End of Year

Term 4

This term has zoomed by as usual - there never seems to be enough weeks to get through all our work. We have started doing six monthly and yearly reports for our Juniors and it certainly takes the pressure of the end of year reporting. It means that we need to be continually doing these through the year but I think the coming year will be better as we are more aware of what we need to do.

In our Inquiry we had to come up with something to help us reduce our waste at school. The class looked at chickens and using them to eat our waste scraps and garden weeds. We had to design an enclosure for our chickens and build a prototype. We followed the life cycle of our chickens as we were lucky enough to have an incubator in the classroom and hatch our own chicks. We kept them in class until the end of the year and then the six chicks went to a good home. Next year the senior students will hopefully be making our selected cage that we designed.

In Writing we concentrated on writing reports. We went through this step by step and finished the year with the children writing their own report about a chicken. 

In Maths we finished off with number - addition and subtraction and symmetry. It was fabulous to hear the children using the correct terminology - reflect, rotate and translate, and now hopefully the will remember these for next time.

We had Athletics at Glenavy again and were lucky this year as it was a lovely day and we were able to do the full programme with the Juniors. 

Our production at the end of the year was Jump Jam. The school was divided into 4 groups and the senior students led each group. It was a fabulous production with the senior students taking on more of a lead role rather than the teachers directing the children. 

Our combined class has been a learning curve for all involved. We have changed and adapted and changed back. I think we  have a good programme going now and we know where we can improve. We will only have the two classes in the first term together as the new classroom will not be ready until term 2 then we will need to look at our programmes again - so doubt some more change in store.