We are so proud of the fantastic work that 6th class have been doing over the past month. They have certainly earned their Mid-Term Break. The following is a little insight into some of the work they have completed.
English
Reading
We have been focusing on the comprehension skill of ‘Making Connections’ in our reading. The children have begun their guided reading for this year and will study a mixture of fiction and non-fiction texts throughout the year. The children have been making excellent connections with the texts under the following headings:
Text-to-Text, Text-to-Self and Text-to-World.
Writing
The children have continued to develop their Persuasive Writing skills. This study culminated in some fantastic debates between the classes via zoom in the final week of the half term. The motions for these debates were, ‘Books are better than movies’ and ‘Screen time should be limited to 30 minutes a day’. The teachers have been absolutely blown away by the effort each child put in to preparing for the debates and the manner in which the children expressed their opinions during the debates. We certainly have a great number of debating stars among us in St. John’s.
Oral Language
The children were engaged in a lot of group work within their pods to prepare orally for their debates and were tasked with arguing various motions through oral debate. The children have also been working on their oral language and indeed art appreciation skills by studying and discussing images from the fantastic resource ‘Once upon a Picture’. We look forward to further developing the oral language skills of the children after the Mid-Term Break and have lots of fantastic ideas to share with them.
Poetry
Over the past number of weeks, the children have studied poetry by William Shakespeare, Jack Prelutsky and Séamus Heaney. The children have been learning how to analyse poetry and have been identifying rhyming patterns, poetic use of alliteration and onomatopoeia as well as detecting metaphors and similes within various poems.
Maths
There has been no fraction left unturned in Arklow over the past number of weeks! The children have been working exceptionally hard on developing their knowledge of fractions and have continued to work on simplifying and ordering fractions while also learning how to add, subtract, multiply and divide fractions. They have also spent time finding the fraction of a number and the full amount of something given a certain fraction. A great amount of work has been done with word problems also and the children have been applying the RUCSAC strategy to their problem solving.
For Maths week the children completed daily maths trails for their homework and had great fun finding maths within their homes. Daily puzzles kept all our brains working in overdrive and helped us to exercise our problem solving and strategic thinking skills. Here is one of the maths puzzles we were working on, see if you can solve it!
Gaeilge
Bhíomar ag fhoghlaim faoi bia agus an ócáid Oíche Shamhna. Bhí a lán spraoí again ag déanamh plátaí bia, biachlár agus oideas don bricfeasta, lón agus dinnéar. Féach ar na phictúirí thíos chun ár obair a fheicéail. Léamar a lán scéalta bunaithe ar an téama Oíche Shamhna agus bhíomar ag caint faoi taibhsí, cailleach agus an spraoí ag imirt bob nó bréab.
Other subjects
In P.E. the children have been continuing the strands of Games and Athletics and have developed their jumping skills to include the standing long jump and triple jump. Some imaginative noncontact games have been enjoyed including football rounders, witches chase and ghosts, ghouls and goblins. It is fair to say that a lot of fun has been had!
In Geography the children have been learning about Ireland. They completed projects on each of the provinces and identified various rivers and mountains of Ireland including Ireland’s longest river and a variety of rivers in our locality.
In History the children completed group projects on various feasts and festivals celebrated around the world. Some of these include Holi, Diwali, Chinese New Year, The Passover and Ramadan. The children presented their projects to the class and did a fantastic job.
In Art, the children created clay monsters. Pictures of these are attached below, we hope they do not give you too much of a scare!
The children have been developing their music notation skills and have composed 4 beat melodies and performed these using body percussion. The children have also been identifying steps, leaps, and repeated notes in various pieces of music and have been listening and responding to excerpts from Mussorgsky’s ‘Promenade’ movement.
Take a look at the pictures below of some of the fantastic work 6th class have completed.
We would like to wish you all a lovely Mid-Term Break.