Month: January 2013

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An Irish Greeting based on a Mihi from New Zealand

On this Link to Class Blog for Y7/8 Room 5, Melville Intermediate School, Hamilton, Waikato, New Zealand

we read how

‘A Mihi

is a Maori introduction or greeting,

which contains information about yourself”.

 

We saw the students introducing themselves.

It was very interesting.

They talk about the name of their canoe,

the nearest mountain to them,

the closest river,

their meeting place,

their tribe,

their chief

and last of all their names. .

 

We decided to make our introductions

to these students from

Room 5 Melville Intermediate School,

because we are working with them at the moment.

 

They are teaching us about New Zealand

and they are learning about Ireland.

 

This is our podcast:

listen to ‘2nd Class Room 6, Greystones, Ireland introduce themselves to their new friends in Room 5 Melville Intermediate School, Hamilton, New Zealand’ on Audioboo

‘Dia Dhaoibh (May God be with you)

to our new friends in Room 5,

Melville Intermediate School

in Hamilton

New Zealand

We liked your greeting,

your Mihi.

So we decided to send you one back

In Irish we say

‘Céad míle fáilte romhat!’

 

to a visitor.

 

This means

‘A hundred thousand welcomes’

We come from Ireland

We live close to the

Little Sugar Loaf Mountain.

 

The Three Trout River is our nearest river

 

The name of our county is Wicklow

This means ‘Viking Meadow’.

 

The Vikings were

fierce warriors

who came to Ireland

 from countries to the North 

from 795 AD

 

We meet in our local town Greystones

In the 1800s the sailors who had passed

our local beach would call it

‘The Grey Stones’.

They would say

‘There was a storm at the Greystones’,

or

‘There was good fishing at The Greystones’.

This is how our town got it’s name.

 

The name of our school is Saint Brigid’s.

She was born over fifteen hundred years ago!

But people remember her because

she was good to the poor, the sick and the old.

February 1st is her Feast Day

so we will have No Homework 😀 to celebrate.

Bye for now.

Click here for the earlier post on sharing learning with Room 5, Melville School

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Class Collaboration between Greystones, Wicklow, Ireland and Hamilton, Waikato, New Zealand

Classrooms are very different places in this 21st Century.

In the past children have done projects on other countries.

 

2nd Class, Room 6 are learning about New Zealand.

But this is different to other years where information

came from books and the internet.

 

We are hearing about New Zealand from

Mr.Webb’s students in Y7/8, Room 5,

Melville Intermediate School,

Hamilton, Waikato, New Zealand.

 

Link to Class Blog for Y7/8 Room 5, Melville Intermediate School, Hamilton, Waikato, New Zealand

 

They in turn are learning about Ireland.

These students have just returned from their Summer holidays 😉

 

They brainstormed what they knew about Ireland and we replied.

We were very impressed that students as far away as New Zealand

knew as much as they did about our small island.

 

This is what they knew and what we said.

 

1. Dublin is the capital of Ireland.

Yes that is true.

We live to the south of Dublin.

On the train, it is approximately an hour away.

 

2. You can kiss the Blarney stone in Ireland and it gives you good luck.

Yes you can kiss the Blarney stone

but rather than make you lucky,  

doing this makes you ‘chatty,’ a good talker.

 

This is a tradition and many tourists include

‘kissing the Blarney Stone’ in their trip to Ireland.

 

The children in 2nd Class Room 6 are already blessed

with this gift of being talkative ;)

 

It is not easy to kiss the Blarney stone.

One has to ‘bend over backwards’.  

Link to the Blarney Stone 

 

Long ago, tourists were held by the ankles

and lowered head first over the battlements

of the Blarney Castle.

 

Nowadays there is a ‘safer way’ to do this.

But the stone is down a ‘drop’ behind you.

 

We think perhaps that people get so nervous doing this

that they ‘babble’ and talk a lot afterwards out of fright.

 

3. Our collaborators from Melville School

knew that Irish Dancing is popular : 

We are fond of Irish dancing.

We have dance class in school,

for a half an hour every Monday.

Included in the lesson is Irish dancing.

Damien from Melville School described

Irish dancing accurately.

 

Traditionally too, Irish dancers just moved their legs very rapidly

and kept their arms stiffly down by their sides.

 

This has changed in the last ten years,

with the popularity of a show called ‘Riverdance’.

 

The traditional rules of the dance have been broken

but we think that the end result is a better dance.

 

4. Ireland has a lot of pubs

Sadly this is a view people have of Ireland.

The Irish are very friendly and sociable.

They like to get together to talk.

 

We used have a lot of pubs,

but many have gone out of business.

 

The government passed a ‘No drinking and driving’ law

and also a ‘No smoking in public places’ law.

This means people don’t go to the pubs as much.

 

5. Potatoes has something to do with Ireland

Potatoes were to Ireland as rice was to China :D 

but this has changed too.

 

When our grandparents were at school,

all the children would have eaten potatoes

each day for their dinner.

 

We had a show of hands today

and less than half of the children

had eaten potatoes or chips the previous day.

 

6. The Titanic was built in Ireland.

Indeed the Titanic was built in Ireland.

Levi’s (from Melville) Nan came to Ireland on holiday.

She certainly travelled a long way.

 

We remembered the tragedy of the Titanic

especially last year as it was 100 years since it happened.

 

7. Fairies and Leprechauns are creatures from Ireland.

This is a funny one :D 

We’ll get back to our new friend from New Zealand on this.

 

These are the facts we found out we knew about New Zealand

after a brainstorming session.

 

1. Wellington is the capital of New Zealand.

(Thanks to JC for this information)

 

2. The New Zealand rugby team are the best rugby players in the world.

They are a competitive, strong and brave team.

 

3. The only famous person we could think of from New Zealand

is the rugby player Sonny Bill Williams. (Thanks to Cian for this information)

 

4. We have seen the ‘haka’ before rugby matches.

We heard it was a war chant to scare the enemy long ago.

 

We are big fans of the ‘haka’

http://www.newzealand.com/travel/app_templates/haka/index_content.html

 

5. Kiwi fruit comes from New Zealand

and it is also the name of a flightless bird.

 

6. English is spoken in New Zealand!

 

7. Hobbits live in New Zealand.

 

We has said the our friends in New Zealand

that we would appreciate their help to advise us

if we have got anything wrong!

 

Teacher will also fill us in on some of the gaps in our knowledge.

As part of this project we are going to learn the ‘haka’ from the link above.

 

From doing this collaboration 2nd Class Room 6

have learned two very interesting things already.

When we have our Christmas holidays,

students in New Zealand begin their Summer holidays.

 

We learned that time wise, New Zealand

is thirteen hours ahead of the time here in Ireland.

 

We are finding this collaboration very interesting

and we are learning a lot.

Click here for what we did next!  

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Spirits of Trees – An Art Project on the Theme of Trees

2nd Class Room 6 are continuing with

their art project on tree paintings.

Follow this link to see the first part of our project on trees.

 

We looked at some other famous pictures of trees.

We loved Georgia O’Keeffe’s  ‘The Lawrence Tree’

We loved the strong colour of the trunk,

the unusual angle of the painting

and the tiny stars in the sky.

 

We admired Emily Carr’s ‘Forest’

We were fascinated by

all the different colours of Emily Carr’s Forest.

We expected there might be green and brown.

But when we enlarged the painting on the whiteboard,

we could see blues, purples, yellows and lots of other colours.

Painting the sky and the grass is not like

painting a wall of our house or the kitchen door.

They are not all one colour blue or green.

 

Then we looked at Klimt’s wonderful ‘Tree of Life’.

We loved the bright colours, the branches

that curled round and round

and the little details among the branches.

 

To complete our project we are going to think about

colour, angle and shapes

and then draw our own trees.

 

“i thank You God for most this amazing day:

for the leaping greenly spirits of trees

and a blue true dream of sky;”

                         from a poem by ee cummings

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Inspired by Van Gogh and Mondrian: ‘Trees’ by 2nd Class Room 6

When our friend at Junior Art Gallery posted this link on their blog…

encouraging us to do the interesting art, that is on this link in turn

2nd Class, Room 6 didn’t need to be asked twice.

We chose to begin with

Van Gogh’s ‘The Mulberry Tree’

and the very different ‘Gray Tree’ by Mondrian

and tried to create our own versions.

The Mulberry Tree is colourful

and not surprisingly The Gray Tree is very grey.

 

Over the next few weeks

we will take a look at the other trees on this link:

 

‘Lawrence Tree’ by Georgia O’Keeffe,

‘Forest’ by Emily Carr,

‘Pine Tree Screen’ by Hasegawa Tohaku

and ‘The Tree of Life’ by Gustav Klimt.

 

We are working towards then, drawing

our own trees experimenting with

colour, shape, and angle as these

artists have done.

‘Trees’ by 2nd Class Room 6 on PhotoPeach

Many thanks to Junior Art Gallery for pointing us in the direction of this great idea.

DLTK Kids Artwork Ideas (Arbor Day)

This is the link to the 2nd part of this project 🙂

Click on ‘Continue Reading’ below to comment.

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Making Connections: Jill Tomlinson’s ‘The Owl Who Was Afraid of The Dark’ and ‘The Aardvark Who Wasn’t Sure’.

We read ‘The Owl Who Was Afraid Of The Dark’

and ‘The Aardvark Who Wasn’t Sure’.

Both of these books are written by

the great children’s author

Jill Tomlinson.

 

We talked about how these stories,

making connections

between the two stories.

We asked ourselves:

How are these books the same

and how they are different?

 

Julia is going to begin

by introducing both books

and talking about

how they are the same.

This is how the stories are the same:

The main characters

are both young animals

that live with their parent(s).

 

The Owl lives with his Mum and Dad

and the Aardvark lives with his Mum.

They are loved and well minded

by the grown ups in their lives.

 

They are both nocturnal.

They both have to look out for ‘danger’.

They are both very inquisitive

especially about food.

 

Both stories follow a pattern.

The same kind of thing happens

in every chapter

over…

and over again.

 

They meet another character

and talk to them,

asking them questions

and finding things out.

 

But this is not tedious

because each of these 

characters are different

and interesting.

 

Also there are differences

in the pattern each time.

Different things get said.

Funny things get said.

Avatar Kila will tell you a little about

how the stories are different

The stories are different because

one story is about an aardvark

and the other is an owl.

 

The owl is a carnivore and the

aardvark is an insectivore.

The aardvark and his Mum

are nomads. The owl family

stay put.

 

Plop the Owl wants to be a day bird.

As the title of the book says,

he is afraid of the dark

and doesn’t want to go hunting

with his Mum or Dad.

This is the problem

that has to be solved

in his story

 

Pim the Aardvark is different

He is looking forward

to going hunting at night

with his Mum.

 

His ‘problem’ is that he is

a brand new, baby aardvark

and he doesn’t know anything.

He isn’t sure at all about

the life of an aardvark

or the world around him.

 

Luckily both stories are the same

in that they both have happy ending.

 

To finish:

In the chapter called ‘The Rotten Digger’

in the ‘The Aardvark Who Wasn’t Sure’,

Pim tries his hands

(or should that be his claws) at digging.

Here is a video of an aardvark digging 

from Arkive.org, a website of animal videos.

If you would like to comment click on ‘Continue Reading’ below

and a comment box will appear.

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Podcast: What did you like about ‘The Owl who was Afraid of the Dark’?

We have just finished our class novel

‘The Owl who was Afraid of the Dark’

by Jill Tomlinson.

The children in 2nd Class, Room 6

enjoyed the humour

and appreciated

that the story followed a pattern.

But let them tell you about it.

Isabella is today’s interviewer.

listen to ‘What we liked about ‘The Owl Who Was Afraid of The Dark’ by Jill Tomlinson’ on Audioboo

As part of the work we are doing on owls,

the boys and girls enjoyed watching barn owls on this link today.

Perhaps they might like to check it out again at home.

Click on this link for a video of a barn owl in flight from a nature website called Arkive.org

Click on ‘Continue Reading’ below to comment.

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The Advantages and Disadvantages of Living in Our Home Town

Today we made a podcast about

the advantages and disadvantages

of living in Greystones.

listen to ‘Advantages and Disadvantages of Living In Greystones’ on Audioboo

Senan was today’s interviewer.

The boys and girls in 2nd Class Room 6

could think of lots of advantages

and very few disadvantages.

We agreed Greystones is

a great place to live.

What do you think is  good about living in your home town?

Click on ‘Continue Reading’ below to tell us what you think.

 

 

Read more we have written about the town we live in here.

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Moments in the Sun – Being Successful – Taking Turns

We were talking in class about ‘moments in the sun’,

how every now and then some one has a day

where their talents are celebrated.

The children who took part in the Kilcoole Feis

had this ‘moment in the sun’.

 

Mark and Fiona had their most recent moment

when they got prizes in the art competition

organised by Junior Art Gallery.

 

More success will occur when the class enter

the Write A Book competition.

Winners and runners up will be picked from each class.

 

We will also enter the Junior Spiders Awards

and the Texaco Art competition

and who knows what might happen.

 

We talked about how we can’t expect

to climb to the top of the mountain

and be successful every day.

 

Being successful takes hard work.

Being successful also takes good luck.

If the weather was sunny every day

we would take it for granted.

The children in 2nd Class, Room 6

agreed that they all love snow days

but if it snowed everyday

they would eventually find this tedious.

Winning the Lotto would be

a dream come true

for many people,

but if it happened every day

we might say:

‘Oh No, not another

Lotto win’ 😉

 

We can take it in turns to be successful

and have our ‘moments in the sun’.

We can congratulate friends

who are successful

and enjoy their success

with them.

 

Today Nicole was successful.

Her lovely picture received praise

from Junior Art Gallery:

Nicole’s picture on Junior Art Gallery.com

Well done Nicole 🙂

This link will bring you to other successes 2nd Class Room 6 have had.

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A Visitor and a Singing Bowl

Today at midday, we had a surprise that we liked a lot.

Paul our Parish Worker knocked at our door.

This was great.

We had said earlier in the week that we would like Paul to visit.

There he was.

 

He came to thank us for sending him cards before Christmas.

He liked our cards and he wanted to thank us.

So Paul brought a singing bowl with him and some music and we listened.

The song told us that we are precious to God.

The room was very quiet and still.

 

Afterwards Tadhg said

 

‘It feels like a new day’.

 

If you don’t know what a singing bowl looks like,

we found you a photo.
singing bowl
Singing Bowl by Rosmary on Flickr

You hit it with a wooden stick and it sings like a bell!

This is a beautiful sound.

You listen to the sound and it helps you to relax

and get ready to meditate.

 

Click on this link to read more about our Communion Preparation.

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Being A Child – The Advantages and Disadvantages

2nd Class Room 6 talked about the

advantages and disadvantages of being a child.

Cian was the interviewer.

listen to ‘The Advantages and Disadvantages of Being A Child’ on Audioboo

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Did you ever call your Teacher Mum? How did it make you feel?

We talked about this question

and we recorded our answers in a podcast.

Each time we made a podcast, we found we had more to say.

This is the first one. Rebecca is the interviewer.

listen to ‘Did You Ever Call Your Teacher Mum?’ on Audioboo

We talked about how we could improve on this podcast.

Rebecca thought about the questions she could ask,

that would help the class, to tell her their stories.

The class thought about how they could give more details

in their answers.

listen to ‘Did you ever ever ever call your Teacher, Mum (2)’ on Audioboo

All the children interviewed said that they had called their

Teacher Mum, at some stage but all said that it wasn’t the

most embarrassing thing that ever happened to them.

 

So we decided to make a podcast of the most embarrassing

thing that had ever happened to the children in the class.

listen to ‘What was the most embarrassing thing that ever happening to you? (3)’ on Audioboo

This was good practice and each time we made a podcast,

the children had more to say and said it,

I think you will agree in a better way.

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Planet Avatar – Starting A Project on the Planets in our Solar System using Voki

We are doing a project on the Sun, and the planets in our solar system.

We thought it would be fun to do our project using avatars.

 

First we wrote down what we were going to say.

458929b1_o

First Avatar Abi will tell us about the Sun.

Avatar Alice talks to us about Mercury

Avatar Amy tells us

some interesting facts about Venus

Avatar Calum talks

about his home planet, Earth.

Avatar JC gives us

some information about the Moon.

Avatar Cian has some information about

The Red Planet, Mars.

Guess how many moons Jupiter has?

Avatar Clara will tell you the answer and more!

Breaking News!

Saturn has even more moons than Jupiter.

Our reporter Avatar Fiona will tell you about it 🙂

A report from the very special

and unusual Avatar Jack.

He is truly out of this world!

This is Isabella’s report on the planet Neptune.

Well done to all.

 

The experts tell us that Pluto is a dwarf planet

but we are fond of it and wouldn’t like

to see it disappear from school books

Finally Avatar Jake is going to tell us

about the early days of the Planet Earth.

We think we would have a lot more fun

if only we could get our own voices recorded properly on Voki.

At the moment we have to change ‘text’ into words instead.

It is fun, but we really don’t sound like this!

We are working on trying to solve this problem

and are going to try a different microphone.

Has anyone any advice?

 

We enjoy learning about the planets.

8cae35d4_o

Can you see the planets hanging from our classroom ceiling?

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Audioboo – Time for Grammar – Nouns and Naming Words

We are learning about nouns and naming words.

A noun is the name of anything.

 

Sometimes it is helpful to say

‘If I can take a photograph of something, it is a noun’.

But this is not always true.

Some nouns would be hard to take pictures of.

Many of these special nouns end in -ness.

For example: happiness and sadness.

These special nouns are called ‘abstract’ nouns.

 

Love is a noun but it would be hard to take a picture of it.


Clara drew of picture of what love means to her.

Nicole also drew one.

So did Niamh.

 

Learn a little more about nouns that you could not take a photograph of!

 

We gave examples of nouns we knew on this Audioboo:

listen to ‘Time for Grammar – Nouns or Naming Words’ on Audioboo

 

These are nouns you could not take a photograph of:

listen to ‘Nouns you cannot take a photo of!’ on Audioboo

 

Abstract Nouns – Part 2

listen to ‘Abstract Nouns – Part 2’ on Audioboo


Senan drew a picture to illustrate the abstract noun ‘sound’.

It would be challenging to take a photograph of a ‘noise’ or a ‘sound’.

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Let’s hear our New Year’s Resolutions from Chip the Chipmunk (Voki Avatar)

It is a new year

and we are going to make some New Year’s Resolutions.

We hope you enjoyed meeting Chip and hearing our New Year’s Resolutions.

We really enjoyed learning how to make an avatar.

Have you got a New Year’s Resolution

that you would like to tell us about?

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We Challenge YOU Again! Try Your Hand At Viking Quest!

Click on the link below to play!

 

BBC’s ‘Viking Quest’

We don’t always win this game …

but we usually do!

 

If you would like to tell us what score you got,

please double click

‘Continue Reading’ below

and enter your score in the comment box.

 

viking 1Creative Commons License Katherine via Compfight

 

1,083 is our best score.

Do tell us how you get on !

 

We also challenge you to make

all the wrong decisions in this game

and get a score of zero.

It is possible 😉

Update 9-2-15

Congratulations to Jake, a TY student

who is on work experience with us.

Today we challenged him to a game

and after a shaky start he scored

a phenomenal 1,099