As part of our distance learning in January, our focus in our Learn Together lessons has been on Children's Rights. We learned all about the UNCRC and the National Children's Strategy, both of which were designed to promote and protect children's rights. 
We used padlet to record our thoughts on how life has improved for children in Ireland since the drawing up of the UNCRC and the establishment of the National Children's Strategy.
We will go on to learn about some children in Ireland whose rights are perhaps not being respected as well as they should be, as they and their families live in Direct Provision.
So we first needed to learn about Migration, push and pull factors, and what might cause children and their families to leave their home countries as Refugees. We used Jamboard to brainstorm our ideas on this.

This week, the children have been really busy at home coming up with all kinds of creative creations! They have been submitting them on Seesaw and we have enjoyed looking through them in class. Drawings, poetry, writing, origami, music, construction - it's been really impressive!
In school, we had our first foray into photography, as we used the classroom cameras for the first time. Needless to say, it was very exciting getting to take photographs, so we had 'free play' with the cameras - getting used to how to take and delete pictures. Over the coming weeks, we will develop our abilities with the cameras and ultimately photograph children from Junior Infants for a photography project.

This coming month, we will be focusing particularly hard on Maths - including playing lots of Maths games to improve our numeracy skills.
At home, it is so important that the children practice their tables every night. At this stage, many of the children have a reasonable recall of their times tables, but many of them could improve on their speed. Each Friday morning, we have a tables test, and I would love to see everybody improve on their personal best speed this month.
I find it is easiest for a child to improve their speed if they focus on one group of tables at a time - that is why we went back to x3 at the start of the year and we have built from there. If your child does not yet have all of the x3 tables on the tip of their tongue, please go back and start there with them again. Only when they have mastered x3, should you move on to x4. 
There are some ideas on this page to support you and your child with practicing tables as often as possible. 
Enjoy!

Last week, we were lucky to have a virtual visit from a historian - Leon's Dad! Our focus this month was on Medieval history, and Leon's Dad Maciek knows lots about the time period, so he offered to have a Zoom call with us.
Before our call with Maciek, we did some reading and talking about Medieval times, so that we had a basic understanding. Maciek then brought the period to life for us, with a brief talk about some interesting aspects of life at that time.
He referred to a map of Europe quite frequently, as he explained what came before the Middle Ages, and the conquests that took place during the period - with special mentions for the Vikings and Normans.
We were so grateful to him, particularly for his patience in answering all of our questions! At first, we were a little shy, but once we got going, we had an endless supply of questions!
Thank you so much, Maciek, for sharing some of your knowledge with us. No doubt, we will be in touch with you again later in the year. We are so lucky to have an expert parent in our midst!

Last week was Science Week in our class. Tallaght Library usually offer for classes to visit them and take part in Science activities. This year, because of COVID, that wasn't an option. Instead, they put together packs to send out to teachers, and videos explaining the different experiments we could try.
The theme of the pack we got was 'Mysterious Microbes' - very apt as we were learning all about how easily viruses and bacteria can spread, how they multiply, and what we can do to try to protect ourselves.

We got a UV light, and used glow in the dark products to represent germs. In the above experiment, we mixed glow in the dark powder with moisturiser and rubbed it into our hands.
Later, we washed our hands as well as we could, and checked whether we had gotten rid of all the 'germs'/ glow powder.
We also checked whether we had contaminated some of our belongings with the 'germs'. This was really effective.

This year, we'll be using a portion of our Learn Together class time every week to work on our debating skills. Debates are a really useful way of practicing putting yourself in another person's shoes, as we are often called upon to argue a point that we really don't agree with.

​There are a lot of other skills involved in debating - formulating logical, rational points; public speaking; listening to others' points; respectfully disagreeing with another person's point. 

So far this year, we have been learning the basics of debating, and practicing those outside of a normal debate setting. We have come up with arguments for and against the following motions:
Children should have to do homework every day.
Children should be allowed to drive cars.
Primary School should be taught in the woods.
Every home should have a pet.

This week, we made the most of the fresh, autumn weather to do some practical learning for Science. In October, we will be learning about different types of plants, and we hope to be able to plant some spring bulbs to brighten up our school grounds early next year.

But before we could think about planting anything, we needed to make a start on the flower beds. During our time working from home, and then over the summer, the flower beds have started to look rather neglected. We got in there and got our hands dirty, and managed to thin out the weeds! Another couple of weeding sessions will be necessary to finish the job - hopefully the weather will cooperate!

In Maths, we've been learning all about time. For adults, it can be hard to remember a stage in our lives when reading the time seemed a magical mystery - but there are actually a lot of variables to remember when reading the time! Please support your child by checking the time with them throughout the day, and talking through the steps you have to take to successfully figure out what time it is!

A couple of weeks ago, we all got to flex our democratic muscles when we elected a representative from our class to stand on the Student Council. After reading aloud her manifesto, the class voted for Maja to represent us.
Last week, the members of the Student Council were presented to the student body at our online assembly, and this week, they met for the first time.
Our class took the time this week to give Maja a very clear mandate, of what we would like her and her colleagues on the Student Council to achieve this year. During the initial brainstorm, we categorised some of our wishes as being unrealistic, because they involve decisions that are made by the Department of Education, and not our school's Board of Management.
When we had a shortlist of potentially achievable targets, we voted on them to give Maja a concrete list of three things we would like to see achieved.
​Maja will take these to the Student Council and keep us posted about any decisions that are made about these issues.

Last week, we made the most of the good weather and took our lesson outside. This year, as part of our Learn Together programme, we are going to spend a lot of time developing our debating skills. Here, we each stood up and made a point speaking FOR the motion, 'That children should have to wear school uniforms'!

-Well, it'd be too easy to argue against that, wouldn't it?!

We spent the month of September getting to grips with a general overview of Irish history. We went back as far as the Stone Age - 7,000BCE - and came right up to modern times. We discussed the meaning of BC, and why we use BCE instead. The alternative we use for AD is CE. 

​We made a class timeline, and then individual ones too.

In Geography, we were considering the impact that human beings have on the environment, and we read a book called Window, which shows an area developing from a rural setting to a built-up town, over the course of one man's life.

We took a look at old maps of the Saggart area, to appreciate how rural this area used to be. Citywest didn't even exist 30 years ago - it was just fields between Tallaght and Saggart!