Category: 6th Class Blog

On June 2 was our sports day. We participated in lots of fun advents and had a great day.

We walked up to the pitch at 9.30. We did No Mans Land as our first activity. it was a lot of fun. Then we did a game called Ice-Cream where someone had an upside down cone and the others would stand behind cones and try throwing a bean bag into the cone. the girls won.

Then we played a game called SPLAT where there was a sheriff in the middle and he would shoot someone and they would have to duck on time but if they didn’t they would be out but if they did the 2 people either side of them would shout SPLAT and the winner would move on until 1 was left.

After that we played Boys vs Girls in a game of dodgeball. The boys won the first round and the girls won the second one. The last round still wasn’t finished.

The ice-cream van came and we had a dance party while we waited for our turn to get ice-cream. Some people got slushies. After we played Tug of War.

We walked back to school at 2.45 after a great day.

Sixth class were recently participating in the Fisheries Ireland school programme called “Something Fishy “

As part of this ecological programme, Markus Muller who works with Fisheries Ireland visited our class and shared a workshop with us on the lifecycle of the Atlantic Salmon.

A few weeks later we visited the Unshin River in Riverstown, where we met with Markus, Kieran and Jimmy and took part in hands on fishery and ecological activities.

We were offered the opportunity to submit a project into a competition, under the theme “Life on the river”. The project could be in any format we wished.

We started brainstorming ideas and decided to make a large 3D sculpture using papier mache showcasing a river system. We then elaborated on this initial idea to divide the one river system in half, one half being a healthy river, the other half showing an unhealthy river.

Using clay we sculpted the different stages of life cycle of the Atlantic salmon. We painted these mini sculptures and then placed them along our 3D river sculpture.

A script was written and narrated by a couple of pupils in the class. This scripted described the life cycle and highlighted the differences between the healthy and unhealthy river. One of our class mates, Luke, dressed up in a fish costume that we made and shared some of his funny ‘fishy’ jokes. This brought a fun, humourous side to our project.

We submitted our project to the regional competition with the hope that it would do well.

Two weeks later, our teacher Ms Hickey, received a phone call informing her that we WON the regional competition and were Sligo champions!!!!!

Our project was then submitted to National level for judging and guess what…

WE WON!!!!!!!!

We won the overall prize of €500 and title of “Something Fishy National Winner 2023”

On June 1st, 2023 my class, sixth, went to Lough Key Forest Park for our school tour.

The bus ride there was really fun as the bus driver, David, put on a variety of songs for us. When we got there we went into the building and lined up along the wall. After a few minutes, we were brought into a room where we were told what we were doing.

First we went orienteering through the forest. After that, we went back to the meeting room where we had our lunch and relaxed a bit until our next activity.

We walked over to “Zip-It” and got into our harnesses. Then we went to the training course where we were told how to get onto the platform, how to get your harness onto the zip-lines, etc. After, we did our test run and we were good to go!

When Zip-it ended we went to “Boda Borg” which were a series of escape rooms. We watched a safety and instructions video, then we went on our way! My personal favorite was “The Quiz Show”. You choose the type of quiz you want e.g. fairytales, then if you get all the questions correct, you can pass to the next room where you do the same!

At the end, my friend Rebecca bought me a slush pup and we went outside. on the ride back we got the same bus, and blasted songs! it was awesome! in the shop, when we got home, my friend bought me an apple juice and we walked home

-Rebecca Conway

On the 25/05/23, all of 6th class went on a field trip out to Sligo Folk Park. Here’s a few bits and pieces about it.

At 11 o’ clock, 6th class, their teacher and Mr. Colreavy got on a bus out to Sligo Folk Park and met up with Marcus, Jimmy and Keiran. Mr. Colreavy was recording our voices so he could insert the audio into the documentary he’s making about fishing.

After we got there, we were divided into three groups of ten and shown three basins which were samples of the River Unshin. We were able to use tweezers and pipettes to lift different wildlife from the basins into petri-dishes to get a good look at them and identify what they were exactly.

Next we went across to the bridge and watched Jimmy and Kieran electrofish using a “Kick Sampling Net.” Electrofishing is shocking the fish a little bit with a rod and the fish, once shocked, will swim towards the rod to rest. Then they will lift up the rod out of the water and they’ve caught the fish.

The fish were brought to a large fish tank for us to observe and identify. We saw an eel, some minnow, salmon fry and also salmon parr.

In the end, we talked about what we saw and then it was time to leave. Everyone got on the bus and headed back. It was a great time for everyone.

We thoroughly enjoyed our field trip and learned so much. We would like to thank Markus, Kieran and Jimmy from Fisheries Ireland for accommodating us.

We had a very busy November in 6th Class, which was dominated by an excellent Science week. The students took it upon themselves to set up and organize a science experiment demonstration day for the whole school.

There was also a combined history/drama project, which challenged the students to become ‘Moving Statues’ – whenever their button was pushed, the students would come to life and tell their chosen historical character’s story, and answer questions in the role also.

We also had some amazing leftover photos of some Halloween outfits to show off – apologies they’re only appearing now, but they’re too good not to share (however late they may be).

We also enjoyed the start of the runs around the astro pitch, which is a really important fundraising initiative. Despite the inclement weather, the community came along to cheer on the start of the school’s ambition to run a combined (…..insane amount of kilometers!) together.

At the start of the month, we had so much fun using maths outside to learn. It was really nice to get out and about to measure, observe and calculate all the maths that is right on our doorstep. The class also completed some maths tests in class, and the class average was probably the highest I can remember recording for a class at this stage of the year. I can only praise the students, parents and past teachers for instilling such wonderful maths brains into this class – superb results!

To wrap things up at the end of this month, 6th Class put on a ‘Moving Statues’ drama/history project. Each student was tasked with researching an important historical figure (dead or alive) that meant something to them. They then had to perform as that character when the other classes came to visit 6th Class – but only once the visiting child stepped on the statue’s button. It really was great fun, and a lot of amazing performances were enjoyed by all.

6th Class look forward to a brilliant December with a new teacher, Ms. Kelly. We’re sure it will be a fantastic last month of the year.

Speaking on my own behalf (Mr Gannon speaking here), it was a privilege to have been the teacher for this class from the start of the year. The class is brimming with talent and capable students. I have no doubt they all have wonderful futures ahead of them. From the bottom of my heart, I wish only the very best to you all.

We had the brilliant Ms Whitehead in on Teaching Practice with us in 6th Class this month. We did many activities and the students really enjoyed all the wonderfully creative lessons. The theme for the lessons was ‘Water’ and the students particularly enjoyed the science, drama and music lessons.

In Maths we looked at 2D shapes, 3D shapes and Volume & Capacity. The children enjoyed creating shapes with tessellating shapes.

Art

Earlier in the month we created sugar skulls. We used a variety of colour to make our skulls and were really happy with how they turned out! We were learning about the Mexican tradition El Día de los Muertos – The day of the dead – which is a tradition to celebrate and honour the dead.

Early on in the month, we also had a wonderful surprise visit from some players from the Sligo All Stars. The students had a great time interviewing the players and comparing hand sizes!

Spellings for Me

We are using a brand new spelling programme this year in 6th Class. Spellings for me is an online indivdualised programme. The children complete a series of tests each day which generates their learning words. (The words that they spell incorrectly). This focuses on the child’s ability rather than their class level. We have attached a link to their website for you to read more about how we are learning our spellings. https://www.spellingsforme.ie/

Thank you to Ms Whitehead

We would just like to thank Ms Whitehead for all her hard work this month. She is a brilliant teacher and we wish her all the very best in her future teaching career.

It was a fun start to the year in sixth class. As there is a sub teacher, Mr Gannon, in for Ms Hickey, we did a few getting-to-know-each-other activities. Mr Gannon spent a some time teaching in Japan, so we made did some very simple origami art to start the year off. Hopefully we’ll move on to some more challenging pieces before too long.

In art this month, we had great fun looking at the paintings and portraits of the Mexican artist, Freda Kahlo.

We also were studying lots of English grammar and we decided to paint some images based on abstract nouns – our brief was to paint a carton of any emotion we liked, with some of the ingredients for that emotion or feeling listed on the carton. Some of the resulting ‘cartons of’ were pretty amazing.

We also learned our first seanfhocal of the year: Tús maith, leath na hoibre (a good start is half the battle). We are all looking forward to continuing on with the good work and we all enjoy a great year together in 6th class.

Massive congratulations to Harry Rush who won 1st place in the Under 12 – 1 metre Equijump Spring tour 2021 . He was presented with this award at the weekend at the Pony Awards night.