St Peter’s Post #15

Slightly delayed St Peter’s Post this weekend! You can blame the CESI (Computers in Education Society of Ireland) Conference in Galway yesterday. The theme was ‘Spark the Imagination’ and they really did! We’ve come back with lots of very cool ways to enhance ICT in St Peter’s!

The headlines from this week are:

• Check out 2nd class and their fantastic version of Riverdance here.
• It’s the annual Book Fair starting tomorrow (Monday)! Get all the details from Ms Sugrue or check out this post.
• In related news, we started a countdown to World Book Day. Count it down with us here!
• Our friend Summer Buzz, who LOVES reading, posted a Voki for us here.
• Summer Buzz will love Sam’s book review and so will you! It reviews ‘Goodnight Mr Tom’, which 6th class have just finished reading. Check it out here.
• Patryk from 6th class was very busy on the blog this week! Check out his post on his chess club here.
• We also posted an update on our Creative Schools after-school club this week. Watch the two Vines showcasing Patryk’s work here.
• Well done Archie, from 6th class, who prepared a post on his gymnastics club here. We love reading about our students’ hobbies and interests, so if you’d like to write something for the blog – let your class teacher know!
• We handed back all the fantastic entries for Write-A-Book that we were judging for other schools this week. The teachers involved were really impressed with the standard and we’d like to thank Blackrock Education Centre for organising it. Read all about it here.
• Recently, 5th class entered the Bord Gais Student Theatre Awards, which required them to write a short scene, based on Friendship in under 500 words. This week, we started recording our scenes, beginning with Luke O’B and Andy. Both are excellent and well worth a listen. You can find them here.
• 2nd class podcasted about their preparations for their sacraments here. Well done 2nd class!
• In another podcast this week, the Student Council updated us on their progress. They continue to do great work and we’re very grateful to them! Listen to their update here.
• ‘Wednesday for Parents’ this week kicked off a mini-series based on helping your child with their homework. Read the first post, on general tips, here.
• You have to see 2nd class and their take on the Moon Landing, using Vintagio – shows fantastic imagination! Check it out here.

In other news this week:

• Swimming continued for 2nd, 3rd and 4th classes. We’re really enjoying our sessions!
• 2nd class started a new book, called ‘Zac Power: Frozen Fear’. They’re really enjoying all the action and adventure in it so far!
• 5th and 6th class set up their Khan Academy accounts so that they can take part in the Mathletes competition over the next few months. We were delighted to see so many of the students who signed up early in the week, using it at night to practise their maths!
• We changed our Voki to Paula the Poodle. Check her out in the sidebar to the right!
• A new theme began in Roots of Empathy. The Roots of Empathy notice board is beautiful and we really recommend that all visitors to the school take a look at all the great work 2nd class are doing with Paddy!
• We were thrilled to get a comment from Joe O’Brien, the author of Alfie Green, on the podcast 2nd class made about reading the book. Thanks Joe!
• 5th class achieved their goal of 95% attendance in February. They had an average of 89% in January, so we’re very proud of them for working hard to improve so much! As they finished reading ‘The Boy in the Striped Pyjamas’ recently, they set their goal at the start of the month, with the film version as a reward at the end of the month. They also had a unihoc league for the whole month. They were in teams of 4 or 5 and played one three minute match each every day. This meant that the strongest teams were the ones with the best attendance!
• Polly arrived in St Brigid’s in Greystones – watch this space!

Next week, we’re taking part in the #antearrach project, organised by our friends in Seomra Ranga, which tracks the signs of Spring. Our first week on Twitter focused on the #anfomhar project, for Autumn so this is a project close to our hearts. Casey from 2nd class got the ball rolling with this Tweet:

This is our very first #antearrach post! I brought in daffodils for our classroom! #springhassprung from Casey pic.twitter.com/NTYO0AryBT

— St. Peter’s Primary (@StPetersBray) February 28, 2014

Expect a busy week on the blog and on Twitter next week! That’s all from us for the moment. As always, you can find all previous St Peter’s Posts here.