We had another nice start to the week with a lovely PE session with Mr McAleenan from St. Louis Grammar School. We got to perform our Irish song ‘Trassna na Donnte’ in front of everyone at our assembly on Monday. We followed this with a Numeracy session on Problem Solving where we had to find as many solutions as possible to the problem. This took quite a lot of thinking. We needed to extend this piece of work into Tuesday as it took quite a bit more time than expected. On Wednesday we reviewed long multiplication and learned how to use the ‘Box Method’ alongside our long multiplication. We also reviewed our work on Timetables and began some paired work on problem solving involving Timee. This was quite tricky ! In Literacy we worked hard on our Storyboarding activity for our Trailblazers project. This will be ongoing for the next few weeks and slots nicely into our work on Narrative texts. We used our ICT time to continue work on our Explanation texts throughout the week. We have also been working hard on our ‘Environmental Youth Speak’ speech and look forward to sharing these with our peers. We got time to work on our Irish language skills. Each child had to look up the meaning behind their name and the place of origin. We also worked on finding the history of some of our famous places – Baile Atha Cliadh, Doire and Ros Treabhar. This was great fun! In Literacy we worked on our focus topic of Explanation Texts. This time we were working on diagram texts. We looked at how the heart works and figured out how the heart pumps blood. We measured our own heart rates and talked about the positive effects of healthy eating and exercise.
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Trailblazer's Project information for Parents
We had a great start to the week with a PE session with Mr McAleenan from St Loius Grammar School. He will be with us for two more Monday morning sessions so make sure you have your PE gear on!
Congratulations to all our Mathletics Certificate winners this week😊
Congratulations to Tomas who won this week’s Star Award for brilliant Spelling😊
We had a visit from Mrs King from St Louis who came to give us some information prior to their Open Day.
We watched a video detailing all that St Louis has to offer their new intake of children. Mrs King answered some of our important questions to help put us at ease.
It was lovely to see some of our past pupils again. Thank you to Nicola, Ella and John Paul for coming to visit us.
In Literacy this week we have been working on Explanation texts. We began by looking at the structure of texts and the rules for creating a good Explanation text. We worked on ‘How a Bee makes honey’. We also worked on Idioms and Cliches and had some fun trying to use example in and out of the classroom.
In Numeracy we spent time working on Timetables, figuring out how to calculate journey times and choosing the best travel options.
In WAU, we got round to completing our Topic Artwork and hope to get this displayed in the classroom soon.
On Wednesday, the School Council took time to thank all the children for the money they raised from the Christmas Hamper draw. They have been invited to present suggestion to the Council about how they would like this money to be spent for the benefit of all the children.
On Thursday we began our first workshop with Trailblazers. We look forward to sharing what the children get up to in the next few weeks.
St Louis Technology Challenge
Congratulations to Aidan & James who successfully represented Holy Cross in the recent St Louis Technology Challenge. A great experience was had by both pupils and they did their school proud by coming third in the competition.
Congratulations to Brea who won the Farm Safety competition. Here she is proudly showing off her entry. Well done!
The children were tasked with producing a Nativity scene for our Sacred Space. Dylan took on the job as Team Leader and allocated jobs to everyone. Great job everyone!
We had great fun this week in Irish, playing the game of Snap. We all love playing Team games.
We worked on 3D shape this week. This involved practical activities looking at the nets of provided 3D shapes. We also had to find the 11 different nets of a cube which we found quite tricky.
Congratulations to our Mathletics certificate holders this week – it was a bit cold to present them outside on Monday.
We have been busy getting ready for the coming Winter season, by preparing a display for the corridor. The children worked so hard to make lovely star decorations for the tree, as well as cutting out intricate snowflake designs. We have been focusing on Poetry, so we included some lovely Winter poems.
Our Literacy focus has been on Poetry and this week we have been working on Diamantes. We tied them in with our Winter theme.
In Numeracy we were working on 3D shapes. We had to identify and name given 3D shapes and then sort them according to their characteristics. We also continued delving more deeply into our work on Fractions, Decimals and Percentages.
This week we were working really hard trying to compose our own music to accompany our Famine animation. We had to be careful with the instruments we chose as well as the beat and rhythm, to ensure that the music matches the mood of the topic. We cant wait to share our work and from what I have heard, the music composition seems pretty impressive.
In Literacy this week we reviewed our Peer Assessments on our Instructional Writing. We discussed how important it was to use feedback constructively to help us improve our written work. We continued work on our Report writing by examining a text on Protected Wildlife in Ireland. This will form the basis of our work this week. We used our ICT time to research our chosen animal. We decided on our Audience and created a piece of Report writing directed at that audience.
Congratulations to our new Digital Leaders who will be using their expertise in all the classes in our school, helping children and checking all our equipment is charged and ready to go at all times 😊
We started off this Anti-bullying week with Odd Socks Day. We watched a PPT telling us about how we can show respect for each other everyday in school and at home.
In Literacy we worked on simple, complex and compound sentences. We learned how to make the content of our writing more interesting and how to keep the reader engaged.
We also began our work on Report writing, by studying a report on Protected Wildlife in Ireland. We then had to choose and research another animal protected by Law in Ireland and research some facts ready to create a report of our own.
In Numeracy, our focus this week is Fractions, Decimals and Percentages. We began by working on equivalent fractions and progressed to Improper fractions. We also worked hard to learn FDP facts so that our working out can be made much easier by simply recalling learned facts.
We have set up our Quiz teams and the children are busy learning facts and figures for the final in Castlewellan on the 24th.
In Literacy we have been working on adverbs and pronouns. We worked with a partner to solve some online activities related to our Literacy work and completed some group work activities. We spent some time learning the songs for the Peace Proms as well as perfecting our dance moves!
School Council Elections
Our School Council is a group of students who are elected to represent the views of all pupils and to improve our school.
The School Council Election will take place on the 9th October 2024.
Please watch our videos below before you vote!!
What an exciting week for our Primary 7 class. They have been waiting so long to record their videos for the School Council Election. They were very nervous going into their recording, but what a great experience for them😊
We had fun watching each other on screen and can’t wait to see who will be picked as School Council members on voting day – 9Th October.
In Literacy this week we have been working on how to use nouns within sentences. We looked at Concrete and Abstract nouns as well as Collective nouns. We also worked on completing our Biography work during our ICT session. We have reviewed our first draft, and we are on the editing process at the minute.
In Numeracy, we discussed what Prime numbers were and how to recognise them. We then filled in our Prime numbers on our 100 grid and when we know them off by heart, we will be able to play the Prime number game. We worked on complementary angles as well as estimating and measuring angles. We worked on a Problem-Solving activity where we had to write totals as a sum of consecutive numbers.
Congratulations to our Mathletics certificate holders this week.
In WAU we completed a Literacy based activity on Cause and Effect. After watching a video about Cause and Effect, we discussed what we had learned and gave a selection of examples from personal experience. We then completed a Famine activity where we had to discuss and decide whether statements given could be seen as the cause or the effect of the Famine. We also worked on a link with Numeracy, where we looked at line graphs dealing with large numbers with reference to the Famine.
For World Around Us, we shared facts about the Famine and had a question answer session with our peers. We completed a cloze procedure.
Also in Literacy this week, we have been focusing on Writing for a Purpose. We had to fill in an application form for Digital Leaders and we hope to get to the interview stage. We also had to write our speech for the School Council, outlining what position we would like to have and what we can do to improve our school for all the pupils.
We had our first swimming session this week, which we all thoroughly enjoyed.
We also had our first Irish session with Mrs Ryan on Wednesday. We reviewed all our previous learning on numbers and names. We learned how to say where we came from and we played some fun games, including movement breaks.
In Literacy this week, we began by looking at multi-syllabic words. We had to identify and colour code the syllables. These formedthe bulk of our spelling assessment on Thursday. Our focus writing area is Recount and this week, we examined different types of recount texts. We worked our way through each text to highlight the evidence that makes it a recount text. We studied an extract from Anne Frank’s diary, a letter from the Blitz and a biography.
In Numeracy we reviewed very large numbers and had to fill in a table to show that we understood the value of each digit.
In WAU we continued with our Visualisation task (linked to Literacy) where we had to create a piece of work depicting a scene from our Famine novel. We laid all our pieces of work out and each child had a chance to discuss what they liked and what could be improved. We then group assessed our pieces and critiqued a variety of pieces we admired.
We managed to complete our Kandinsky pieces and have begun work on our Abstract pieces.
For Religion, we talked about the Rosary. We discussed when we have had experience of saying the Rosary e.g. at funerals or at Cemetery Sunday. We talked about the decades of the Rosary and have promised to try to pray more at home every day.
We had a fabulous time on our Sponsored Walk on Friday and raised a lot of money for such a worthwhile cause.
In Literacy this week we have been working on improving the depth of our reading. We will be getting a library book every week and at the end of the week the children will give an oral synopsis of what they have read, to the class or small group or partner. This week’s volunteers were Robin, Henry and Tomas and they did a brilliant job sharing their learning with the class and answering lots of questions from the children.
We reviewed previous learning on Grammar and Punctuation and have promised to try our best to make sure every piece of written work is of a high standard. We began our work on Recount texts by discussing rules and reviewing samples of Recount texts. We formally began our Reciprocal reading groups and are having a great time discussing our books and looking for connections from books we’ve previously read or from the world we live in.
For WAU we began our topic work by recording what we already know and what we would like to learn about the Great Irish Famine. We had some great discussions and are really looking forward to finding out more.
In Maths, we began work on very large numbers. We watched videos telling us about when we would need very large numbers, eg in Space or calculating the area each of the large bodies of water on earth, or perhaps air travel journeys. We also looked at how to record large numbers and what the values of each digit was. We practiced writing numbers using a provided Frame to make sure we all understood the value of each digit.
During our ICT sessions, we reviewed learning on Recount texts by watching recommended videos eg Michael Rosen explaining to us how to write a good recount. We spent some time exploring Newsdesk.