St. Peter's Primary Bray Blog

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: (more…)

2nd Class have been learning about the first Moon Landing in History.

In July 1969, three American men set off in their spaceship Apollo 11. They wanted to get to the moon. Their names were Buzz Aldrin, Michael Collins and Neil Armstrong. They had a landing craft called Eagle. They wore special spacesuits on the moon so that they could breathe. Neil Armstrong said ‘That’s one small step for man, one giant leap for mankind’ when he walked on the moon. He bounced and walked in a funny way because there is only 1/6 of the Earth’s gravity on the Moon. It has become one of the most famous lines ever spoken in history.

We pretended like we were astronauts and reenacted the moon walk wearing an astronaut’s suit. Look at Abbi doing the moon walk! We made it using our new favourite app ‘Vintagio’. It makes the video look black and white like the coverage of the landing was.

Abbi from St Peter’s, Bray on Vimeo.

Millions of people watched the moon-landing on the television. It was in black and white. When the astronauts landed they were welcomed back to earth like heroes. They were now one of the most famous men in the world!

Here is Dylan pretending to be a news reporter, reporting on the Moon Landing in 1969.

Dylan M from St Peter’s, Bray on Vimeo.

Hi, I’m Sam in 6th Class. Last night I wrote a book review about Goodnight Mister Tom. Here it is, I hope you enjoy it!

Characters:

.William Beach (Willie)

.Zach (Dies)

.Mister Tom (Tom Oakley)

.Sammy (Dog)

.Carrie

.Ginnie

.George

Places

. Little Weirwold

.Bradford

.London

.Salmouth (Salt-On-The-Mouth)

.Skyron

Author:

Michelle Magrain

Cover art:

David Frankland

Plot

We start with Willie who is evacuated in WW2 and is given to Tom. At first Tom doesn’t like having Willie around but then he starts to get used to having him around. Willie is terrified of Tom and Sammy but on his birthday he starts to like Tom and not be afraid of Sammy. Sadly, Willie’s mom died so Tom adopted Willie and they lived a happy live.

Review

I like the book but it took a while to get interesting and that’s why I am giving it a 7/10.

Every Wednesday, I attend the chess club down at the Esplanade Hotel on the seafront.

We hold many tournaments there and practice every Wednesday. People are welcome to join us anytime. The season ended recently and lasts for a few months. The final match was 5-1 to the opposing team down in Wicklow. If enough children go, a special room will be added for younger players. We hope for the community to grow and win more Leinster leagues.

If you are interested in joining, just ask me for the details and I’d love to see more people on our school get involved in Chess!

The famous Irish gymnast Kieran Behan! Picture from gymnasticsireland.com!

Hi, I’m Archie in 6th Class and I do gymnastics. It is very fun if that is the thing you like doing. It challenges you to stay fit, flexible and focused!

The stretches are hard depending on how flexible you are. Personally, I find them hard. You do all training exercises as you do in most sports. Gymnastics is very good for parkour, as they are basically the same thing.

I joined gymnastics to improve my parkour skills and become better at it. I do gymnastics up in Ballyogan. The name of the gym is Trojan. There are about eight people in my group, it is an all boys group.

I’d really recommend Gymnastics. It’s a fantastic way to make friends and stay fit!

5th class recently took part in the Bord Gáis Energy Student Theatre Awards. The challenge was to write a short play on the theme of Friendship. It was a great opportunity to write in a new format.

LukeO’B wrote a short play about making friends in difficult situations. His play is set in a homeless shelter and his two characters are boys, aged 10 years old. His actors were Andy and Leon.

Andy wrote a short play about making friends on your first day in a new school. His characters are Peter and Paul, and it’s Paul’s first day. His actors were AaronJ and Robert.

Well done boys! Keep an eye out over the next few weeks for more of our short plays!

This Wednesday, we kick off a series on helping your child with homework. Our series is going to give you a number of simple tips to help you to help your child with all aspects of their homework. We want to know what works for you and what you’d like advice on. We’d love to hear from you! To get us started, we brainstormed our best homework tips at a staff meeting earlier this week. We hope this post will be edited regularly, as we get more and more tips and advice!

Here’s the structure of our mini-series:

• Week 1 (today): General tips and links
• Week 2: How to help your child with his/her learning homework
• Week 3: How to help your child with reading homework
• Week 4: How to help your older child with study skills

Today, we’re covering general tips for helping with homework!

• Agree on a set time for homework with your child. Among other tips, Schooldays.ie suggest that you allow your child some element of choice, i.e. that your child may start and finish when they want to, providing it falls between 3pm and 5pm. (more…)

Wow! We have great blogging and twitter friends. One of our favourite friends (called Summer Buzz) has flown onto our blog with a message for all of you.

Some of the students wanted to share what they are reading with Summer Buzz! Here are the names of the books that some of 2nd Class are reading at home.

1. Dean D is reading a book all about Mojang and the discovery of Minecraft!

2. Dean T is reading Doctor Seuss on the Loose!

3. Codie is reading Five Kids and It!

4. Kayden is reading a non-fiction book about dinosaurs.

5. Casey is reading Pinocchio.

6. Abbi is reading Diary of a Wimpy Kid ‘Dog Days’.

7. Ryan is reading Silly Cow!

8. Dylan M is reading Oliver Twist.

We are hoping that we will have even more updates on our reading for you soon! We hope that Buzz is proud of our reading at home.

For the last number of weeks, Ms Brennan and Ms Sexton have been organising an after-school club to prepare for the Creative Schools. We’re working on a collection of stop-motion animations to show the greatest moments of invention and discoveries. It’s called the ‘A-ha Moments Project’ and we can’t wait to show you all of our hard work.

So far, we’ve chosen our moments of discovery, storyboarded our animation, written the scripts and started to build with clay. Next, we need to film!

Here’s a sneak peek at some of our work so far, courtesy of Patryk from 6th class.
 

Keep an eye out on the blog for updates!

As you all know, 2nd Class have been lucky enough to have dancing every Wednesday this year.

They have loved taking part and they are really grateful to their lovely teacher Sue! Dancing is great fun and helps us to keep fit! We love doing it for PE.

Just for some fun, we decided to learn a little bit about Riverdance, the famous dance from the Eurovision. It was cool to look at the video and imagine what it is like to dance in front of loads of people all over the world. The music is excellent and was written by a man called Bill Whelan.

Would you like to see us give it a goal at assembly? Have a look here!

IMG 7921 from St Peter’s, Bray on Vimeo.