Christmas story competition

We did some Christmas story writing in class and put our knowledge of adjectives and descriptive writing to the test!

We would like to share one of these stories with you.

 

Christmas Eve

By Conor Watts

 

The clock struck midnight and all the lights went off. Nobody was around. All the blinds of the houses were shut. All the children were dreaming of Santa Claus coming into their houses and filling their stockings.

 

Then, Santa's sleigh whizzed onto a roof. This was the first house and he was worried that any children would wake up. He didn't have much luck in the 16th house he went to. When he was in the room where a child was sleeping, he tripped over a toy car and fell onto the floor! The child heard the noise and woke up. He looked around the room. He was very frightened. Then he saw a polished black boot behind his bed. "Santa!" the child shouted.

 

The child flung the sheets off him. He jumped on top of Santa. "Santa!" the child shouted again. The child squeezed Santa.

"Ho Hack H..." Santa was choking! The child got off Santa with an eager face. Santa got up and filled the child's stocking up to the wooly brim. He held the child's hand softly and brought the child downstairs.

 

Santa sat down on a comfy brown chair where a tray of mince pies, a gleaming orange, a carrot and some shiney white milk were laid out on a beautiful Christmassy white table. Santa reached out and took a mince pie and bit it. "Yummy," said he, "this is the best mince pie yet." Santa gobbled up the pie. He grabbed another and put the whole pie in his mouth. "I'd better give you the presents now." Santa gave him the presents. "Ho Ho Ho Merry Christmas!"

 

Santa flew up the chimney and got into his sleigh. Rudolph's nose started to sparkle and they flew off.

 

The end.

 

Well done Conor, you're now a published author!!

 

 

 



Christmas Windows and Art

Our Christmas classroom windows are brightening up the yard! We love them! Have a look at our snowman and penguin themed doors too!

Alien Adjectives

Have a look at some of our alien adjective pictures! We are going to try our best to use more adjectives in our writing. An adjective describes a noun.

Christmas Carol Service

Christmas Carol Service at 1pm in Ballyroan Church this Thursday! All welcome to come and celebrate this special time with us. For anyone that can't make it, there's a video link below to watch!

http://www.ballyroanparish.ie/ballyroan-parish-live-video-link/

Ms.Fannin's Christmas reading challenge

Ms.McDonagh's class have just finished a reading challenge and the boys have done so well and have really improved their reading skills.

Ms.Fannin's class are going to do the same thing over the Christmas break. Like Ms.McDonagh's class, we will all set our own target with our parents and try our best to reach that. It is important to remember that we all have different targets.

We will have a record sheet with which we must record the books we read. An adult must sign it to say it has been read.

I'm so looking forward to seeing what books have been read when we come back in January.

 

Projects

Well done to the boys for all the hard work they put into their nocturnal animals projects. We learned some really interesting facts about nocturnal animals and the boys had great fun presenting their projects to the class. It was also a great learning experience to see the different ways that projects can be put together. We had PowerPoint presentations, booklets, posters, interactive storyboards and lots more!!! See below for some photos of the projects that were brought in! They are all hanging up outside of our rooms if you want to have a look at the projects.

Nocturnal Animals Project

We are learning about nocturnal animals and birds! We came across some nocturnal animals in the novel we are reading called 'The Owl who was Afraid of the Dark' by Jill Tomlinson.

Christmas Reading Challenge

Ms. McDonagh's class are in the middle of a reading challenge! We started it a few weeks ago to try and read more and more books! We all had to set our own target with our parents and try our best to reach that, we all have different targets. We have a record sheet that we must record the books we read and an adult must sign it to say it has been read. We have D.E.A.R (Drop Everything and Read) time in school nearly every day so if a parent hasn't seen us read the book maybe ask us questions just to see how well we understood the story. We are going to have a lovely afternoon in school on the 11th of December to mark the end of the Christmas Reading Challenge for the boys who have really tried their best with their reading. 

I have seen a great improvement in a lot of boys reading and we are really enjoying books more! Keep up the fantastic work boys!

Reading Folders

The reading folders have been going home for the last few weeks. We get a new book on a Monday and we have the book for the week. Try and follow the laminated sheet that accompanies the book in the reading folder. This sheet outlines how to work on the specific strategy for the week.

We would like you to break the reader up each night rather than reading it all in one go. This may change during the year. Parents, please remember to sign the sheet every Thursday and put it back in the folder for checking on Friday.

Questioning

We are also learning about the comprehension strategy called Questioning. We are still practising using this strategy in school.

If we ask questions before, during and after we read it helps us to think more about what we read, help us to organise what we are thinking and find certain information we need to help us understand what we read. If we ask ourselves questions as we read it helps us to focus on the text.

We are making up our own questions as we read. Some of these questions can be answered in the story, but some are not, and that is okay because we can read between the lines and make some predictions, or we could try and find out the answer by researching it more.

We are using 'I wonder' questions a lot. Our hand signal for this strategy is a 'W' with our hands to show 'I wonder'.

Comprehension Strategy - Predicting

A strategy is a plan. When footballers are playing a match they have a strategy in place, they have a plan of action. Good readers have a plan when they read as well.

One of the strategies we have been learning about is predicting. Predicting is when we think about what might happen next in a story. We use the title, pictures, our prior knowledge and the information the author gives us as clues to make a good guess about what the story might be about or what might happen next. We can make predictions before reading, during our reading and after reading.

If we make predictions about the story we want to find out what is going to happen and check if our predictions were right. We know that our predictions will not always be right and that is okay.

This is our hand signal that we are going to use in school when we have a prediction to make. We can use it at home too when we are reading. We make the letter P with our hands.

School calendars for sale

The school calendars will be going on sale on the 20th November. They cost €5 each and can be bought in the office.

pencil grips

 

Two transition year boys from Coláiste Éanna came to our classroom on Wednesday and explained the use of these pencil grips to the boys. They are intended to encourage young writers to use the correct grip when writing. They are €2 each and the students will be back this week with their pencil grips if any children are interested in purchasing.

Stay Safe Programme

The Stay Safe lessons for 2nd class expand and develop the personal safety concepts and skills taught at previous levels. The children learn how to differentiate between 'Yes' and 'No' feelings, acknowledge who their helpers are, learn how to deal with strangers and understand what good and bad secrets are.

 

When a Stay Safe lesson has been covered in class, we will be sending home the related worksheet to be completed and signed at home. These sheets will always be accompanied by a note, explaining what we did and how the topic could be explored further at home.

 

Please find below a link to the Stay Safe Parents' Guide .

 

http://www.staysafe.ie/PDFs/Parents/Stay%20Safe-Parents%20Guide.pdf

Lego Workshop

What a fantastic afternoon the two 2nd classes had today!! We went to the library and learned all about building robots out of Lego! Ms. Fannin's class worked in teams to create a moving, jaw-snapping alligator while Ms. McDonagh's class made a moving plane!! Rob and Niamh were great instructors and we all got our 'toys' finished just in the nick of time.

Learnit was the name of the company and they have a website where you can find further information on their services. www.learnit.ie

Maths games

http://www.topmarks.co.uk/maths-games/5-7-years/counting

The link above is a great resource for our budding mathematicians to use at home when homework is finished or as a tool for reinforcement if a topic is proving to be challenging.

Remember that mums and dads can encourage children to find maths everywhere and to use maths language as often as possible e.g. look at the portion sizes for dinner...who eats the most?!!

Yoga after mid-term

Hurling has come to an end and we would like to thank the ever committed and dedicated Tommy Keogh for all his hard work with the boys over the last few weeks.

As was mentioned in the parent meeting at the start of the year, we will now begin a series of 'mindful movement' sessions with both classes. If you have a yoga mat at home and could spare it for a few weeks, we would be very grateful if you could lend it to your son for use during these sessions. If not, please do not feel the need to purchase one as the boys can share the gymnastics mats that are in the hall.

If you would like to learn more about the benefits of meditation and mindful movement, please look at the link attached.

http://www.yoga4classrooms.com/benefits-of-yoga-in-schools

Draughts League

We have been learning how to play draughts in 2nd class. It is proving to be great fun with the boys getting competitive and improving their technique each week. But as well as being fun, draughts teaches children to focus their thoughts, anticipate future moves and concentrate for a prolonged amount of time. It also shows them how to play fairly, how to lose with dignity and honour (!) and also develops their spatial awareness.

storytelling with 4th class

Mr Furlong's 4th class came in to visit us. The told us stories using keys as their prompts. We listened very carefully and decided which stories were the best. Telling stories is hard to do - you have to be very entertaining and use lots of descriptive language!!

Litter picking - September 2015

We have been busy so far this year, and it's only October!!! We have learned all about the community and even took a little trip to the Community shops where we met a host of shopkeepers and Ballyroan community members! We learned about being a good citizens and how to respect the local and wider communities in which we live. Check out some of the photos of our litter picking afternoon - we gathered up quite a lot of rubbish! Let's respect our community and leave it the way we should!!

Welcome to our 2nd class blog!

Welcome to our 2nd class blog! This is our first post. We hope you enjoy it! We will put up some games on the blog. We will show you some different things that we do in our class. We will share photos with you but first we need to bring back the permission slips! We will post again soon.

Greater Than, Less Than

We are working on our greater than >, less than < , and equals to = signs this week.
Here are some games that are fun for us to practise which signs we should use.
Remember, the alligator is very greedy and opens his mouth to gobble the greater number!

5 <  9 (5 is less than 9)

10 > 4 (10 is greater than 4)

6 = 6 (6 equals 6)

Click on the links to play the games!

Balloon Pop Compare Numbers

Genius Boxing

Crickweb Compare Numbers