Welcome to Ms. Cawley’s class!
Welcome to Ms. Cawley’s third class for the 2025-2026 school year. We have welcomed back all twenty eight pupils into a tightly packed classroom and straight away we began working on routines, rules and our Random Acts of Kindness reward system. We had fantastic fun getting to know each other a bit better once again and we are all looking forward to an action-packed, challenging, busy and enjoyable year ahead.
April
In April with Ms Maher we did some really fun hands-on activities while learning about litres and milliliters in Capacity and we also examined some artefacts in history to see if we could figure out what they are. We celebrated Earth Day by printing some lovely images of the earth from space. Then we were lucky enough to have a visiting coach from Fresh Today to brush up on our ball-handling and other hurling and camogie skills. We finished up with some ‘egg’speriments which we will monitor closely for the coming weeks before recording our results.
March
March was a particularly enjoyable month with preparations in full swing for Lá Glas celebrations for St. Patrick’s Day. We worked extremely hard to prepare a magnificent tin whistle performance of our National Anthem ‘Amhrán na bhFiann’ and a craic-filled céilí. Bhí an-spraoi againn ar fad!
Third to sixth class also had an insightful visit from Jenny Holmes where she really opened our eyes to the downsides and dangers of AI and of the lasting digital footprints we leave on the internet. The same day was World Book Day and as you can see, as always, children and families made a huge and creative effort to represent their favourite characters.
Work began on decimal fractions this month which is always enjoyable including some hands-on learning making fraction wheels.
Our much-anticipated tour to the Ernest Shackleton Museum in Athy also took place in March, bringing all our hard work and research on the explorer and his friends to a wonderful conclusion.
With one project drawing to a close we began working on our next one. Researching and writing a report on the work of some of the most famous international artists and architects whilst also developing our literacy and visual arts skills is the goal for this one. We will work on these into April where we will present our findings to the class.
February
February is a short but busy month. We got straight into Valentine’s Day in the style of contemporary artist Keith Haring using bold, thick black outlines, vibrant colour and simple figures. We then continued to develop our digital literacy skills in researching our chosen topics of interest, posing some very interesting questions and presenting our answers in a variety of creative ways. We also enjoyed taking part in the ‘Active Break Every Day’ challenge throughout the month.
Numeracy kept us busy exploring Chance and making pyramids and prisms. Throw into the mix Pancake Tuesday, a whole school Mass to mark the beginning of Lent and wrap it up nicely with some more art work in the style of Ms. Cawley’s favourite surrealist artist Salvador Dalí and you get a very productive month in third class.
January
Athbhliain faoi mhaise daoibh go léir!
We were all quick to get back into the swing of things in 2026, in particular there was great excitement with the arrival of the hot school lunches. They have been a huge talking point, with the children eager to share their thoughts and opinions and plan their next week’s menu.
We continued to develop our digital literacy skills also this month working as Environmental Researchers on the topic of the ‘Great Pacific Garbage Patch’. This followed on from a wonderful scheme of work on the theme of ‘Plastics’ which has really peaked our interest in areas of science, geography and history.
Catholic Schools’ Week also took place in January with one of the most special days in the school calendar where we welcome our Grandparents into our classroom and share our work, memories and skills with them.
We also began our focus on the Gymnastic skills of balancing, hopping and landing this month with some extra wellbeing classroom activities as part of the Active Breaks Challenge.
Wrapping up the month nicely it was all hands on deck to help us make St. Brigid’s crosses. It was challenging to begin with but we got the hang of it eventually.
December
I think it’s fair to say that once our Christmas Play took place, we definitely took the foot of the pedal and eased ourselves into the Christmas holidays. The show called ‘Stable Manners’ was a massive hit, with every single child performing like professionals both in the matinee and the evening show. I could not be prouder of how this class worked together to learn lines, songs, raps, dances and were willing to take on any number of roles I asked of them. A huge amount of work goes into putting it all together but they’re such a talented bunch they made it look easy.
We didn’t overwork ourselves after all that excitement but we did fit in some work on length and measurement and created some amazing layered Christmas trees inspired by the abstract work on Wassily Kandinsky.
Wrapping up 2025 we had a popcorn and movie treat, a wonderfully sunny walk to Huntington Castle in our Christmas outfits followed by a visit from Santa. Merry Christmas to you all and best wishes for 2026.
November
I think we rehearsed every day in November for our upcoming Christmas Nativity Play but we did manage to squeeze in some hands-on work with fractions and multiplication. We continued our French lessons this month and 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.
To wrap up November we did some serious ‘Spellings for Me’ assessments before we nearly made ourselves sick with the amount of treats we brought in to share with each other for yet another ‘Random Acts of Kindness’ party.
October
Once again in October we thoroughly enjoyed Maths Week with many activities including the firm favourite ‘Problem of the day’, with some brilliant prizes, as well as joining in on the times tables phenomenon TT Rock Stars using the tablets to improve our multiplication skills.
We have continued our efforts to improve our Irish comhrá, this time out in the hallway! Then we finished the spooky season with some seriously creepy Tim Burton-inspired (Burtonesque) self-portraits. Eerily accurate likenesses and wonderfully detailed portraits emerged.
The mid-term break came just in time after an extremely spooky Halloween Walk to Huntington Castle. Every year the costumes just continue to impress and scare us in equal measure. A tremendous effort was made on all the costumes, I think you’ll agree.
September
We started strong this September putting real emphasis on our ‘comhrá’ with the intention of creating the most useful Gaeilge notebook to take with us all the way to secondary school.
We began a new maths programme this year aligning with the new Primary Maths Curriculum and so far so good. We are really enjoying all the hands-on activities, games and activities that are forcing us to explore maths topics in a much deeper way.
This is the second year of the pupil-centred spelling programme ‘Spellings for Me’ and with a new revised version we have been busy testing, getting to know the system and learning new strategies to help us on our spelling journey. We have also successfully restarted the Accelerated Reading programme.
Early September’s work centred around ‘Communication’ leading us to 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, identifying warm and cool colours as well as complimentary colours.
Music Generation returned in September where third class students were introduced to the guitar for the first time. It’s bigger and more difficult but we are excited to continue to practice these skills at home and at school.
While the weather is still fine we have taken our first Walk on Wednesday to improve our health and wellbeing. This will hopefully become a regular occurrence.
