Term two was an eventful time in 4th class as we had many events taking place over the past few weeks. It has also been a busy period academically for the class as we made good progress with our coursework.
This half term we celebrated "inclusion and diversity week, Seachtain na Gaeilge and World Book Day". We also had guest speakers, field trips, sports coaching, art workshops, swimming and school photos all taking place this half term.
These past few weeks we have also had a student teacher working with the class. Thanks to Maeve for all her creative lessons and well done to the children who put in a huge effort during this time.
Sport
The last few weeks, Lauren our GAA coach has been teaching the skills of hurling and camogie. 4th class have made brilliant progress learning the rules and skills of the game and it is a great introduction to one of our native sports, especially for the children who have never played it before.
Keith from Skerries Town FC and Andy from Skerries RFC have also called in for sessions with our class.
Last week was our first week of swimming lessons at ALSAA. The children were extremely well behaved and had a great time. We look forward to our remaining swimming lessons after the Easter break.
Some of the children in our class have represented our school in the Fingal Athletics race series this year. It is a cross country running 400m event. Congratulations to Bruna, Hayley, Sadie, John, Motiejus, Francis, Ciarán, Oisín and Braiens.
School events
During this half term, we have had some guest speakers in to visit the class. We had a basket weaving workshop where the children all made small wicker baskets. We also had a guest speaker from Fingal Council in speaking about Green School initiatives and how we can be more environmentally conscious both in school and at home. One such initiative was to promote walking, cycling or scooting to school and as a result we now have additional bike and scooter racks at the front of the school.
We held a number of events for Seachtain na Gaeilge which can be seen in a previous blog post. That week we also celebrated World Book Day where the children got to dress up as characters from their favourite books. We celebrated Inclusion and Diversity week where we learned about: dyslexia, autism, physical disabilities and dyspraxia. It was a very insightful week for the children and led to many great discussions.
Fun times
Thanks to our PTA who kindly donated money to each class for some boardgames and toys for the children. These are used on rainy days when we can't go outside for yard or on Friday evenings for 'golden time'.
Thanks again to our PTA for buying all the children in the school an Easter egg. In 4th class we held a cryptic Easter egg hunt to find the eggs which were hidden around the school.
The recent fine weather has allowed us to bring some of our learning outside and this fitted in with our theme of length in maths. The children worked really well and enjoyed the break from the classroom and were able to apply their skills to real life scenarios.
There was great excitement last week when we visited Phoenix Park. (See previous blog post) The bus journey through Dublin City allowed us to see some of the famous sights we have learned about and the children had a great time in the park.
