Hi Everyone!
Welcome to the class blog for Second Class. I plan to keep this updated as often as possible with news and activities from our class. So check back in regularly for updates on all the exciting things we are doing and covering across a range of curricular areas.
We can't believe September is over already! It was such a busy month, filled with lots of fun occasions, activities and settling in! We are nearly all settled into our routines in Second Class and will continue to refine these over the next few weeks. All the kids have done so great at adapting to the new changes that Second Class brings and also welcoming some wonderful new children to our class.
Here is a brief run through of some of the things we have covered in the different subject areas this month.
In English, we have been working hard on revising our phonics sounds and also introducing some trickier new sounds. We enjoy playing weekly phonics games to consolidate and practice our learning and we are working each morning on choosing the correct phonic sound for a selection of word endings. We have been introduced to Nicky Noun and Vicky Verb who have been helping us differentiate between parts of speech.
We created a beautiful 'Noun Town' in which the children compiled a selection of 'People', 'Places' and 'Things' and collaboratively built a town of nouns. We are still adding to it!
Noun Town!
In Gaeilge, we have been focusing on Mé Féin, learning all about ourselves and introducing means of communicating information about ourselves to others. This week we are starting to learn how to say whether we like or do not like something.
In Maths, we have been working extra hard. We spent a week or two revising some concepts learned in First Class and have also built upon this and completed a lot of work on addition strategies, rounding and subtraction. We have begun our 'Number Talks' which are a particularly important opportunity to engage in a mental maths strategy discussion. I am blown away daily by the range of strategies children in our class offer for solving a particular maths problem.
Using life-size sets to help us solve tricky addition problems.
In SESE (History, geography, Science), we began our learning by focusing on our local environment. We started our new school year off by studying the world map and noting where we visited over the summer holidays.
We learned about our own country of Ireland and then focused on the county of Dublin and the amenities available to us here. We completed an experiment with soil from our school grounds and watched how the soil and water reacted when mixed together.
The result of our science experiment!
We also examined a collection of materials from our school grounds and studied the characteristics of each. We examined things like leaves, grass, soil, rocks, feathers, flowers and weeds and categorised them based on factors such as whether they are smooth/rough, heavy/light, crumbly among many more. More recently, we have been learning all about the Irish legend of Oisín in Tír na Nóg and completed an activity in which we had to draw Ireland as it was when Oisín left Ireland and then all the changes that had occurred when he returned 300 years later. This week we are beginning to learn about North, South, East and West and how to use a compass. Next week, we will use a compass to accurately design a map and accompanying key of our school and classroom.
Have a look at our superhero alter ego's created during one of our first art lessons early in the month!
We were lucky to be a huge part of the school's opening ceremony last Wednesday, performing a poem at the ceremony in front of Minister Bruton. We had such a great day and enjoyed using the pom poms we made in art to welcome the minister as he arrived. Did you see us in the newspaper cheering?!
