Welcome to our learning page for the Senior Room, for 4th, 5th and 6th class children. Here, you’ll find some ideas to continue learning at home during the school closure. Time to talk and share with family and friends is at the heart of all learning. Children will enjoy talking about the activities below with older siblings and parents and will be able to do these activities by themselves. Planning a daily schedule and doing some work in two or three areas each day is a really good goal, if possible. Children should balance reading and research (books and screens) with lots of fresh air and get outdoors when they can.

Weekly Learning Guides during our School Closure 

Our Weekly Learning Guide is posted here on our class webpage and is also shared with all families via the Class Dojo. Parents and children are welcome to message me during school hours to share your work, to ask for feedback or just to check-in on your learning at home.

ENGLISH & HISTORY: 1916

Oral Language: Take a look at a photo from the New York Times archive. What words would you use to describe what you see happening in these photos? Try to use your descriptive nouns and vivid verbs as well as adjectives and adverbs.

Reading – New Class Novel: The Easter Rising, 1916, Molly’s Diary (by Patricia Murphy). Molly’s diary interweaves the real history of 1916 with an invented story.

• If you collected your novel in school, how much information do you learn about Molly at the start of the book. Do you know Molly’s age, family home, father, mother, brother, favourite activities, appearance, education, house, street and her dreams for the future?
• In the opening chapter, we learn about the real history of the time. You may need to search through some other sources (history books, the internet) to answer the questions below. You’ll find lots of information about 1916 online. Check out this resource; select the link to Ireland in 1916 to see what life in Ireland was like in 1916. Can you answer these questions?

Writing: Make a note of any interesting phrases or words you find in the story which you would like to use in your own writing. Create four lists of the words that interest you from the novel and/or your research: nouns, adjectives, verbs and adverbs. We’ll use these in our Report Writing about the 1916 Rising.

PROJECT WORK: Tom Crean and Antarctic Explorers

This week, we’ve discussed your Project Success Sheet which lists project requirements and shows measures of success. Try to complete your project, if possible during the break. We’ll have a great ‘share session’ when we’re all finished! Remember to check-out the websites we used in class:

• Cool Antarctica – Pictures, Facts and Travel Guide
• Fun Facts about Antarctica
• Tom Crean: Antarctic Explorer

Staying Active!

Check out your Active Homework sheet for some ideas on staying active . Challenge yourself to do as many of these as possible in the next two weeks. Can you complete the full grid of active challenges? Can you create some new ones for the school? If you left your sheet in school, you’ll find the Active Homework sheet here.

MATHS: Perimeter and Area

This week, we’ve been learning about Perimeter and Area. We’ve been learning that: Perimeter is the distance around the outside of the shape and Area is the space inside a shape. Our rule for finding the perimeter of any regular shape (with straight lines) is to add up the length of all lines. Our rule for finding the area of a regular quadrilateral (four sided shape) is Length multiplied by Width.

• View the movies on Perimeter and Area on BrainPop Junior https://jr.brainpop.com. Username: SarahFitzpatrick Password: Brannoxtown-CNS2020. Take the easy and hard quiz until you answer all items correctly. Try out the additional activities.
• Look around you for things we could measure to find perimeter and area.
• What are the items we often measure when decorating a home or organising things to fit in a space?
• Take a look at the activities/games on this site to explore area and perimeter!

Our next topic in maths is Weight. If you have a chance to bake or cook at home and to measure ingredients, this is one of the best ways to learn weight! Check out this nrich challenge that asks you to compare imperial units of measurement (pounds) with metric units of measurement (kilograms). Find out what you weighed as a baby in pounds and ounces and the equivalent weight in kilos!

CODING: Scratch

We’ve been talking about Tech Week at the end of this month. Why not get ahead with your coding over the next two weeks. You can download the coding programme, Scratch, for free here. The first two lessons, you can do by yourself, thanks to Lero, the Irish Software Research Centre, for organising these tutorials for us!

• Scratch, Lesson 1: Under the Sea
• Scratch, Lesson 2: In the Jungle

First year… subject choices?

Sixth class children, have you wondered about your subjects at second level? Why not get ahead a little, by learning about what each subject is like on this site. You’ll find information about each subject in a Fact Sheet. What are the subjects about? Which ones are you most curious about?  We’ll share when we get back to class. Choose two or three subjects that really interest you and tell us three interesting things about each one that you learned from your reading.