We are also very excited to go and see ‘Peter Pan’ in U.L. before our Christmas holidays. It will be another great day out!

We would like to give a special word of thanks to our wonderful SNA Marian who is in our classroom each morning and afternoon. She is super helpful and so kind to us and we are lucky to have her. Also, we are delighted to have Ms. Ruddle every Tuesday for Literacy Stations and we would like to thank her for all the work that she does supporting us with our learning in literacy this term.

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

Fourth Class Mid-Term Update

Oíche Shamhna shona daoibh!

We have had a productive, enjoyable few months back at school. Rang a Ceathair has been super 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 had to imagine that they were ‘The First Dog’ living in the White House. They had a giggle at recounting a day in the life of this dog, getting groomed daily, having doggie brunch and jetting off to meetings. 4th Class also wrote a Newspaper Article about an Astronaut returning to Earth after spending several months in Space. We have weekly Literacy Stations with Ms. Ruddle, where children carryout hands on literacy tasks and work collaboratively with their peers. It’s a great opportunity for them to work on their phonics, spellings, grammar, oral comprehension and writing in small groups.

Each week, we love reciting new poems that we have learned such as ‘The Moon’ by Ruth Kelliher, ‘The Witch’ by Jack Prelutsky, ‘September Weather’ and ‘Useless things’ , a poem which we composed ourselves. For Halloween, we made up some terrifying tongue twisters such as ‘gobbling gargoyles gobbled gobbling goblins’. It was a fantastic opportunity to put anew skill we learned called ‘alliteration’ to use.

Space Week was super exciting! We carried out pair work, using laptops to research facts about the planets in our Solar System. We compiled these facts to make a whole class project. Taking part in a Kahoot Quiz on the laptops was a nice way to finish the lesson and assess what we had learned! The children took part in a Lunar Lander STEM Challenge where they had to invent, design and build a space module which allowed 2 astronauts to land safely on the moon. They used a plastic cup, straws, paper clips, elastic bands, paper plates and 2 marshmallows (the astronauts) to build their piece. The children were exceptionally creative with their designs, ensuring the astronauts had an extra soft and safe landing. Testing out the inventions was very exciting! Well done everyone!

Maths week was full of daily, interesting activities. 4Class learned how to play chess which is a game that uses lots of mathslanguage such as ‘vertical, diagonal, horizontal’. We also carried out a MathsTrail around the school grounds, filling out answers to questions based onobservations of the school.  We took partin ily puzzles, riddles, crack the codes and games and at the end of the weekre was a whole class maths quiz. Great work!

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 were very fortunate also to take part in a whole school skipping day. 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! – Halloween silhouettes, black and white self portraits, one dot can be… The children learned all about Dia de Los Muertos in Mexico. Afterwards, they moulded sugar skulls from clay and painted beautiful, colourful designs on them.

For Climate Action Week, we studied the importance of taking steps to help combat Climate Change. The children worked together on various aspects of Climate Action to make a class project. Check out the pictures!

The children were rewarded for all the hard work this term with a Halloween party! We played bob the apple and flour tower. We enjoyed yummy sweet treats and watched Monster House on Netflix! A fantastic, spooky day was had by all! Well done on the amazing costumes!

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

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