Check out our page each week to see the wonderful learning that is happening in our class!

🌟 How to change your MY-SCHOOL password from home🌟

If you have been asked to change your password or have been told your password has expired, you won’t be able to change it yourself outside school through the MY-SCHOOL login page. 
 

Go to the following web address 

http://www.c2kni.net/c2k_services.html

The images below show you how the page will open. Select change password and then enter your username and your current password along with your new password (twice) 

IF YOU HAVE LOCKED YOUR ACCOUNT BY ENTERING YOUR PASSWORD TOO MANY TIMES YOU WONT BE ABLE TO RESET IT. Ask an adult to email me or send the school a Facebook message and I will unlock your account. 
 

I hope this is useful. Great to see so many of you accessing MY-SCHOOL and google classroom. 
well done 👍  

Monday 29th June

Good morning boys and girls, 

The last 2 days of term are upon us! I just wanted to send you all a wee message to say how fantastic you all are and how proud I am of each and every one of you! You have worked hard through what was a very strange and difficult time. Thanks so much for sending all your work and messages to me each week... my highlight most definitely was your project work! 
I hope you all have a safe and happy summer break and look forward to welcoming you back in September 🥰 
Mrs Sloan 

Lockdown leavers 2020 

The day has come to say farewell to our leaver’s class of 2020... what a goodbye! You will forever be the class that made history, finishing off your final term in P7 like no other class ever have. 
 

We all wish you luck, health and happiness as you begin the next stage of your education in the ‘big school’ and look forward to catching up with you all soon. 
 

Have a read of some of the lovely messages from the P6s who will most certainly miss you in their class and the lovely memory write ups you prepared. 
 

I am so very proud of you all.
 

Have a great summer break and take care.

Mrs Sloan 

Monday 22^nd June

Good morning Primary 6 and 7,

This is officially the last full week of the school year; I can’t quite believe it and it is very strange to be ending the year without all our usual celebrations and routines.

The work shared this week is all on the theme of summer and can be located in the google classroom. There are useful work booklets for literacy and numeracy revision. I hope you enjoy carrying out some of the more fun and creative tasks.

Primary six, please continue to make use of Mathletics over the summer months and read for enjoyment in preparation for coming back to school in August.

Primary 7, I look forward to seeing you all on Friday. I hope the weather picks up so we can enjoy an outdoor celebration as planned. Please make sure you have taken the time to learn the leaver's song, shared in our google classroom. 

Your parents will be collecting some of your belongings and your reports on Friday. Please make sure any reading books and textbooks that you have at home are sent in on this day to school. This is incredibly important for planning next years resources.

Have a great summer everyone. I have missed you all over the past few months and am so looking forward to seeing you again soon.

Take care

Mrs Sloan

Monday 15th June

Hi boys and girls, 

Please click on the relevant class to access this week's tasks. 

Thank you 

Mrs Sloan

Primary Seven Leaver's arrangements 2020

Please read the information in the letter below. P7, get your song choices to me asap so one can be selected to give us time to rehearse. 

Thank You 

Mrs Sloan

Ancient Greece and the Olympics Mini Topic 

Well done to all those who participated in last week’s mini topic! I received excellent, informative slideshows and some very creative pieces made with Lego! 🤩
 

keep up the great work 😊🤗🥰

Monday 8th June 

Good morning boys and girls, 
Please click on your class to access this week’s tasks. 
We are going to have our very own ‘Virtual Sport’s day’ on Friday!! The information and the videos to use to guide you all can be found by clicking here https://www.holycrossps.com/class-pages/ Please do take part and remember it is for fun!! You can send your videos/photos in and we will be able to create a ‘whole school’ sport’s day presentation. 

I hope you all have a great week. Continue to follow the guidance and stay safe.
Mrs Sloan 
 

Mini topic... The water cycle 

Well done to Darragh and Liam Sloan for their wonderful work on the Water Cycle last week. 
Well done to those who put their knowledge to the test on Kahoot! Too 😊

Monday 1^st June

Good morning boys and girls,

Please click on the relevant class link to access this week’s work. Some work, such as the ‘mini’ topic will be the same.

Have a great week!

Mrs Sloan

Wednesday 27th May 

Good morning boys and girls, 

I hope you enjoyed the long bank holiday weekend and continue to stay safe. It Is hard to believe we are in the last week of May and I am sad to think of all the fun we are missing out on together at this time of the year, but remember what is most important is that we continue to follow the advice being given to us and that we and our families remain healthy and well. 

Phonics 
As this is a short week, we have a nice short sound study the ‘sh’ sound. There are fewer spellings to learn and use which I’m sure you will all be happy about 😊. As always, upload any completed tasks for me to review in our google classroom.

Numeracy
Mathletics is back up and running. Please go on and see what tasks have been allocated. If you have any difficulty accessing do, please let me know.

WAU Mini Topic 
We have had lots of amazing pieces of work submitted for our ‘mini topics’. Last week’s presentations on famous people were very interesting. Well done. This week our mini topic is ‘The water cycle’. I have shared some useful links from NI water, you may remember some of them from the ‘Water bus’ visit last year. There are also some activities assigned on purple mash, please log on and check these out. As always, how you choose to present the project is up to you. There is a Kahoot! Quiz which is available until next Tuesday to test your knowledge on the topic 😊 Remember to use your real name so I know how you have gotten on. Well done to all those who took part in the quizzes last week.... excellent scores and knowledge of famous people and inventors!

Grow in Love
As we approach the end of May, I would encourage you to remember that this is the month of Mary the mother of Jesus. Most of you created beautiful May altars. This week, perhaps you can make a special effort to say a prayer at your May altar for yourself, your family and all those who you miss. 

Next week I am going to have a separate link for P7 as I would like them to focus on other areas of learning in the last few weeks. Keep an eye out for this on Monday.

I look forward to hearing from you all this week. Stay safe :)

Mrs Sloan
 

Monday 18^th May

Good morning girls and boys,

I hope you are all well as we start yet another week of home-learning. I am so very proud of all the efforts you have been making to carry out the tasks I have set for you and for submitting your work and your topic projects to me. I just love receiving your work and having a link with you all during these strange times- you are all doing so well.

A special ‘thank you’ to those of you who took the time to write a prayer or send a message to our P4 class for what was to be their First Holy Communion day on Saturday. I’m sure it meant so much to them to read all your kind thoughts.

Spelling

This week we are taking a break from our phonics schedule to focus on common misspelled/tricky high frequency words.  Carry out similar tasks to your phonics tasks; see can you write a text using as many of the words as possible, definitions of unfamiliar vocabulary, sentence writing or create mnemonics of words you find particularly hard to help you remember (these can be posters to stick on your wall!) Some of these words will seem easy- always be sure you are using them correctly. The more you use them, the more likely you are to get them right

😊

Literacy

You will remember that before the closure we were focusing on the comprehension skill ‘inference’ where you have to read ‘between the lines’ beyond the obvious to get a deeper understanding from what you read. I have uploaded some mini comprehension challenge cards to reinforce this skill in our google classroom.

Numeracy

Continue to work on your mental maths skills and revise your timetables. In Mathletics this week, I have focused on patterns and relationships in number. Well done to those who achieved their bronze certificates last week, remember to use Mathletics live to play games against one another and earn extra points… you may even get your name on the leader board!!

I have uploaded some perimeter challenge cards too. Remember perimeter is the measure around the outside of a shape (we say we take a walk around the shape, adding as we go). There are some trickier questions, where you must problem solve, using the measurements given to work out a missing length.  

WAU Mini Topic

Our mini topic this week is ‘famous people’. I have incorporated some literacy work into this week’s mini topic. Log into your purple mash account and select the ‘2dos’ and you will find a selection of writing tasks about some famous people in history. You don’t have to complete all tasks, select one of them and research and complete a written task based on their lives (I have linked in some documents on our google classroom that you may wish to use). For your own topic work, you can select any famous person, be it a footballer, artist, musician, someone important from history or someone from the present day. It is entirely up to you (I might have an idea of who some of you will select :D) How you present your work, as always with our mini topics, is up to you. You can do a PowerPoint presentation, a video, an impersonation, a painting/model… the choice is yours! I absolutely love to receive your project work each week, it’s always so creative and individual.

We will hopefully complete a Kahoot! Quiz on famous people in history during the week too 😊

I hope you all have a great week and continue to follow the advice to keep yourselves and your family safe. I look forward to when we will all be reunited.

Mrs Sloan

Chloe's family time capsule

'We are living history' was a task assigned at the beginning of the lock down, to mark how in years to come people will look back on this time and learn about it in classrooms. Chloe and her family created a fabulous time capsule to help teach others what it was like to live through lockdown!

Excellent work Chloe :) 

Danny’s Bridge Project 

Danny had sent this video in of a real bridge he built with his daddy during our Bridges Mini Topic... It was too large to share but I’m so happy to have it uploaded now for you all to see! 
Excellent work 😊⭐️Great job from his assistant Cassie for the grand opening too 🥰

CONFIRMATION DAY 2020 

Thank you to the boys who shared a message and photo of how they spent their confirmation day this year. It certainly wasn’t the day we had all for, but Josh, Danny and Liam certainly had a special day regardless! 
We hope you all had a lovely day and look forward to being able to share in the celebration of this important sacrament very soon. 

WAU Mini Topic.... Nature!

Off to a great start with this week's mini topic, which left you a lot of room to choose an area of interest to you. It is very clear that we live in a beautiful area, surrounded by glorious countryside, rich in all sorts of nature!

Well done to Fianna and Darragh for their submissions. Darragh's collage of images is so bright and cheerful and Fianna has created a nature walk and poem. Excellent work 

Thank you Owen (and John and Raymond) for the Nature project submission which is teaching us all a thing or two about how to grow grass! Great work :) 

Monday 11^th May

Good morning boys and girls,

How are we already into the second week of May??!! It seems such a long time since I saw all your lovely, happy faces in person. I hope you and your families are well and staying safe.

Thank you so much for all the lovely messages, updates, photos and submissions of work. I truly love to see how you are getting on at home. I especially love the photos of you out in the sunshine, safely enjoying the great outdoors with your family. We are so fortunate to live in such a beautiful area.

This Saturday was to be a very special day for our P4 class. Like our P7s they were to celebrate a very special Sacrament this May- they were to celebrate their First Holy Communion. I am sure you all have great memories from your own Holy Communion and can understand how disappointing it would be to not have the chance to celebrate this very special occasion in their lives. I thought it would be a nice idea to do a little picture, write a prayer or record a message to cheer them up… it would be great if you could all take the time to do something and I could group them together to share on their class page on Saturday. It would be a lovely positive and caring way to mark their special day. As always, send your work to me directly at csloan154@c2kni.net or via our google classroom or school FB message.

Phonics

Our Phonics target for the week is the ‘ch’ sound. Thank you to all of you who have been keeping up with the weekly sound study and have been sending in your work. Remember you can continue to do the work in your literacy books also if you prefer. Visit http://www.ictgames.com/mobilePage/lcwc/index.html too for a fun way to revise tricky high frequency words and spelling patterns using the 'Look, say, cover, write, check' strategy. Remember to keep up with your English in practice too.

Literacy

For Literacy this week, I thought it would be great to do something slightly different. I received an email from Newry, Mourne and Down District Council towards the end of last week. It explained that they were starting a new project called ‘Living in Lockdown’. The idea is that they will be able to record their residents' experiences of the lockdown for use in their museums for years to come, so in the future people will get an idea of what life was like during the 2020 Covid 19 pandemic. I would like you to write a piece for the ‘Living in Lockdown’ project. Get your parents to get involved too and work together to explain what you are living through, how are you keeping in contact with your family and friends? How are you carrying out your schoolwork/home-schooling? What things are you able/unable to do? Are you able to work from home (mums and dads)? How does this experience make you feel? Anything you think is of interest or important to note!

Remember this will be used to inform future generations of this moment of history… make it as detailed and informative as you can. Wouldn’t it be amazing to have your family’s record in a museum to read in the future!!

Numeracy

For Numeracy I have updated Mathletics with some new tasks. I have put up fewer ‘set’ tasks this week as I would like you to spend more time on ‘Live’ Mathletics, revising your skills. Perhaps you will be on at the same time as a fellow classmate so you can play against one another or you can play against the computer or children around the world.  

Remember to keep revisiting your timestables and to work on your mental maths books too! This is a great way to keep all your knowledge fresh in your head! https://www.topmarks.co.uk/maths-games/7-11-years/ordering-and-sequencing-numbers has some great games for your age group for you to revise lots of key topics. 'Hit the button' is a good quick fire for timestables.

WAU Mini Topic

I must acknowledge the fantastic effort being made in our WAU ‘mini topics’… you have all been so creative, I just love to see what you come up with each week and the fact the whole family seems to get involved, Well done!! I hope you take the time to have a look at each other’s work on the website and google classroom... I try to make sure I share everyone's work.

This week’s topic mini topic is ‘local nature’ I hope the weather continues to be nice so you can get outside for a nature walk or spend time in the garden. You can pick any aspect of local nature; the trees, the birds, animals, landscape to focus on… whichever interests you most. Perhaps you will draw/paint something, research facts about particular local wildlife, become ‘David Attenborough’ for the week and video local wildlife in its natural habitat, keep tallys of different birds/ insects in your garden, build a bird house or bug hotel… the options are endless and it is entirely up to you!! Be creative and have fun 😊 I can't wait to see what you all come up with!

I have been in contact with most of you over the past few weeks, either via google classroom and the messages and work you’ve submitted or from your parents messaging. Can I ask that anyone who hasn’t been in contact, please send me a little message (or get mum/dad to) simply to let me know how you are. I miss you all very much and like to know how you and your families are getting on. Remember the most important thing is to be safe, happy and healthy!!!

P7, I had asked that you send in a picture or message to your classmates, showing how you acknowledged your Confirmation day or simply just to say something to the rest of your class on the occasion. Could you please send me this messages/photos by Wednesday so I can collate and share on the website. Don't worry if you didn't have the chance to do anything in particular... a nice 'hello' from you alone would brighten up each other's day!

I look forward to hearing from you all.

Mrs Sloan

I have uploaded last week’s Mathletics certificates in google classroom. Let’s see who can earn their bronze this week 😁

I will also be checking out the kahoot! Quiz results from last week and will announce the top scorers when the quiz closes later this afternoon... there’s still time if you haven’t had a go!! The link is in the google classroom stream. ⭐️

Egyptians Mini Topic

Off to a flying start with our Egytian mini topic this week... well done 😁 

I love to see all the creative approaches to the topic. 
Luke has used Egyptian symbols to write his name and Darragh made a fantastic model Pyramid!! 
 

Look at the other great efforts I received over the weekend. Excellent Danny, Emmett, Fianna, Owen, Liam, Thomas and Chloe. 
 

I also received very well researched slide presentations on google classroom! Well done... you are all amazing!! 
 

Access Google Classroom from now (Thursday) until Monday to test your new knowledge on the Kahoot! Quiz... I wonder who is going to get the top score 🤔😁 

keep up the hard work everyone 👍⭐️

Thomas’ fabulous bridge work 

Thomas is very pleased with his work and rightly so... an excellent bridge and research for last week’s topic work! 
 

Well Done Thomas!!! 😁⭐️

Danny’s bridges work

Danny has been very busy with the mini topics set each week. He has down some great work on bridges, his model bridge and research can be seen below. 
He also worked with his dad to design and make a REAL bridge in his garden... unfortunately I cannot get the video to upload at the moment but hope to soon so you can all see it. 
 

Well done Danny... super work!!! ⭐️⭐️

Luke and Ella’s real life Bridges research 

Luke was busy making the most of the sunshine and researching his mini topic on bridges. Ella very kindly helped him look at the bridges on the nearby river. 
 

Great work 😁⭐️

Chloe’s beautiful May Altar 

Well done Chloe! Beautiful art work making your Altar an extra special prayer space. 

Monday 4^th May

Primary seven boys and girls,

Today was to be a very special day for you all, one of the most important that marks your final year in primary school, your Confirmation day. A day when you were to receive the very special fruits and gifts of the Holy Spirit as you confirmed your faith and renewed the promises made for you on the day of your baptism all those years ago.

Today, there is some sadness as we are all too aware of how different our celebration is. Had we been in school as normal, we'd have spent the last few weeks and days in a buzz of excitement, making preparations, rehearsing singing and prayers and enjoying what is a celebration of you, the young people you have become and the special role of God in your lives.

I have no doubt you and your families, like us, are disappointed and saddened at not getting to celebrate this special day with you as we had all planned. We know there will come a time when we will truly celebrate this special occasion but for now, we must wait. That does not mean we will let the day pass us by unnoticed, while we wait there are some things we can do to mark the day that you would have been confirmed.

Mass will be offered up this morning for all the P7 children of our Parish and their families in St Joseph's Ballymartin at 10am. I would encourage you to tune in and participate in this Mass to acknowledge this special day and the hope we hold for our celebration of confirmation in the future. It is a nice opportunity to feel united in prayer for each other and our families at this time too.

As a special treat, there is officially NO home-school work on Monday or Tuesday for P7. Had we been in school we would have celebrated in a similar way! If we were in school today it would have been a half day to allow your siblings to celebrate with you. For that reason, today will be a half day of home learning for them too (I'm sure this will put a smile on a lot of faces) so you can all celebrate together in whatever way you plan to mark the occasion.

In our learning for last week I encouraged you all to prepare a May altar to Our Mother Mary. I received photos of such beautiful altars. This is a truly special thing to have in your home. If you have a May altar, place something on the altar today, perhaps a photo of you or a symbol of the Holy Spirit, to acknowledge the fact this would have been your confirmation day.

I’ve have shared some lovely ‘Grow in Love’ videos, to help you reflect on Confirmation and what this day means for you all. Take some time with your family to listen to the reflections and the songs.

Please send in some photos of how you are celebrating the day with your family and we can share them with everyone so we can feel united in recognition of what should have been your confirmation day. It isn’t the day we had planned but it still means so very much to each of us!

Know we will be thinking of you all in a special way today and offering up prayers for each one of you. We look forward to the time when we can celebrate the Sacrament of Confirmation with you in person.

I wish you all every good wish, today and always. I hope you enjoy the day whatever you choose to do.

God Bless

Mrs Sloan and all the staff of Holy Cross

Monday 4th May

Primary 6 boys and girls,

You may have read my message above to the P7’s acknowledging that today would have been their Confirmation day- You’ll be glad to hear Monday is a half day for you all too. It would be lovely, if you wish, for you to leave a little message for our P7’s on our google classroom.

You can then make a start on this week’s learning.

Well done to all of you (P7s too) for the great effort in all learning last week. I loved receiving all your photos of your mini topic work, your May altars and the submissions of phonics! It was great to see so many of you using Mathletics and Purple Mash too!

Numeracy

I have uploaded some new Mathletic’s tasks for the week and some Purple Mash focused tasks. Remember on both learning apps you can access other tasks for fun or according to what interests you. Well done to all those who earned their Mathletics certificates last week (these were shared in google classroom)!!

Phonics

Phonics this week is the based on the target sound ‘k’ Please do submit your work either via google classroom or even in a photo so I can see how you are getting on. You can challenge yourself to try some on the sound words from the next group too i.e. if you are 4a try some 4b words). There are also some written literacy tasks linked to our mini topic as this is a short week.

World Around Us

Our mini topic for this week is…. The Egyptians. This is a very interesting topic. I want you to carry out some research on the Egyptians; you can use Newsdesk fact sheets and Purple mash as well as google or books you may have at home. You can create a presentation on your findings (google docs or slides). You may wish to focus on one area of interest such as the pyramids, Egyptian Gods, Egyptian creations and even hieroglyphics (symbols the Egyptians used). Get creative… design a make a mask for an Egyptian king, make a model of a pyramid, make a model to show how the Egyptians made their homes or transported goods up the Nile. I have set some writing tasks based on this topic in Purple Mash as well as some fun tasks and games! You have been so creative with our mini topics so far and are having fun with them… I look forward to seeing what you come up with for this topic. It’s one of my favourites!

I will share some Kahoot! Quizzes for fun too later in the week… Keep an eye out on google classroom for the link.

Remember Friday is a bank holiday… let’s hope the sun is shining!

Keep up the great effort and remember stay in and stay safe.

Missing you all,

Mrs Sloan

Bridges mini topic 

This week’s mini topic was bridges. You were tasked with researching the types of Bridges and how they work and then creating your own bridge with just paper and tape (that could carry a load!) 

First example just in! 
 

fab ⭐️

Owen has been very busy... multitasking between life on the farm (and all the jobs he has to do!) and keeping up to date on his home learning! 
 

Thank you for the pictures... it’s great to see what everyone is getting up to. 

May is the month of Mary 

Have a look at the beautiful May Altar crafts So far. 

Siofra and Emmett have put a great deal of work and creativity into their beautiful tributes to Mary. 
 

Well done! 
 

Just added Liam S, Fianna and Owen’s beautiful May altars too. Great work ⭐️🙏🏻

Luke and Ella worked together to create their beautiful altar too. ⭐️
Arianna gave me a hand with ours... she made the flowers out of egg cartons and donated her rosary beads to the altar. 🥰
 

Well done everyone 😇

More dinosaurs mini topic work 

WOW!!! 
Look at the fabulous models, facts and art work that Danny and Luke Murphy shared with me this morning! Excellent art work from Josh just added too 😊
Such a lot of work went into these! 

Fabulous boys 😊 I’m sure everyone will love looking at these models. Well done 👍

Monday 27^th April

Good morning boys and girls

Firstly, a very big ‘Thank you’ and ‘Well done’ to those of you who logged onto Mathletics and have been trying it out doing some daily activities. I have updated some tasks for you all for the week ahead. I hope you are having fun exploring some of the games and perhaps playing against other pupils. Remember to earn 'Live Mathletics' points by playing games. Some boys and girls earned their Bronze certificate for last week by scoring over 1000 points... let's see how many class bronze certificates we can earn this week!

Remember, purple mash has lots of revision games and activities. I have noticed it’s been a while since you have logged on. I have assigned different tasks this week for those of you who can access it. If you have any difficulty with your passwords or log in details send me a message via our google classroom or email me directly to csloan154@c2kni.net

Phonics

Our sound this week is 'r' Remeber to send me some of your phonics work on google classroom. I have really enjoyed reading some of the very creative non-sense sound stories.

Literacy

We would have been looking at persuasive writing this term. I have assigned some persuasive tasks on purple mash for you to try as well as a persuasive writing piece to plan in google classroom.

We are also looking at the role of the comma in our writing. We are good at using it for listing items, but can we use it to ensure there is less confusion in a sentence and to show additional information or clauses?? Have a go at the assigned purple mash tasks.

I hope you are all continuing to read for enjoyment and have perhaps finished some of the reading materials sent home in your packs. Remember our focus on non-fiction reading, if you’ve finished the non-fiction books you can continue to improve your non-fiction reading and comprehension skills by reading fact sheets and daily articles on news desk.

I have shared our first Junior Jurors book with you all via google classroom. I hope you have had a chance to read. This week I would like you to give a review of the book; what you liked about it or disliked about it, your thoughts on the characters and who you think would enjoy the book the most and a score for the book out of 100. You can write the review (on google docs) or you could record yourself talking about the book (which would be waaay more fun and interesting I’m sure) and then send it to me. Remember, your thoughts will be passed on to help inform the judges on the children’s book of the year 2020.

Another task related to our book is a creative one- redesign the cover!! What do you imagine the cover should look like… how could you make it look more appealing to a young reader such as yourself or your friends? Have a think and have a go!! Send me a photo of your completed cover 😊

Numeracy

Log on to the Mathletics programme and purple mash for some new learning this week. Remember to keep doing your mental maths workbook and timetables learning too.

World around us

Bridges & STEM is our new ‘mini topic’… What is a bridge? How are they made? I want you to carry out some research on NEWSDESK factsheets and see if you can find the answers. This links with STEM (Science, Technology, Engineering and Maths) and I am setting you a challenge… to make a bridge!!

I haven’t gone loopy (before you ask!! :D) I don’t want you to make a real-life bridge… I challenge you to make a bridge solely from: paper and tape!! See how tall and how far you can get your bridge to span… for extra points see can it carry a load (e.g. can it stay upright if you put something on top of it like a toy car??) Send me pictures of your engineering masterpieces. We might try another little Kahoot! quiz this week linked to our mini topic.

ICT

If you’ve been using our google classroom and software, you have been using your ICT skills quite frequently lately which is great! Purple Mash have some great coding activities and challenges if you want to practice your coding skills.

TASK: Go onto scratch (in just the same way you’d access it in school) Create a story board using your coding skills. This story is to advise people about good hygiene or about the rules of lockdown (It must be persuasive to link in with your text type for the term!)

Grow in Love

Friday is the 1^st of May. May is the month that we pray to and honour Our Lady, Mary the mother of Jesus in a very special way. In school we would normally create a very special May altar in our classroom for this month.

I have uploaded some pictures of Our Lady for you to print and colour to create your own special May altar in your home. If you don’t have a printer you can draw and decorate your own picture of Mary and gather any statues or prayer items to create an altar. We love to add flowers to our prayer altar in school. Perhaps you can pick some lovely flowers from the garden. Send me photos of your completed pictures or altars. I’d love to see them. Perhaps we could offer up our prayers to Mary this month, for an end to this virus and protection for all our families from the illness.

I hope you all have a lovely week. 

Missing you lots!!!

Mrs Sloan 

Our mini topic this week is dinosaurs... 
Lots of great research has been happening on the topic. I also encouraged you to get creative and draw or make a model of your favourite dinosaur! 

Delighted to receive photos of Darragh’s model T-Rex. Excellent work 😊 

Remember to send me pics of all the great work you get up to... they really put a smile on my face! 

Monday 20^th April

Good morning boys and girls,

Welcome back to your ‘home learning’ after the Easter break. It was certainly an unusual break this year, but I hope you and your families were able to make the most of it by doing some nice things at home, enjoying the beautiful sunshine and perhaps eating lots of yummy Easter eggs!! I hope you and your families are well and continuing to stay in and stay safe.

As we are back to our home learning timetable, I am going to assign some tasks for the week. These tasks can be completed when you can and it is possibly more manageable to do small amounts throughout the week, rather than all in one go.

Remember, you have your English in practice, mental maths and reading materials which you should continue to work on, that don’t require you to access a computer/internet.

Some of you have managed to login to our google classroom and have left messages so I know how you are getting along. Can I ask anyone who hasn’t managed this to either log into the classroom or send me an email to csloan154@c2kni.net It would be great if we could see some pictures of what you have been getting up to or even a written message to your classmates that we can share on our class page to help everyone stay connected. Have a look at some of the pictures and messages on the other class pages too. I would love to hear how you are all doing!

Phonics

Our phonics sound study this week is ‘u’ For your sound see can you use some of the target words in a nonsense text, perhaps create a word search for your sibling/parent to complete (this helps you order the letters in new words), remember definitions of unfamiliar vocabulary and sentence writing. See how many small words you can make from one of your largest words. For example, ‘Luxuriously’ has sly, silly, sulk etc

Numeracy

For maths, continue to use purple mash and your mental maths book, to revise some of your learning. I have also signed our class up for tasks using a new website known as Mathletics (www.mathletics.com ) It’s a great fun website where you can answer set tasks from me to gain points but also play games and practice your maths in the ‘play section’. You start of by creating an avatar for your profile. The more points you earn the more you can change your avatar. You can play live Mathletics against pupils from your school and around the world and can earn certificates for your work. I have loaded up the passwords into our google classroom for security reasons- there is a QR code so you can use your camera on your tablet or phone to sign in. Just simply go to mathletics.com and click on the tab which activates your camera and hover it over the QR code- it will log you in straight away. I’ve uploaded a video to explain how to access this and some of the features! Please sign into your account and have a look at the tasks I have assigned this week. The focus is on number to get you all started. I will be able to track your progress and see how well you are coping with the learning too. I will change the tasks throughout the week as you complete them and from week to week. If you have a printer there are some printable workbooks too :)

World Around Us

For WAU we would have been starting our new topic if we were in school. This won’t be possible at present so instead I will be putting up some ‘mini topics’ for the coming weeks including; dinosaurs, the Olympics, Ancient Egypt, bridges and STEM and famous people. We will carry out some learning tasks on these ‘mini topics’ and hopefully be able to connect at an agreed time to do some kahoot quizzes against one another 😊

To start us off we will look at ‘Dinosaurs’ this week. Firstly look on Newsdesk https://newsdesk.c2kschools.net/c/newsdesk/news/3262 and read the recent article. Then you can search for some more fact sheets and create a google slide with some of the most interesting key facts you’ve discovered. These can be submitted in the google classroom. Pick your favourite dinosaur from what you’ve read. Draw a labelled diagram of it or make a model and send me a photo either by email or through the class (mum or dad can also send via the school’s Facebook if that is easier) I’m looking forward to seeing what you come up with so get creative!!

Junior Jurors 

I had signed our class up this year to participate in the KPMG Junior Juries Programme, which gets children involved in reading a selection of newly released children’s books to have their say on what they think are the best and most recommended reads. Your opinions and scores of the books are then used to award the children’s book of the year 2020. We were due to get some of these reading materials sent to us which now won’t be possible with the school closures! However, we can still participate using all our online methods. The first book we have been assigned to read, and review is ‘MADAME BADOBEDAH’ by Sophie Dahl (Roald Dahl’s granddaughter). An extract of the book can be viewed on www.youtube.com/watch?v=D2afw7BdOXA

I am awaiting confirmation that you can download this book from NI libraries for free on your kindle/tablet or on your computer. It is available to purchase on kindle. If you like you can read along with a parent or access an audio book. I will be assigning some tasks about the book (including a video book review) which we will able to submit to the KPMG Junior jurors committee to help them decide on the children’s book of the year 2020!! A fun way to keep reading during these extraordinary times!

As always, the priority is that you are all healthy, happy and well- remember there are other ways to learn that don’t involve school work (baking, nature hunts, learning a new skill from a parent/sibling, farming etc). Know that I am very much missing you all and all the chatter and fun!! We would have been counting down to some very special events this term. I would love to hear from you and love receiving all your pieces of work so I can see how you’re getting on.

Keep safe,

Mrs Sloan

Monday 6th April 

Good morning boys and girls, 

Yesterday was Palm Sunday, which marks the beginning of Holy Week. Had we been in school this week we would have been spending much of our time learning about Holy Week and what it means for us as followers of Jesus. We also would have been working on some lovely Easter Crafts before our half day on Wednesday. 

For this reason I am not setting lots of Literacy/numeracy/WAU activities this week. I would rather you take some time to reflect on the meaning of Holy Week. I will put up some Grow in love resources to help with this. 
 

Our priests encouraged us yesterday to get creative and adorn our doorways with greenery because we wouldn’t be able to receive a Palm Cross as we do every other year. This would be a nice starting point for you all. I have included some pictures of some of the efforts my family have made. You can be as creative as you like. 
 

You can also make and decorate a cross for the veneration of the Cross on Good Friday, when we reflect on the great sacrifice Jesus made for each of us. 
 

As always, you can use google classroom to send messages to me or your classmates. Do send in some of the lovely work you prepare and I can share it on our clss page (csloan154@c2kni.net) 

Take care and stay safe! 
keep up the hard work :) 

Mrs Sloan 

Monday 30^th March, 2020

Good Afternoon boys and girls,

Apologies for the delay.

I hope you had a lovely weekend, enjoying the sunshine with your family at home. Today marks the start of week 2 of our home learning. A huge ‘well done’ for all your efforts so far, I was very impressed by the number of you who used google classroom to send messages and upload tasks that you had completed.

I have added some new activities on google classroom for this coming week. Some of the resources can also be found below on our class web page. Remember; there are other subjects that you can work on through these weeks including PE, Art and design, technology.

Stay active and have fun!

You can get your parent/guardian to send me photos of how you’ve been spending your time through our school Facebook page or my email csloan154@c2kni.net and I can share these with your classmates.

As we approach the beginning of April, we prepare for the coming of Holy Week and our celebration of EASTER. This week I have included some lovely ‘Grow in Love’ activities to help us prepare. Remember throughout lent we try to repent and carry out 3 things to bring us closer to God and prepare us to celebrate Jesus’ resurrection; Prayer, Fasting and good works. Perhaps we can make an extra special effort to do these things over the next 2 weeks.

Missing you all and hoping you are well! :) 

Mrs Sloan

P6 & 7 Home Learning update

Monday 30th March 2020

Good morning everyone... I'm having a little problem with my internet this morning, as soon as I can get on I will update you all with this weeks activities. 

Thank you, Mrs Sloan

Some activities for the week... just click on the link to take you to the website.

https://family.gonoodle.com/ 

Join in with some songs and dancing to get active. There are also some lovely relaxing activities to help you stay calm and worry free!

https://www.mathschase.com/

use this website to test your number facts, including adding, subtracting and times tables :)

http://www.scootle.edu.au/ec/viewing/L1275/index.html#

Edit the comic book to make it more interesting

https://scratch.mit.edu/projects/editor/?tutorial=getStarted

Why not have a go at creating something new on SCRATCH... use the tutorials to give you some ideas.

P6 & 7 Home Learning update

Monday 23rd March

Good morning everyone... just to ask you to log in to our google classroom. I have added some 'assignments' for the week. Remember these are options for your learning at home and there are lots of different tasks/ways to carry out these learning activities. Pop on and say hello to everyone!

Thank you, Mrs Sloan

Hello Primary 6&7 pupils and parents... 

At present packs are being prepared for home learning, while we follow advice to close or school. Below you will find copies of some of the information being issued in the 'Packs'. 

Arrangements will be made to have these collected from school before the end of the week. 

We still want our website to be a link between home and school... send work/photographs and messages direct to me that we can include to keep everyone up to date and in touch over the coming weeks!

Happy St. Patrick's Day everyone!!

We have created our own assembly on St. Patrick, which you can view under 'Children, St. Patrick's Assemblies 2020'

We really enjoyed our 'Green Day' and even had our very own St. Patrick in class... Well done to Danny for the extra special effort :)

Using ICT and TSPC of Self management

We completed the Topic Time ICT task using 'Google Slides' to create a presentation on our topic 'The Rainforest'.

There was lots of key factual information from our learning to date included in the presentations and some even managed to use images, sounds and videos. We can't wait to see everyone present on the IWB!

Literacy- Exploring Explanation Text

WE have been looking at lots of samples of explanation texts to discover the different features they have- we found things like: Chronological order, time connectives and past tense.

We will be preparing in the coming weeks to write our own autobiography!

World Book Day 2020

We celebrated world book day on Thursday... everyone made a great effort to dress up as a character from a book they have enjoyed! We had some great links with Non-Fiction texts this year too, which has been are focus for reading for the past few weeks. It was great fun.

We also carried out our 'Read-on' sponsored read for 1 hour in aid of the Children with Cancer charity. We listened to some of our class novel, The boy in the Striped Pyjamas', using an audio book, to celebrate all the different ways we can enjoy reading and stories. This was really enjoyable.

Mental Maths... Partitioning calculations

In mental maths throughout the year we have been focusing on skills and approaches that will help us carry out mental maths calculations more effectively. This week we looked at partitioning numbers when carrying out calculations. We did lots of examples on the Interactive Whiteboard and our independent Whiteboards.. What we discovered??? There are so many different methods and we can use the approach that works best for us!

Working with Fractions

We have been doing a lot of work with fractions lately. Looking at what fractions are and getting familiar with the terms numerator and denominator. We then moved on to looking at finding equivalent fractions... we could find equal fractions using pictures... but then we learned a new rule (What we do to the bottom we must do to the top) to find a huge range of equivalent fractions AND even find missing numerators!!

Computational Thinking in P6&7

We are getting to grips with the new computers and chrome books- and are absolutely loving it!

this week we started coding, thinking about how a computer needs clear coding or instructions to be able to carry out any activities. We used scratch and 'Go Scottie' to have a go at coding ourselves. It was great fun!

We used an explanation text on ‘How Bees make Honey’ to write a summary. First we highlighted the most important information. In groups we decided what was most important. We used bullet points in our summaries. Each group presented their summary to the class. 

Emmett explained that his Granda, who lives in Ukraine, keeps bees who produce honey. Emmett brought the honey in to let us all taste the honey, it was delicious! 

Learning about Cube Numbers

We have been learning all about cube numbers! We know that a cube number is a number multiplied by itself 3 times.

Strictly The Nativity!

On Thursday evening we held our annual KS2 Christmas play. This year the children starred in ‘Strictly The Nativity’… and what a show it was! Well done to all of the children who took part. A massive effort was given by each child and a lot of extremely hard work was carried out behind the scenes. All the children spent lots of time making sure they had learnt their lines,  singing their hearts out and mastering new dance moves. to make the show as exceptional as it was! We are very proud of all the children and we hope you all enjoyed the show as much as we did!

Digital School House

On Thursday, the children got to visit St Malachy’s High School, Castlewellan to participate in the ‘Digital School House’ program. This is a part of the school’s ICT focus and the children got a great insight into computational thinking and coding. They learned about binary programming and how to program a computer to colour an image. They all had a fantastic day, full of fun ICT based activities which we are keen to explore further in our own classroom.

‘It was fun, I learnt that pictures are made of pixels.’ – Owen Haughian

‘At the digital house I saw everything inside a device and learned how pictures were made on a device.’ – Luke Murnion

‘I felt very happy when we got on the computers. I learned that we are smarter than a computer.’ – Luke Murphy

‘I enjoyed doing the coding in the digital school house yesterday. At the start it was difficult but then it got easier.’ – Niall Murnion

‘Digital school house was so much fun, I loved learning about how computers work!’ – Isla McMorrow

Anti-Bullying Week

This week in school we have been carrying out lots of different activities for anti-bullying week. As a class, we discussed what we thought bullying was. We then went onto look at the different types of bullying that occurs, including emotional, verbal and physical; and what these each entail. In pairs, we then brainstormed some of the ways in which we can make a change to help stop bullying. We came up with lots of different ideas and shared these with the class. We were encouraged to give each other compliments throughout the week as well as help each other out when we could - it was lovely to see lots of this happening all week! We each created a poster on anti-bullying, keeping in mind this year’s theme which is ‘Change Starts With Us’.

Our Trip to Hannah's Close

On Tuesday 22nd October, our class took a trip to Hannah’s Close. As we are focusing on the Victorians for our WAU theme this term, we decided this would give us a better insight into how things have changed over time. During our trip to Hannah’s Close, we had a tour of a very old house. We sat around the fire and listened to stories, before watching how bread is made. We then had a go at making some bread ourselves. Our favourite part was when we got to taste the bread ourselves!

Maths Week

This week in school we celebrated Maths Week. During school the children worked in groups to create maths games. Our Primary 6 children created games for Primary 2 and Primary 7 created games for P3&4. The aim of this task was to make maths more fun and to help the younger children with their learning! We had to use lots of exhilarating ideas to help us create the games and we had lots of fun carrying out these games with the younger children at the end of the week. Have a look at some of the amazing games that we created and delivered in our groups.

Mental Health Day

On Thursday 10th October, we celebrated Mental Health Day. We held a ‘Purple Day’ to celebrate and all the boys and girls came to school in purple clothing. We began the morning by discussing what mental health is and shared our ideas of how we can keep ourselves happy and healthy. Throughout the day we took part in lots of different activities. These included painting stones for our sensory garden, which some of the children kindly brought in. While we did this, we listened to some relaxing music and also took part in some ‘mindfulness’ colouring, as these were some of the suggestions the children gave for things that make them feel happy and relaxed. As well as this, we created mind maps around the word ‘Kindness’. To do this, we used our knowledge of abstract nouns as well as adjective and adverbs. We then used this to create a 'Kindness Poem’. We re-drafted our poems to improve them and incorporated our ICT skills to type up our poems on Microsoft Word. We enjoyed adding illustrations to our poems and look forward to saying our poems to the rest of the class. Keep an eye out for our ‘Kindness Poems’ on our website.

National Poetry Day

On Thursday 3rd October, we celebrated National Poetry Day! We spent lots of time in school, and at home learning our chosen poem, ‘My Big Fat Cat’ by Christin M. Mitewu. As a class, we came up with different actions to go along with our poem and we had lots of fun reciting it back for the rest of the school, to celebrate National Poetry Day. We also enjoyed watching the other classes recite their poems and found it so enjoyable witnessing the hard work and enthusiasm all the children out into recite their poems. We hope you enjoy watching us perform our poem

                European Day of Languages

We have had an extremely busy week in P6&7 this week! We have worked very hard to prepare for European Day of Languages. In our groups, we worked together to research facts about our chosen countries and from this made posters, as well as powerpoint presentations which we presented to the rest of the class on Thursday. Our chosen countries included Belgium, Germany, France and Italy. Once we had completed our presentations, we got to enjoy tasting all the lovely food from our chosen countries which was kindly brought in from home! A massive well done to all the boys and girls for the effort put in to celebrate this day!

Roald Dahl Day

Today in school we enjoyed celebrating Roald Dahl Day! We dressed up as many different characters from Roald Dahl's novels and had lots of fun doing a show and tell with our costumes. Throughout the day we researched and discussed the life of Roald Dahl, took part in a quiz about Roald Dahl as well as focusing on some of Roald Dahl's most famous quotes. We even ended with watching 'Witches' as part of our Golden Time.

"Those who don't believe in magic will never find it"

Tally Charts and Frequency Tables

This week in Numeracy we have been focusing on place value as well as tally charts and frequency tables. We have been discussing the importance of grouping data and recording in tables with given intervals. Each pupil had the opportunity to choose the data they wished to collect. We used our whiteboards to gather this data and had lots of discussion around the information gathered, before presenting it in tally charts and frequency tables. Some of the data collected included how many siblings the children in our P6/7 class had, their shoe size, colour of hair, their favourite sport and what pets they owned.