Terrible Tangram Trouble

Tangrams are an old Chinese puzzle. They involve the use of variously sized 2d shapes (squares, triangles, parallelograms) to create other shapes and designs. In the pictures below, the children had to use all their pieces to make a square. There was much head scratching and pulling out of hair! It was hard to figure it out but great fun at the same time.

A rather spooky debate...

With the Presidential Election just one day away, we ran our own in-class debate today. The motion was "School uniforms are a good idea" which was a bit ironic as most of us were dressed up in our Halloween costumes! Proposing the motion were Natalia, Emmanuel, Merveille and Emma. Opposing the motion were Siobhan, Seán,, Eve and Albert.
Even with short preparation, each team did fantastically well to prepare, structure and rehearse their arguments. They made good use of debating language and addressed their audience superbly well with good eye contact and tone of voice.
Both teams had obviously researched their viewpoints well and created a strong case. Perhaps most importantly of all, each team gave opposition members the time and respect to make their points and then they listened acutely in order to create their own counter arguments to each point.
It was really encouraging to see each pupil being able to voice their opinions and the wider class played a great role in listening to all the arguments for and against and then voting on a winner. It was truly democracy in action. Well done all!

Halloween Disco

See all ours snaps from the Halloween Disco....

Getting busy with LEGO WeDo 2.0

We had a very enjoyable time familiarising ourselves with LEGO robotics. Since it was the first time using it for many, we got a quick tutorial and then started building. First we built a basic propeller and then moved on to a simple car. After that, several groups started to make their own designs. We learned a lot such as:
 - Using tablets/laptops to connect to the LEGO hubs (via bluetooth)
 - Following the instructional steps to create our LEGO toys
 - Identifying and categorising LEGO parts
 - New vocabulary (ie naming parts) e.g. 2x4 bricks, triangular bricks, gears, axles, beams, hubs, sensors, pulleys, motors etc
 - Using the programming software to sequence the order of operations
 - How to problem solve when something didn't work (an important life skill!)

Special visitors in 5th Class

As part of our reward system for the class, the children have a chance to choose "Show and Tell" or "Show us your talent" passes.  So on Friday, we were treated to a visit from Charlie, Julia's own bearded dragon. Now luckily for us, he is not the type of dragon that burns down houses or schools! Here, he is meeting some of the pupils. Julia was able to tell us all about him, where she bought him, how she cares for him and how he eats flies among other things. We noticed there were a few nervous flies in the room on Friday.

We were then treated to some card and coin tricks by Albert, our resident magician. He drew gasps as he time and again was able to show us the card we had picked from the pack. There was also some sleight of hand as he was able to make money appear from nowhere (which is always a great trick to have in life)!

We had lots of furry creatures in the classroom at the end of Sept. Speedie the guinea pig paid us a visit and Oskar presented him with a speeding ticket to mark the occasion. Its probably for the best that the other two creatures weren't alive or we may have had some animal chaos!

Behaviour Week

For behaviour week, we had a different theme each day:

Manners Monday - revisit the importance of manners, saying please and thank you, saying hello in the corridor, holding doors for others etc.

Tuesday Chooseday -  focus on choices and importance of making good choices

Wednesday Rules - a chance to revisit classroom and school rules 

Truthful Thursday - Importance of telling the truth

Fun Friday - Fun activities that reinforce what has been learned during the week.

For an activity on rules, we played a quick game called "There should be rules!". Each group got 2 game cards and instructions. However, the rules of the game were deliberately hard to follow so the children started making their own. The lesson here was that we need rules in life for many different reasons and even when we play games, we need rules so that everybody can understand how to play fairly and have fun. After that, we played a card game called 31 which everybody enjoyed and also helped greatly with our mental addition skills. 

For honesty, we did a short activity by asking a class member to pretend he hadn't done his homework and then to start thinking up lies to tell the teacher. Every time the teacher asked a question, the pupil had to think up a new lie and we wrapped him up further in cotton wool. It just goes to show that when we tell one lie, we can end up telling more and more lies to cover the first one. We are literally "tying ourselves up in knots" as the picture shows!