Welcome to Ms. Cawley’s class!
Some changes for our school and Ms. Cawley this year as she heads further up to the senior cycle of the school and jumps right in with our new third class. We have a small but hard-working bunch of 19 pupils eager to get stuck into learning with hopefully a sprinkle of fun and mindfulness this year too.
June
I feel that the only way to describe the month of June is a whirlwind. Active week with a very full and diverse offering of activities including tennis, boxercise and basketball definitely kept us all on our toes.
Wellbeing Wednesday also inspired us to look after our mental and physical wellbeing with a wide range of activities such as yoga in the classroom, a Maidin Caife with fourth class encouraging a cúpla focail, shared reading with the junior classes, workouts, whole school walks and mindful colouring but to name a few.
The exciting school tour to Clara Lara definitely lived up to our expectations with boat rides, go-carts and water slides among some of the most popular attractions.
The last few days were spent in a flurry of fun and games including water fights, basketball leagues, sports day races and Kahoot quizzes. It has been a fabulous year, we have worked and played hard and now it’s safe to say we have all earned a good rest to recharge the batteries. I will be back with third class again in September. Enjoy the summer!
May
May was jam-packed finishing up a lot of work including projects, writing our own fairy tales and creating amazing dioramas using found and recycled materials, Drumcondra testing and generally tying up any loose ends so that we could wind down in June.
We finished up with Music Generation for this year with an impressive guitar performance for parents and family. As well as this, we wound up our French lessons with some very enjoyable cultural games and activities.
We also had an extremely insightful and eye-opening visiting speaker to keep us all informed of the dangers of all things internet related. It really made us think about our online footprint and ways to keep us safe on all digital platforms.
Basketball lessons also began in May and will carry on into June, leading up to the much-anticipated whole school basketball league!
Rang a trí once again earned fifty bumble bees for their kindness and so we headed off for some treats and a picnic in the castle grounds.
April
April was a short month filled with hands-on activities exploring the characteristics of 3D shapes, lots of ‘egg’speriments and some chocolate to ease us into the Easter break.
March
March was a particularly enjoyable month with preparations in full swing for Lá Glas celebrations for St. Patrick’s Day including a guitar performance and a céilí. Bhí an-spraoi againn ar fad!
We worked all month long on some fantastic art projects getting to know the work of 19 international artists whilst also improving our computer literacy skills.
Work began on decimal fractions this month with some hands-on learning and games which we all learned a lot from.
In P.E. we began our ‘Walk A Week’ which we pledged to do as part of our Active School’s work. We also developed on our skipping skills to prepare for an upcoming challenge which Ms. O’Brien will tell us about in April.
We finished up with some printing in the style of Andy Warhol creating fabulous portraits of our mums for Mother’s Day.
February
We packed a lot of activities into a short month but here are some examples of the fun learning we did in February. Firstly was our eagerly awaited Grandparents’ Day which is always a fabulous day for all involved and this year did not disappoint us. It was especially lovely to see that Grandparents were willing to share their time with children whose grandparents could not be there.
Well done to our winner in third class whose slogan was selected from the whole school competition to become this year’s Active Schools’ Slogan. I think you’ll agree it’s catchy and it’s inspiring us all to get up and move more. ‘Our bodies are made to move. Pick a sport and find your groove!‘ We also agreed, as a class, on the four ways we would like to get more active: 1. Learn more playground games 2. More outdoor learning activities 3. A walk a week 4. Active homework.
We worked on some collaborative and individual problem solving skills in Maths and Science this month. In particular we were thrilled when most of our experiments to create scuba divers in a bottle were successful tying up some interesting work we did about Jacques Cousteau.
Wrapping up the month of February nicely we had a very enjoyable visit from Carlow Sports Initiative representatives who played some old fashioned games with us. We began our ‘Say Yes to Languages’ programme with French this month et bien sur we are thoroughly enjoying it. Followed by an exploration of the potential of water colour paint and texture using a variety of materials such as salt and cling film.
January
Best wishes for 2025 to you all. Despite the snow and storm closures we have settled back into school life effortlessly. Timelines of the Stone Age, composing our own poetry as gaeilge based on our pastimes and some highly competitive cooperative searches for the longest words are just a glimpse of some of the various engaging methodologies being utilized by third class.
December
December is always a busy month and this one didn’t let us down. We worked long and hard to prepare for our Christmas Carol Service and as a whole school the children were nothing short of spectacular. Also thrown in was a fantastic guitar performance by some of the third to sixth class pupils.
The rest of the month was a whirlwind of activities including debating if ‘Lapland is the best place on Earth’, a Christmas Card competition winner, typing practice, online quizzes, peer reading with Senior Infants and First class, a rainy walk to Huntington Castle followed by a visit from Santa. Safe to say we are all exhausted and excited for the Christmas Holidays. Merry Christmas to you all.
November
November was another busy month starting with some extremely interesting and informative project work using actual encyclopaedias. Everyone had to choose their own topic based on our reading about various scientists.
We have continued to work on our Wellbeing through the ‘Lust for Life’ programme, in particular as you can see from our freeze frames we have been learning more about the ‘Flight, Fright or Freeze’ response when experiencing fear.
This month also saw the return of the much loved Christmas Shoebox Appeal which was hugely successful. Many thanks to all who donated to such a worthy cause.
Third class finished the month with a well deserved party they earned by carrying out fifty random acts of kindness. It really was a team effort, Maith Sibh Rang a trí.
October
Third class were busy in October starting off with some interesting activities on the strand of Chance. Followed swiftly by some dramatic role play based on our much-loved class novel ‘Fantastic Mr. Fox’ exploring our senses, creating wonderful freeze frames of items we visualised in the novel.
Maths Week is always a favourite time in the school calendar and this year was no exception with many activities including the firm favourite ‘Problem of the day’ with some brilliant prizes. Ms. Byrne’s fourth class helped us to join in the fun with an extremely challenging quiz and some fun with shapes. We also joined in the times tables phenomenon using the ipads to improve our multiplication skills. This we all thoroughly enjoyed.
As always the mid-term break came just in time after an extremely spooky Halloween Walk to Huntington Castle. A serious effort was made on all the costumes, I think you’ll agree.
September
Third Class are off to a fantastic start this September. We have settled into the routines of the classroom quickly and have been busy testing and learning new strategies to help us with our new Spellings for Me programme and also restarting the Accelerated Reading programme.
We have been doing lots of group work especially in art where we used items from the environment to create collaborative pieces. We also read an inspiring book called ‘The Black Book of Colours’ by Menana Cottin, written for the visually impaired. It really made us think about colours differently, using our other senses to describe them and appreciate the gift of sight. This is also reflected in our artwork focusing on the primary, secondary and tertiary colours.
We also have a newly elected Students’ Council representative. We ran a fair election with some amazing campaign ideas being suggested but ultimately the promise of a weekly Monday Morning Meeting where we can share our suggestions won the tightly-run race.
Last Thursday we had our first guitar lesson and we are excited to continue to practice these skills at home and at school.
