This week's Newsletter

14th May 2021

Another busy week in RMDS and a very different week as several days were given over to Drumcondra tests. Having talked about not focusing on tests in the past two newsletters I am going to heed my own advice and not overly dwell on them, they are just a snapshot in time and their purpose is to inform our teaching next year.

A nicer point of focus is the fact that we have 20% of our staff vaccinated and the Junior Infants are off on our first outing of the year today to Airfield Farm. I’m just a little sad that I can’t go too.

Rang a Dó have finished their session in the Forest and the reports of all the fun they had in the four weeks make all the extra stretching of resources to make it happen worthwhile. Senior Infants are in the middle of their forest school session and are loving it. The weather gods have been particularly kind. Not that the children would mind, building tents with sheets has never gone out of fashion. Junior Infants have been building shelters during Aistear and the amount of fun they were having was lovely to watch, I couldn’t stop myself from joining in. When the children get to put up tarps and sit in out of the rain it adds to the excitement of the forest school experience. Less fun for the adults so perhaps, we won’t wish for rain.

We say goodbye to our student teachers Charlotte Hurley, Ellen Fitzgerald and Rachel McCoy who have been working in Naíonáin Bheaga, Rang a Dó and Rang a Trí. They have been great to work with and we wish them well as they continue their journey to what we hope will be a long and fulfilling career.

For those of you who were checking the post every day for the promised CHY3 form, you will have to wait as some editorial changes have delayed its posting. Mary Holder may kill me yet. She has had the envelopes and everything else ready for weeks.

Don’t forget that the Parents’ Association talk about digital Technology is on this Tuesday May 18th, contact the pa@rmds.ie if you wish to attend.

I have saved the biggest and best news until last. Last weekend we heard of the birth of Anna Shackleton’s daughter ‘Edie Stephanie’. A moment of pure joy and we wish every happiness for her and her doting family.

I said that I wouldn’t focus on the tests but I can’t make the same promise from the class reports. It’s an unusual event for the children which makes it newsworthy, we just won’t focus on it.

Have a lovely weekend and Eid Mubarak,

Paul

Rang a Sé

This week we were hard at work. On Tuesday, we did our English/Reading Drumcondra Test. Then on Wednesday we did our Maths Drumcondra. We also did lots of preparation for our Sixth Class Musical such as reading through the script, learning off our lines, making props for the stage in Art and now a group of us are in the process of drawing out the backdrop. On Thursday we had rugby with Ken and it was fun. On Friday we did more musical work. We are really excited to show you the final production.

Sarah and Jarvis

Rang a Cúig

Today marks the end of another great week in Rang a Cúig. This week we worked very hard completing our Drumcondra tests in Maths and English and we are happy to have these out of the way. In Maths, we learned all about circles. We also learned to use a compass for the first time. Using our new compass skills we made some pattern circle art; you can see some examples in the pictures below.

Today we are going to make marbled planet paintings in Art. We can’t wait to show you them in next week's newsletter. Our class is over half way through our novel ‘Under the Hawthorn Tree’ and we are really enjoying it. We wrote and acted out scenes based on the famine in Drama, this helped us understand how different people were affected by the tragedy.

In Core Curriculum, we learned all about Eid-Ul-Fitr, a celebration in the religion of Islam that was on this Thursday. We went to Dartmouth Square and played Rugby with our coach Ken for P.E. We finished the topic of Bullying in Stay Safe and we made a class agreement to prevent bullying.

Rang a Ceathair

News2day came to our school and we all made catapults. We had a lot of fun and a great time. You can catch the episode from Wednesday 5th of May here:

https://www.rte.ie/player/series/news2day/SI0000001210?epguid=IH000400267 We played a match of tag rugby. We had a blast with Ken.

We all did acrostic poems on friendship and being kind to each other. Also we talked about it with our parents.

We coloured some rainbow patterns and put them together and displayed them on our window.

In Gaeilge, we all got a worksheet and got to learn about tv shows and how to say what we like and dislike to watch. We also did an Irish poem on a snail who lost his shell. He was very sad after he lost it.

Last Friday we held a presidential election for our teddies to see who will be our new class president. We are proud of President Peanut and Vice President Watermelon! On Wednesday we all fully finished our write a book project. We are excited to present them! To our friends, teachers and parents.

We had a zoom call from Hannah, a Space Reliability Engineer, about our Science Blast project. She will judge our class and give us feedback on our project. She also answered all of our questions about space.

Drumcondras this week were hard but mostly everybody felt they did well. We had a birthday celebration for Théo, Michael and Nicholas and had some cookies.

No one is disappointed in these 2 weeks! We are very excited for the weekend and to meet our friends and family!

Sadie Kate and Isabelle.

Rang a Trí

We have been learning about Ancient Egypt. We did some hieroglyphics in art class, see pictures below. We made paper that looks like it is from ancient Egypt by using tea and tea bags then drew hieroglyphics on them.

We are learning a new song that you might know! It is called “Walk like an Egyptian”. Does that ring a bell? We had different lyrics all to do with the Egyptians. Mr. Fairbrother came in to listen to us!

It was Eid on Thursday. We talked about it in class and wished people celebrating a Very Happy Eid.

We did our Drumcondra tests this week on reading and maths. We did them on Monday and Tuesday.

It was Mary and Ms. McCoy’s birthdays! Happy Birthday!!!

Oliver had surgery on his left arm. He is wearing a sling. But we are glad to have him back in school with us. Katherine fell on Monday and is on crutches. Get better soon everyone! Last week we did PE which involved lots of team-work. We are getting better at supporting our team mates and helping them when they need encouragement.

For drama we did bingo using other people!! Where we had a sheet and it said “find someone who…” and then we would find someone and they would have to sign it. In english we learned about when to use commas and explanation text on how the Egyptians mummified their Pharaohs.

It is Ms Mc Coy’s last day with us. Thank you Ms McCoy for teaching us and we will miss you.

Edith and Edie

Rang a Dó

We have had such a lovely couple of weeks in Rang 2.

The weather is improving and we have been making the most of it with lots of outdoor activities.

We played rounders in Dartmouth Square and designed parks we would like. We also designed and created beautiful houses from cardboard.

We have worked so hard on our Write a Books and of course we have thoroughly enjoyed Forest School. We will really miss our time with the wonderful Miss Fitzgerald , and we would like to say a huge Go Raibh Maith Agat to her.

Rang a hAon

We had a very busy week in R1 as we did our Drumcondra Tests.

In music, we are learning a new song called "The Octopus's Garden" and in art we designed our own Octopus's Garden. We have been learning about friendships in SPHE and we created our own friendship tree in the classroom. All of the leaves on the tree have words to describe our friends in the class. On Thursday, Izyan and Riad taught us about Ramadan and how Eid is celebrated.

We also got a special gift of some herbs and flowers from Ms. Farley. We are going to plant them on the Roof Garden.

Naíonáin Mhóra

Senior Infants have had a great week this week. We are now on week two of Forest School. We absolutely love going to the forest with Caroline. This week, we were learning all about different birds and their nests. We used leaves, twigs, grass, moss and feathers to make our very own nests.

In Aistear this week, we have a farmers market in our classroom. We have been learning all about the farm, the animals, farm jobs and machinery. In our farmers market, we have lots of dairy products, eggs, bread, fruit and vegetables. We have loved going out for soft play, this is where we build farm yards, sheds and coops.

In Maths, we have been learning all about capacity. We completed some experiments, measuring various containers. We were investigating which container would hold more or less.

Naíonáin Bheaga

We made bird feeders with suet and bird seed and we hung them in the park for the birds. We looked at farm buildings and farm machines and we made tractors in art with 2d shapes. Our new song was Farmer in the Dell and we did all the actions. In Aistear we made bread just like the Little Red Hen did in the story. We tasted our bread and some of us thought it was very tasty. Tomorrow we are going on our school tour to Airfield. We are very excited.

Our patio is looking really great now and we love playing, reading and relaxing out there. Thank you to all the mums and dads and to Woodies ( Matthew's mum Suzanne works there) who donated lots of beautiful plants.

We are looking for bamboo canes so if you have any spare please bring them in.