Information for Parents – January Updates

Letters sent home to parents during the month of January:

Re: 1st Confession

The Importance of Tables 

Homework

and Welcome Back after Christmas Break

Dear Parent,                                                                                                                               22nd January 2013

Please talk to your child and find out what ‘job’ they would like to do in the Confession and Communion Ceremony.

There will be as many opportunities at both ceremonies as there are children. I hope every child will see the importance of participating in this way on the day.

As I said before, children will work in pairs, so that they can give one another encouragement and support.

We will be well practiced at these jobs, so everyone should feel confident at the ceremonies.

At Confession.

There are 12 readers needed (6×2) to read about the Lost Sheep. Each pair has two short paragraphs to read.

There are 6 singers needed (3×2) where each pair sing a verse of ‘Where ever I am God is’.

There are 8 children needed (4×2) to say a prayer for example; ‘Prayer for Forgiveness.’

There is 3 children needed to lead their classmates in the actions for the ‘Our Father’.

Please mark as many as apply.

My child _____________________would be happy to

◊ sing

◊ do a reading

◊ say a prayer

◊ lead the actions in the ‘Our Father’ (non speaking)

◊ bring up the gifts on Communion Day (also non speaking)

This will act as a guide for me. We will talk about this in class and I will be asking the children to volunteer. Singing is a popular choice and I will try to be as fair about this as I can. There will be further opportunities at communion. I will try to distribute the jobs fairly between the two ceremonies.

With every good wish, Teacher

____________________________________________________________________________________________

19th January

Dear Parent

Clarification re ‘Tables Races’

Some parents asked for clarification regarding the results in the ‘tables races’ that I sent home earlier in the month.

This is a sixty second test. There are sixty items.

I don’t think it is possible that anyone would get sixty answers done in the time.

In case anyone in the class, would find the pace involved physically impossible

I did a ‘speed test’ , where I asked each child to put a circle round the higher number in each sum,

and the average score for this was forty items done in the minute.

The average score when doing the addition and take away sums is 24 at the moment.

The ‘tables race’ is useful in that it shows a child’s progress in learning the tables over time.

Where a child’s score over time looks very random, with dramatic improvements

and then disimprovements, it shows what I have said to you before,

that assessments are a ‘snapshot in time’.

If your child is tired or distracted, they may not do as well as they did on a previous occasion.

It is exactly the same sixty sums each time .

If a plateau is reached and a child is getting exactly the same score under each month,

it may be that with approximately fifty per cent of the school year remaining there is plenty of time to improve.

This involves learning one’s tables every night.

The Balloon Popping game on School Hub is helpful for doing this. The link is here

So are the 5 minute adding frenzy drills Here is a sample which we will do in school

and I will also send home next week.

When a child has ‘learning off’ to do,

often times, they do not think that homework is as important as the written work.

The opposite I feel is true. The most important homework I am giving at the moment is the tables and reading.

I know it is challenging, but please encourage your child to do both.

Hopefully, having to complete a maths drill, with help the children

not to forget to do this very important maths homework.

In Third Class in September, the teacher may do a little revision,

but then for the next two years, the focus will be on multiplication and division.

Multiplication is introduced as repeated addition, so knowing the addition facts continues to be important.

Just before the February midterm, I will do this ‘tables race’ with the children again.

I will be happy if there is a steady, gradual improvement.

I tell the children that each of them is trying to improve on their own score.

I am playing down any competition within the class, as much as I can.

I see children who find ‘rote’ learning difficult, making good use of ‘strategies’

which I have mentioned in the past.

Click on this link for strategies

I set up the Balloon Popping Game for each child to play each morning

and I see children using the ‘strategies’ then.

Using ‘strategies’ means you won’t be as fast but one very heartening thing

about the ‘tables races’ is that where a child completed a dozen sums in the sixty seconds,  

the answers were accurate.

A group of children know their tables well and they are getting different homework,

preparing them for learning multiplication next year for example.

Reading Homework

Currently I am asking the children to read the last four pages of the chapter

that we have done in class that day from their class novel ‘The Owl Tree’ by Jenny Nimmo.

If I was to check that all homework was done by all twenty nine children in the class,

this would take me up to an hour.

We have so much to do, to cover the 2nd class curriculum,

I can’t afford an hour a day to do this.

Instead I do ‘spot checks’ with regard to the reading I have asked the children to do.

The fairest thing to do I find, it to set a question in advance,

the answer to which the child will find in those four pages.

In this way, no child should be worried that I will ask them a question

that they have forgotten the answer to, having done their reading.

 

At the beginning of the year I spend time in September/October

encouraging the children to develop a ‘homework habit’.

During this time, I check that the homework is written done fully and legibly.

I do spot checks from then on as time once again is a concern.

Checking that homework is taken down and completed takes away from time we need to cover the curriculum.

I find now, half way through the year, that I will have to give time to checking homework is written down and completed.

Thank you to the children who always do their homework.

I know you all lead busy lives too but I am asking for your help in this matter.

Preparing for Confession and Communion

With five weeks to go to the Sacrament of Reconcilation, we are preparing for the ceremony.

I will be looking for children to volunteer to say prayers from the altar, do reading and sing.

At the Communion ceremony I will also need children to bring up the gifts.

This seems to be the job that children find easiest to do.

I assign volunteers from the class in pairs to do all these jobs,

so they can give one another back up and support.

Last year I was told that some parents felt that being asked to do this

put undue pressure on the children and this meant they were nervous at the ceremony and did not enjoy it.

For this reason this year, I am asking you to ask your child, what they would like and fill in the attached form.

If I am oversubscribed, say for volunteers to sing (and this often happens) I will put the names of the volunteers in a hat.

I will also do this to establish, at what ceremony, Confession or Communion a child would do a particular job.

I hope this is acceptable to all,

With every good wish,

Teacher.

This letter will be going home on paper, on Monday.
____________________________________________________________________________________________

Dear Parent

I hope you had a very pleasant Christmas.

The children from 2nd Class, Room 6 have settled back really well,

so in terms of work, we have ‘hit the ground running’.

We are still working hard on our tables.

Tables
Know one’s tables make learning methodologies and computation in Maths so much easier.

In a typical long division sum for example (taught in fifth),

a child will need to divide, multiply and subtract several times.

Working with fractions your child will also need the ability

to add, subtract, multiply and divide.

Knowing tables make things so much easier.

Not all children find learning by rote easy so in the letter

I sent home after the parent teacher meetings.

 

I detailed the strategies we use in class to help

and also posted a link there to a useful website.

Follow this link

I having been recording progress in tables by giving the same

one minute ‘tables race’ at the beginning of each month.

I am sending home their scores to date on paper on Friday.

I will be giving this assessment again before midterm, Easter and the Summer holidays.

The first score you will see is that of a simple test on the very same sheet

that I gave to the children to check that there was no physical reason

that would affect their speed in writing down the answers quickly.

 

We all learn at different rates and what I really love to see

is an individual’s steady progress over time.

I encourage the children to improve on their own score

and not to concern themselves with anybody else’s.

 

Reading Homework

In case of any mix ups:

We are reading ‘The Owl Who Was Afraid of the Dark in class.

We read nearly a chapter a day.

I leave the last four pages for homework,

and am asking the children to practice reading these with expression.

An adult reading every second page,

may help if you find your child doesn’t have the stamina to read all four pages.

 

Homework: In the run up to Christmas, the amount of homework

I gave became less on account of my hospital stay.

I feel I have not given a lot of homework this week.

I just wanted to ease the children back in.

I realise the little I give may take some children a long time.

 

By the same token sometimes when I feel I am giving a lot of homework,

I hear on the grapevine that some children finished it in ‘five minutes’.

To me ‘learning off’ homework and presentation of work is really important.

Also remember that there are suggestions for extra homework if you feel

that your child is not getting enough, on the blog

Suggestions for extra homework

For Reference:

From the archives: November/December Updates

From the archives: October Updates

From the archives: September Updates

2nd Class Room 6 received an e-mail from Audioboo

Recently 2nd Class, Room 6 made a podcast,

of the class singing this melodic song

by Sara Bareilles and Ingrid Michaelson!

 

 

UPDATE: 27th December 2012.

This morning Teacher received an e-mail from Audioboo

which she thought would interest 2nd class, Room 6

 

Hi  Merrybeau,

 

Congratulations.

Your boo http://audioboo.fm/boos/1126073-2nd-class-room-6-sings-winter-song 

has had 1,000 listens and probably more by the time you read this. 

 

That makes us, and hopefully you, very happy.

Thanks,

 

The Audioboo team”

Amazing!


Lovely work Isabella!

Christmas Holidays – How are you spending them?

Previously we have used ‘Answer Garden’ on this blog.

Now we are going to experiment with ‘Wall Wisher’.

 

Would you like to tell me about your Christmas holidays?

Remember to start your sentences with a capital letter

and end them with a full stop.

Your comment will appear here when it has been moderated.

 

Double click anywhere on the page and a little box will appear.

You are invited to write in this!

 

To close the box after you have finished writing

just click anywhere outside the box.

 

We live in Viking Meadow!

The children of 2nd Class, Room 6 were very interested

to hear stories about the history of Greystones.

 

Matthew lives in Rathdown.

He was amazed to hear that

people have been living in Rathdown

since the Stone Age.

 

Twenty years ago, a cliff near Rathdown

fell into the sea.

Among the rocks and earth,

people found Stone Age axe heads.

 

The children in 2nd Class, Room 6

were also fascinated to hear

that Vikings were in the area.

One of our favourite things to do,

when we have visitors from older classes

or students from Transition Year,

on work experience, visiting our classroom

is to challenge them to a game of Viking Quest.

Click on the link below to play!

BBC’s ‘Viking Quest’

We don’t always win this game …

but we usually do!

 

This is what we learned in class:

 

We know Vikings visited our local area because

 

1. Some of the local placenames

came from the Vikings.

‘Gata’ is the Viking word for road.

Windgates is the road

between Bray and Greystones.

Wicklow comes from

the Viking words ‘Vyking Alo’

which means Viking Meadow.

 

2. Viking coins were found

in the local area.

 

3. The monks wrote a book called

‘The Annals of the Four Masters’.

In it they said that there had been

a big battle nearby at Delgany in 1021 AD.

The King of Leinster beat

the Viking King, Sitric.

 

We think it is exciting that Greystones

has had such an interesting history

from the time of the Stone Age

and that Vikings visited here too.

 

Later we heard that a castle

was built at Rathdown.

We look forward

to learning more.

 

 

Best Wishes to all our visitors

to our visitors from

 United States (US)854

 United Kingdom (GB)470

 India (IN)211

 Philippines (PH)131

 Canada (CA)130

 Australia (AU)110

 France (FR)62

 Singapore (SG)35

 Pakistan (PK)30

 New Zealand (NZ)29

 Spain (ES)28

 United Arab Emirates (AE)25

 Malaysia (MY)22

 Indonesia (ID)19

 Russian Federation (RU)19

 Belgium (BE)18

 Germany (DE)17

 South Africa (ZA)16

 Italy (IT)14

 Netherlands (NL)14

 Saudi Arabia (SA)13

 Poland (PL)13

 Egypt (EG)12

 China (CN)11

 Hong Kong (HK)11

 Brazil (BR)11

 Europe (EU)11

 Turkey (TR)10

 Thailand (TH)10 

 Greece (GR)9

 Qatar (QA)8  Trinidad and Tobago (TT)8  Portugal (PT)8

 Taiwan (TW)7  Bangladesh (BD)7

 Mexico (MX)6  Hungary (HU)6

 Korea, Republic of (KR)5  Kuwait (KW)5  Romania (RO)5  Oman (OM)5  Kenya (KE)5

 Jamaica (JM)4  Slovenia (SI)4  Ukraine (UA)4  Sri Lanka (LK)4  Nepal (NP)4

 Jordan (JO)3  Israel (IL)3  Ethiopia (ET)3  Mauritius (MU)3  Sweden (SE)3  Japan (JP)3  Bhutan (BT)3  Colombia (CO)3  Austria (AT)3  Slovakia (SK)3

 Nigeria (NG)2  Seychelles (SC)2  Peru (PE)2  Czech Republic (CZ)2  Argentina (AR)2  Belarus (BY)2  Norway (NO)2  Zimbabwe (ZW)2  Switzerland (CH)2  Bulgaria (BG)2  Bosnia and Herzegovina (BA)2  American Samoa (AS)2  Armenia (AM)2  Uganda (UG)2  Puerto Rico (PR)2  Belize (BZ)2  Nicaragua (NI)2  Iran, Islamic Republic of (IR)2  Asia/Pacific Region (AP)2  Yemen (YE)2  Cyprus (CY)2

 Paraguay (PY)1  Lesotho (LS)1  Botswana (BW)1  Chile (CL)1  Antigua and Barbuda (AG)1  Guernsey (GG)1  Dominican Republic (DO)1  Estonia (EE)1  Finland (FI)1  Latvia (LV)1  Virgin Islands, U.S. (VI)1  Northern Mariana Islands (MP)1  Denmark (DK)1  Uruguay (UY)1  Saint Vincent and the Grenadines (VC)1  Azerbaijan (AZ)1  Montenegro (ME)1  Netherlands (N)1  Grenada (GD)1  Venezuela (VE)1  Lebanon (LB)1  Palestinian Territory (PS)1  Angola (AO)1  Bahamas (BS)1  Malawi (MW)1  Guatemala (GT)1  Barbados (BB)1  Croatia (HR)1  Mali (ML)1  Cambodia (KH)1  Myanmar (MM)1

 

and Ireland (IE) of course: 3,583 visits.

Double click on any of the place names

to see where they are in the world

using Answertips.com

 

Information from  Clustermap for this blog

 

As we say here in Ireland ….

Nollaig Shona Daoibh Go Léir

If you would like to comment,

please double click

‘Continue Reading’ below

and a comment box will appear.

2nd Class Room 6 wish all their friends and families a Very Happy Christmas!

Create your own Animation


Illustration by Senan.

Merry Christmas Everyone 🙂

A Visualization based on ‘Winter Song’ by by Sara Bareilles and Ingrid Michaelson

Today we listened to a beautiful song:

 

‘Winter Song’ by Sara Bareilles and Ingrid Michaelson

This is what Matthew drew.

 

‘Winter Song’ was familiar to many of the students

because it is currently being used in an often repeated

advertisement on the television.

 

We studied the lyrics.

We used our imagination

and we sketched some pictures

that the lyrics put into our heads.

 

Then we took a look at a

wonderful animation on Vimeo

to inspire us even further.

‘Winter Song’ by Sara Bareilles and Ingrid Michaelson

 

Initially we used white chalk

on black sugar paper.

Then we added colour.

This is what we did:

 

These are the results:

Winter Pictures in Chalk on PhotoPeach

 

We would love to hear what you think of our artwork.

Do leave a comment.

We would love to hear from you.

If you would like to comment,

please double click

‘Continue Reading’ below

and a comment box will appear.

A Word to the Wise:

Please don’t leave your child to explore Vimeo or Photopeach unattended  :)

The internet is a portal to the world outside. Children should be supervised.

Visualizing ‘The Twelve Days of Christmas’

We visualized what happens in the song

‘The Twelve Days of Christmas’

Here is a detail from Shauna’s visualization:

Here is JC’s very detailed visualization:

Double click on JC’s picture

to see the ‘twelve lords a-leaping.’

How Well Do You Know Your Tables? We Challenge YOU!

Balloon Popping Fun

The class record in 680 in mixed addition and 674 in subtraction!

Would you like to try it?

You are very welcome to try multiplication and division also.

Click on this link:

Balloon Popping Game

If you would like to tell us how you did,

please double click

‘Continue Reading’ below

and enter your score in the comment box.

Do tell us how you get on 🙂

from 2nd Class, Room 6

Explaining subtraction with ‘renaming’ for the parents of 2nd class Room 6

At the moment the children are learning subtraction with ‘renaming’.

This methodology is required for example when you are doing a sum like:

T U

 4 3

-3 5

_______

The student starts ‘taking away’ the units and realises that they can’t take 5 from 3.

We are doing subtraction with ‘renaming’ in school.

We have done a lot of practical work using Dienes Blocks.

We are at the early stages of learning how to do these kind of sums.

At the moment, for homework, the majority of the class are getting

a worksheet of subtraction without renaming.

 

This has caused some confusion as the children attempted to ‘rename’

when it wasn’t necessary.

Identifying when a sum will need ‘renaming’ is a skill in itself

and one which we are working on!

 

More confusion can arise because some parents may have learned

how to do this kind of subtraction using the

‘borrow and pay back’  method.

 

Another factor that may confuse you is that ‘renaming’ is also referred to as ‘regrouping’!

 

You might find this Tips Sheet from the NCCA helpful:

NCCA’s Tipsheet for Parents: Helping your child with subtraction

 

or on the Maths is Fun website below where the methodology is clearly demonstrated:

 

A demonstration of ‘renaming’ on the Maths is Fun website

 

Strategies we use – Bridging the Ten

I have found that the children who know their tables are completing these sums sooner than the children who don’t.

I am encouraging the children who find tables hard to use strategies to help them.

You might hear them talk, for example about ‘bridging the ten’.

 

Ask a child to take 7 from 10 and they will say 3 with confidence.

This is because they are very sure of ‘what makes 10’.

However when one asks a child a sum like 17 take away 9, they are less sure of the answer.

 

One of the solutions is for the child to learn the ‘make up’ of 20

and be as sure of it as they are of ‘what makes’ 10.

Again, we are working on this!

 

The other solution is that the child learns to ‘bridge the 10’.

Take that sum 17-9 again:

The children are fairly secure in the knowledge that 7 steps will bring them back to 10

‘Nine is one less than ten. So you add 7 and 1 and the answer is eight’.

 

Just in case you missed it…

I am reposting the link the the post on this blog on the importance of learning tables.

Click here for that link!

Thank you for your continuing interest and support.

Look what you can do with K’nex. Nice work Senan!

 

Advent – Talking about ‘the real meaning of Christmas’ – ‘Happy Birthday Jesus’

It is the beginning of Advent

and the children in 2nd Class, Room 6

have been talking about

‘the real meaning of Christmas’

We have changed our ‘sacred space’ in the classroom

to reflect the change in season.

(Thanks again to Rebecca’s Mum and Dad for the resources
they sent us at the beginning of the year).

Working with a formal reading scheme in 2nd Class – Ginn – Advice for Parents

Dear Parents,

For the time being we are working on a formal reading scheme.

Many children have started the Ginn Readers.

Others are working hard on a separate scheme with Mrs. F 🙂

 

Advice about reading (Ginn Readers)

First of all don’t feel you have to read a full book in a night!

 

From Level 4, (Green cover) it is quite ok for you, the parent

to read every 2nd page to the child.

Reading these books takes quite a bit of  ‘reading stamina’,

so if you take every 2nd page, that will help.

 

Alternating who reads the story in this way,

also helps the pace and the ‘flow’ of the story.

 

But one of the most useful things about this approach

is that your child will ‘model’ their reading on yours.

This means that they will pick up on

how you use expression when you read

and how you observe punctuation.

Now that your child is reading more fluently,

it is important to check that your child

understands what they are reading.

For this reason, as you read with them it is a good idea

to check their comprehension by asking them

incidental questions about the story.

 

So you might ask;

‘What do you think might happen next?’

Or after you have read a story with your child you might ask

‘What happened in this story’ or ‘What was your favourite bit?’

Poems feature in some of the higher levels of the Ginn readers.

The vocabulary in them is a bit trickier.

Persevere certainly,

but don’t worry about getting them word perfect.

 

Throughout the Ginn series I have found that there are book/stories

that boys enjoy more than the girls do and visa versa.

e.g. ‘Helicopters’ (Level 4) and also in the later Ginns (from Level 6).

 

If your child is finding a story most uninteresting,

there is no need to labour over them.

In this way reading is enjoyable for you and your child.

 

PS. I have assigned the reading level according to the

Standardised Test results of last term.

If the level is too simple (or too hard) for your child,

not to worry; I will adjust this in a day or two.

 

I assigned a level that might be too easy rather than too hard,

as it is better for a child’s confidence in themselves as a reader

to be promoted up a level rather than demoted.

 

When we have finished Level 8,

we will read from Teacher’s box of ‘real books.’

In January we will begin our class novel

‘The Owl Who Was Afraid of The Dark’ by Jill Tomlinson.

 

If you want to see how we are getting along on our Reading Journey

please take a look at This Year’s Reading Journey

 

I can see from reading over the plan for this year,

that we are ahead of ourselves!

I am happy that we are making steady progess with our reading

and improving in fluency and comprehension every day.

This review from Amazon.com:

The GINN series of readers are commonly used in schools and is of a very high standard.

They are well designed, provide a wide variety of stories within each book.

Each book is dedicated to a theme.

The books can include fiction, non-fiction and poetry and cover different cultures.

The stories range from informative, factual, fantasy, amusing and educational both in facts and life.

They often have an amusing twist at the end.

Illustrations are excellent and the pages appealing to the eye.

On many occasions, children will chose to read further than requested by the teacher as they are caught up in the story.

The only slight criticism is that some of the poetry can be much tougher to read within a level than the stories within the same book….but then again, this is true in adult poetry too.

Each level steps up at a reasonable pace so the child isnt swamped at the next level.

Highly recommended.

Junior Art Gallery Competition

Children from 2nd Class Room 6 entered this competition:

Junior Art Gallery’s ‘Favourite Christmas Food’ Art Competition

from Junior Art Gallery

We received a very nice email

and some entries were on Twitter.
Favourite Christmas Food – Some entries

Click on this link …

to see the thirteen entries from 2nd class Room 6

in Junior Art Gallery’s

‘Favourite Food Competition’

on display in ‘The Happy Pear’.

Patrons are invited to vote for their favourite.

I love them all 😉

 

UPDATE: Happy News for Fiona and Mark

who received their prizes today in school.

Thank you to Junior Art Gallery for this opportunity and your kindness.

Fiona’s and Mark’s pictures are on this link: Junior Art Gallery

Look! We are on the Parish Website

Saying Thanks

The children’s contributions to the parish website was updated

with a podcast of thank you prayers.

Quite sensibly Grannies, Grandads and chocolate all get a mention 🙂

Well done 2nd Class Room 6, you sound great on the Parish Website.

Click on the link below to hear the class singing ‘Away in a Manger’.

Greetings from 2nd Class, Room 6 this Christmas