last day of school in ireland!

Today we did maths, Spanish, Art, worked on BT presentations, had my farewell and also watched most of the movie "Twister". It is crazy that we can just show it and dont have to send home permissions due to language and whatnot. Does make it a lot easier not having to worry about those things but..... in the states cursing in school is way more looked down upon... as some of the students pointed out to me, you wouldnt be irish if you didnt curse every once in awhile. Interesting to say the least.

I hope to post more later but need to head to bed to be able to wake for my flight home tomorrow morning.

The snowflakes in the window are the ones I taught the kiddos to do and the rest of the pictures are of their lighthouse projects.

Last Week

I hope to get pictures up soon of the snow flake project that I did with the kids for art the other day. I found a more complex way of making snowflakes to give them more of a challenge. When I started in on the lesson with them I ask them if anyone could tell me how snowflakes formed and did a little science background with them. As I walked them through the steps and the diagram I drew on the board I was a little worried that it was too complicated for them. However, they proved me wrong and their snowflakes look fabulous!


Their lighthouses for young scientist look amazing as well, I will try to take some pictures to put up here to show you guys. They are wiring them at the moment.

The students are also working on a presentation in their junior achievement groups. They got invited to the BT headquarters in Ireland to present their findings on the environment and renewable energy to staff there. I am sad that I wouldn't get to see it!

Don't forget you can always see what we are up to on the school site. Click here to see some pictures from our science projects over the past few weeks

Field trip update

1. The dad that came in who works for Electric Ireland put on a fantastic presentation about energy, electricity, and numbers for the students... he didn't get to finish it all but will be coming back in some other time to finish it up.

2. the musical- it was great to see so many different schools there to watch the performance. Everyone was even given a snack during intermission from the secondary school.  It was kind of hard to follow but the music was good-- can't go wrong with Queen. Although, there was some swearing in the play that was not exactly school appropriate, but the kids didn't react to it so that was good.

3. We have been practicing for the carol service-- their christmas play. The students have done an excellant job in acting their roles. Quite sad I am barely going to miss their performance... It takes place Monday night, the 19th.

4. Tomorrow we are going to the ASPCA with the kids to talk about animal cruelty and the responsibilities of being a pet owner. I am quite pumped because I love animals. The kids already asked Mr. Malseed if they could adopt one of the animals as a class pet. (The response was no to that if you were wondering).

Field Trips Galore!

Even with funding cuts and a strict budgets Irish schools seem to find the ways to still give students great experiences through educational field trips. Tomorrow, one of my students father is coming in to do a workshop with the kids over Energy. He works at Electric Ireland so should be great. After that we are walking to Newpark school in Blackrock, a ways down the road, to see them perform  their musical We Will Rock You Then we will return to school and the day will be finished! On Friday we are going to DSPCA, which is an animal rescue place. The students will get a tour and learn about how they care for animals and wildlife, and the responsibilities that come with a pet. Looking at their website they have some cute residents. 

On another note, the Christmas tree is up in the classroom and we are doing a Kris Kringle gift exchange next week. Definitely wouldn't experience such a thing in public schools back home. It was funny the other day in the teacher's lounge they started talking about how in the states we have division between church and state. Most the teachers couldn't believe it and had questions about what all we could do in schools and what we couldn't in regards to religious holidays. When I told them how Wal-mart called their Christmas trees 'Holiday Trees'  they all couldn't believe it.

Interesting News in Education

 So an article has come out in the UK about calculator use in primary schools. They are close to banning them in primary schools since they have dropped in PIMMS (?) rankings in maths.  I agree that more students are struggling with math due to over relying on the calculator. I even think that I fell into some of that reliance on the technology. It will be interesting to see if it actually is implemented in the schools and what the results will be.

click this to read an article about it

Still getting the hang of it....

Above are pictures of my classroom.. I will try to get some pictures up of some of the projects we have been working on.. in the window sill you can see pringle cans on boards with chickent wire.. this was at the start of our light house project for young scientist.


It has been quite the overall switch from my time at Merrill to here. I have learned quite a lot in this new setting as well. One thing that is difficult to work around is that the students have homework limits so that they only get a certain amount of time's worth of work so that "parents don't complain", and Friday they don't assign any homework at all. Some of the things I want them to complete at home they can't due to the amount of time they need for other hw in Irish, history, or whatever it is that I myself didn't assign. So some of my stuff gets pushed to the side, I have been trying to make my lessons have time for them to work on things that I normally would have assigned as homework. What this all makes me think of is the old debate of whether hw is important enough to have still a part of school.  I definitely think homework has its place in schools as long as it is meaningful to the students and within reason. But what it further makes me reflect on is the question of am I asking too much of the students? Am I giving them too much homework?'

Friday's lessons

I continued creative writing from the previous week the students. Since they were having issues with mechanics I decided to really break it down and start from the beginning with them. I introduced the 5 step process to them and basically let them do a creative writing piece following the steps. We picked up on Friday with the proofreading/editing bit.  I wanted them to not only get in the habit of proofreading their own work but seeing the importance of it. I also wanted them to do some peer editing. I found a nice checklist that suited for both types of editing and went over it with the kids. I was kind of shocked when Mr. Malseed said they had never done peer editing before. Whoa! He seemed to like it and might perhaps use it once I leave. On Monday I plan on having them finish up editing and writing their final draft and submit that to me. I haven't decided if I want them to publish it on a nice piece of paper and then display these in the room. I think the amount of errors in the writing is going to be significantly less then what I have been finding. I am also hoping that the class goal of having perfect punctuation happens! (cross my fingers)


oh and did i mention we can't assign the students homework on Friday!!!!
-management wise: I kind of feel at a loss to what other strategies to use. I know that management has always been something for me to improve upon in but these students are really stumping me. I notice it is not just with me but the main classroom teacher as well that the students misbehave for. They are a chatty bunch. To get them back on track or to squelch any side conversations seems almost impossible some days. They get bold and will keep on talking even after I have said their name, given the warning of extra homework, and tried multiple other ways of correcting the behavior. I have tried clapping, raised voice, waiting, etc. and nothing has worked. They don't really have a time out place. If i see a student with repeated issues I usually just sit him/her out of the activity.  I think part of it is that they did not have a firm management style from the beginning so when I entered the picture not only was that a factor but they know that I am not from here so they try to take advantage of that as well.  It is a bit frustrating but I am  definitely learning things from the situation.