Happy Christmas

This is an image of our class Christmas card.

Happy Christmas to all our visitors around the world from 5th class Scoil Eoin

History of Santa Claus

We learned from our eTwinning partners that Christmas is celebrated in many different ways around the world.

Enjoy this fun video on the history of Santa Claus

Christmas Greeting using Scratch

We used Scratch to make some some cards for our eTwinning partners. We used seven versions of Happy Christmas (French, Spanish, Greek, Finnish, Euskera, Irish and English) in the card so that all the participants in our project could read it in their own language.



Controls: Press the Spacebar for a surprise. Use the Up and the Down arrows to move the moon up and down. Use the Left and the Right arrows to move the snowman. Click on the two snowmen or the moon for a surprise. Press the O key to reset everything. Card was made by Sannad



Card was made by Elisee. Click on the green flag to watch the animation and the red button on the top right to end.



Click the green card to start.

Press the o key for a surprize. This card was made by Alex

eTwinning

In our class we are doing an eTwinning project. eTwinning is when other schools in the EU communicate with you using Twin Space on a special website for projects. First we agreed to participate in a project called Thick as Thieves. The title means that we are very,very friendly with each other. There are five school participating in our project. They are from the following places Bilbao Spain, Tanus France, Limnos Greece and a school in Helsinki Finland.

It's great fun to be able to communicate with other people in a different country. For the project our class is divided into four groups and each group is working with a different country, but we can still get to communicate with other people in the other schools. Sometimes we go to the computer room to reply to our friends in a different country. I'm working with the school in France Tanus. I've got messages from Emily, Rania and Demmie. We are even able to log in to it at home. It's really good I'm looking forward to talking to them after Christmas.

We made Christmas card to send to our eTwinning friends. The collage will give you an idea of some of the cards that we sent.

posted by Joyce

Fís movie winner

This movie won an award for Outstanding Achievement in film-making for history, at the 2013 FÍS Film Festival.Their film "School Days Over" gives us a glimpse of life in rural Ireland in the early part of the twentieth century.

Well done to the teachers and pupils of St. Colman's NS, Ballymote, Co. Sligo

Team Hope

During the last two weeks the Student Council has been collecting shoe boxes for Team Hope. The Student Council asked everyone in the school to bring in items such as something to WOW, to wear, to wash and to write with in a shoe box. We got many shoe boxes in the last two weeks. We had a notice outside Ms. Bradshaw's room and everyday we wrote up how many shoe boxes we had collected.


Everyone in the school took part which made us get lots of shoe boxes. All together we got 86 shoe boxes. We stacked all the shoe boxes in the hall, the we called the classes to come take a picture with the shoe boxes. The representative from Team Hope was really happy when she saw all the shoe boxes that we had collected. The representative gave the school a certificate thanking our school. posted by Joyce and Ryan

Hour of Code

This week 5 million students in 33,000 classrooms across 167 countries are trying out and Hour of Code as part of Computer Science Education Week. The Hour of Code is an opportunity for every student to try computer science for one hour. It will provide an opportunity for you to learn how to create the technology of the future rather than just use it.This knowledge is needed to prepare students for the 21st century, regardless of their ultimate field of study or occupation.
 

Write your first computer program

Learn the basic concepts of Computer Science with drag and drop programming. This is a game-like, self-directed tutorial starring video lectures by Bill gates, Mark Zukerberg, Angry Birds and Plants vs. Zombies. Click Hour of Code to begin.

Tornado in a Bottle

On Tuesday we tried to make a tornado in a bottle with Ms Whelan.I did not know what logic she was going to use for our experiment. She said she might not get it right on the first time but she looked confident so I trusted her. She was ready and she put her hand on the top of the bottle and she turned it over and shook it around and poured it into a jug. You could see the tornado in the middle of the top of the bottle and it looked amazing.
So that was a success and we tried it again and that was also a success but the third time we had a little problem when she was pouring it in the bottle slipped out of the jug and it went all aver the place and it was a good thing we had the cloth so we got to do that again and we got it on target this time.
 It was a great success and now I am going to tell you how to do it. First you get a bottle of water, a jug, and a cloth just in case you spill it. Then you get the top and twist the bottle round, then you get the top of the bottle and put it in the palm of your hand, next you shake it around for a couple of seconds and finally you pour it into the jug and look at the top of the bottle near to the spout. If you're lucky you can see your mini tornado in a bottle.

 By Craig

eTwinning Movie

Have a look at this wonderful movie produced by a primary school from the Greek island of Naxos. It was voted the most liked video in a recent eTwinning movie competition run by the eTwinning community

American Indians

When   Columbus  found  America  he thought it was India  because the Spanish didn't  know about America and Columbus wanted to go to India .He called the native people Indians. Later he realised that he had found a new country. He went back to Spain and told King Ferdinand and Queen Isabelle.
Later many of the white emigrant that came to America built railway lines across the country and killed most of the buffalo. The native American people couldn't survive without the buffalo and  had to go and live in reservations.

Then the native Americans started a war to get their land back the war was deadly many died it was horrible . There were loads of Americans so the English transported more over and they had more advanced weaponry but still the Americans won they went down to Canada. The Spanish started running out of food so they asked the Americans to help by the next couple of months they could hunt as well as the Americans Then the Americans started getting sick they realised that the Europeans had brought sickness and many died they only stopped when they found a cure.

posted by Jonathan

New York is a very big city. It has many tourist attractions Central Park, Empire state building and the Statue of Liberty. The population of New York is 8,337,000 (8.3 million) people in 2013. New York is divided into five boroughs Manhattan, Queens, The Bronx, Staten Island and Brooklyn. The Statue of Liberty was given as a present by the people of France to the Americans. It weighs as much as 115 cars and is 30 storeys high. Lady Liberty is not in New York it is on an island out side of New York. The Statue of Liberty was made of copper but the colour changed to green by the atmosphere.

posted by Killian

Halloween Podcast

In our podcast we share some of the interesting topics that we are working on in our class. We recorded our second podcast just before Halloween. Listen for our fun song Disco Oiche Shamhna a song in the Irish language about a Halloween disco at the end.
Well done Karl. You did a wonderful job as presenter of the podcast and thanks to Jonathan for organising the items.

Who has the Greenest Fingers?

Which group has the greenest fingers? That was what we set out to find five weeks ago when we started a mini garden contest.

First we got three plastic containers and filled them with compost. Next we gently sprinkled the seed on top of the compost.  We watered the seed every two to three days. Over the weeks the seedlings grew bigger and bigger and changed into a variety of salad leaves green, red, frilly and curly.

In order to decide which group had the greenest fingers we harvested the salad leaves and weighed them. Group 2 had 22 grams and were the winners. We then ate some of the leaves. Some were soft and delicious but others were very peppery.

 This is the prize winning lettuce.

If you have ever planted anything why don’t you leave a comment? We would love to hear from you.


Posted by Sophie

Journey of the Spoon-billed Sandpiper

This charming animated video is the work 500 children from 8 countries Russia, Republic of Korea, Japan, China, Vietnam, Thailand, Myanmar and Bangladesh. These countries lie on the migration route of the Spoon-billed Sandpiper one of the world's most critically endangered birds.
The birds face many threats mostly manmade on its migratory journey from the Far East of Russia to South-East Asia.It gives us a brief glimpse of school life in classrooms along the route.

Katie the Caterpillar and the Parasitic Wasp

                                                   
Katie the caterpillar was the best caterpillar in the jar. She was the funniest because she escaped.Then my teacher put Katie back into the jar but she got right back out again.
One morning Katie was resting on a twig in the jar. Tiny larvae from the parasitic wasp came out of her body. We could see them moving. It was horrible.
I was very sad. She was like a child to me she was the best caterpillar ever. I loved that caterpillar the day I met it. But when I found out that the larvae of the parasitic wasp ate her I was very sad.


Post written by Katie



Listen to Katie recounting the sad tale of the caterpillar that she was taking care of in our classroom.

  If you have the courage watch the National Geographic video below.The Parasitic wasp has injected eggs into the caterpillar. Now they are ready to hatch. Be warned that this is a gory, gruesome story.

Metamorphosis from Caterpillar to Butterfly

The word metamorphosis comes from the Latin words for changing shape and in this movie you will get the opportunity to see three  stages in the life cycle of the the butterfly. First the caterpillar, next the chrysalis and finally a beautiful butterfly emerges.

These are the caterpillar of the Cabbage White butterfly. They are great eating machines and have been living on the underside of the cabbage leaves in our school garden.
The larger ones look ready to pupate but you will have to read Katie's post to find out their fate.

The Peacock butterfly lays her eggs on the underside of a stinging nettle.When the caterpillars emerge they are highly conspicuous. In order to protect themselves from predators they cover themselves in a type of web.  If you look carefully at this picture you will see tiny caterpillars feeding inside a type of web. When they have eaten all the nettle inside the web they move on to another part of the nettle.

These caterpillars are much larger, are jet black in colour and their bodies are covered in tiny spikes. They moult several times as they outgrow their skins. On the right of the picture you can see the remains of their protective web.

Bull Island is about one kilometre as the crow flies from our school. I was fascinated to find that a butterfly conservationist counted 298 Marsh Fritillary butterflies there one morning last June.

Click here to see some of the beautiful pictures that he took of the Marsh Fritillary. Be sure to scroll down to the bottom of the page so that you can see a mass of butterfly eggs on the underside of a leaf.

Exploring Local History

Last Tuesday Fifth class pupils from Scoil Eoin went on an  exploring local history trip around our local area of Kilbarrack. We walked around out area and we were accompanied by Sophie's mon.                       
First we walked to Howth road to see a milestone. The milestone was a road signpost from the 19th century. This one was  made out of a single granite stone and a cast iron metal plate containing the information was embedded in it. 

P.O.refers to the Post Office in the center of the city of Dublin and in the early 19th century Howth was an important port and the mail station for Dublin. At that time the ferry boat brought the mail from Holyhead in Wales to Howth.

We walked one  mile further down the road where we saw another milestone. If you examine this one carefully you will notice a mark similar to a bird's foot chiseled on the base of the milestone.This is a benchmark and was put there by the Ordnance Survey when they made maps of Ireland in the 19th Century. We checked up an Ordnance Survey map and discovered that  our area is only  23 feet ( 7 meters ) above sea level at low tide.

In the early part of the 19th century Howth became the mail station for Dublin. Thomas Telford a Scottish engineer who was involved in designing the London to Holyhead road was contracted to improve the road from the GPO to Howth.
Thomas Telford was a famous engineer and completed numerous projects during his lifetime including the road from  London to Holyhead in Wales. Milestones on the road are similar to the one near our school.  Click here  if you would like to see one.

This plaque  erected in 2007 on the Dublin road to Howth commemorates the 250th anniversary of his birth.

After that we went to Fox's Lane and examined a thatched cottage.
The walls are very thick, the windows are very small and the thatched roof is thatched made from  reeds.The walls are painted white.
This type of house was common in many parts of Ireland in the 19th century.

Later on we walked on the sea wall watched some Oyster catchers  on the mudflats.  Soon after we saw some crazy looking spiders.

Sophie's mum was fortunate to get a picture of a Red Admiral butterfly feeding on the Buddlia bush.

Finally we got to the old cemetery. St. Bearach set up a monastery there in the 6^th century. St. Bearach moved to Kilbarrack because it was a peaceful place and it had streams which provided him with fresh water. He got shellfish, mussels, winkles, cockles, crabs and mackerel from the sea.
Kilbarrack is named after St.  Brearach. Kilbarrack means the church of Bearach.




Work prepared by Killian.

The Mariners' Church in Kilbarrack

There has been a church on the seafront at Kilbarrack since the 6th  century when a holy man named Berach set up a monastery there. It’s from this man that the place got its name. Kilbarrack means the Church of Berach. At the time the site was on sand dunes and one can imagine that the monks were able to enjoy the abundant supply of fish and shellfish that were available close by. Fresh water was also available locally.

If you take a good look over the sea wall at low tide you may be able to spot the place where these streams now enter the sea.

In the 14^th century the mariners and fishermen of the area built a church to St. Mary Star of the Sea in Kilbarrack. According to tradition the church was built on this spot near a sand bank for the assistance of ship wrecked mariners. The sailors came here to offer prayers for their friend lost at sea.

Well done Jonathan for a great drawing of the church ruin.

Sam Maguire Visits Scoil Eoin

On Tuesday Johnny Cooper a player from the All-Ireland winning  football team brought the Sam Maguire trophy to Scoil Eoin. It was really cool. All of the school was decorated with flags, bunting, pictures of the team and much more.

A few minutes before Johnny Cooper came to the school we assembled in the school hall. As soon as he walked in everybody started cheer for him.

After we stopped cheering he introduced himself and then said “You had to work really hard in school to be what you want.” He also told use to pay attention in school and be the best at what you are good at. He said that Dublin had to work very hard and that they were very lucky to win.





The Scoil Eoin GAA team got their picture taken with their trophy that they won last term. After that each class got a picture with him and the Sam Maguire. One of our teachers Mr. Breathnach got us all autographs of the players on the back of a picture pf Stephen Cluxton holding the Sam Maguire over his head. The we all went back to our class but we were still talking about it.

Posted by Jessica

Our First Podcast

The word podcasting is a combination of ipod and broadcasting. It’s a World Wide Web form of broadcasting allowing anyone with a computer to download and listed to content.

Podcasting is a new way of communicating with others and the pupils are very excited by it. Podcasting gives them a lot of confidence when speaking and listening and also enables them to develop interviewing techniques.

We used Audacity to create and edit our podcast and then uploaded our finished mp3 file to SoundCloud.

We hope to make podcasting a regular feature on our blog. Come back in two weeks time when we hope to have another podcast informing the world of some of the interesting things that we are working on in our class.

ClassDojo

ClassDojo is an engaging and attractive method of tracking student behaviour and learning skills during the day. It’s an online method with children being awarded points when they respond positively to the rules we've drawn up. Negative behaviours are also recorded. However those children making an effort to modify their behaviour can have them reduced. Each child is represented on screen by an avatar and they can see their points being awarded in real time. It is an excellent reminder to them of how to behave in the classroom and assists them in taking responsibility for their behaviour.

 I have been using ClassDojo for almost two weeks now and already I can see its benefits keeping students focused on their work and helping to build positive learning habits.

 ClassDojo also has a feature that allows me to send parents behaviour and skills report every week by email. Parents wishing to avail of this feature should contact the school with this information or put their email addresses in their child’s journal.

Dublin FlightFest

Tens of thousands of spectators turned out in Dublin at the week-end to view a fly past of almost thirty planes. It was a historic event as planes representing almost every decade of Irish aviation flew as low as 800 ft over the river Liffey. The planes represented the Irish Air Corps, Irish Coast Guard, Spitfire ML407, Flying Fortress, C-130 Hercules, Hawker Hunter. Commercial airlines were represented by Aer lingus, Cityjet, Ryanair, British Airways, Ethiad  and FlyBe.The highlight of the day was the flypast of the British Airways new double-decker superjumbo the Airbus A380

Spectators were amused at the special message from Ryanair painted on the undercarriage of their plane.

Papier-mâché Owls

The inspiration for this project was an article and set of instructions in a recent issue of Burda Craft magazine. In the accompanying photos the finished owls looked awesome and I immediately thought that my students would love to recreate them. However the article gave no indication of the mammoth task. Now that we've finished we're delighted with the finished product and think that it was worth the effort.

If you are interested in trying this project you may be interested in the following suggestions.

• Blowing the balloon up half way will give you a more manageable owl.
• We found that making the legs, attaching them to the bird and then getting the owl to stand were the most challenging parts of the project.
• The top of the legs is similar to a paper clip and is inserted into an empty space. It is essential to reinforce that bottom of the bird to make it strong enough to support the legs.

Many thanks to Adrienne for her time and patience assisting with this project and to Bill for recycling old coat hangers into amazing legs.

Inspired by Matisse

     

Woman in A Purple Coat by the French artist Henri Matisse was used as inspiration for these pictures.
The original is  a complex painting full of decorative patterns and abstract designs.  It demands a high level of concentration to reproduce.

Fingal Schools League 2013 Final

Some of the team members.

On Tuesday the 11^th of June Scoil Eoin Junior Boys’ Gaelic team reached the final of the Fingal League in Parnell Park. St Vincent’s were the opposing team. Two students from our class were on the team.

There was great excitement around Scoil Eoin. Some classes made buntings and they were hanging up in the link corridors. Some of the children had their faces painted. The parents made plaited wristbands in the team colours. We had  three buses one for the team and two for the fans who was coming to cheer the team on.

Before the match we were all waiting on the steps beside the pitch. We were feeling a bit nervous because all our supporters were cheering and we didn’t want to let them down.

Ten minutes into the match Scoil Eoin went ahead with a point but St.Vincents came straight back and scored a point back. Then Scoil Eoin scored two more  points but St.Vincents came straight back and got two points back. At half time it was St.Vincents 0-03 and Scoil Eoin 0-03. When the second half started Scoil Eoin started to play better football. Ten minutes into the second half Scoil Eoin scored 2 goals and 3 points and then St.Vincents scored a point back but it wasn’t enough to win.

The final score was St.Vincents 0-04 Scoil Eoin 2-06.

We were very excited that we had won and we ran over to our supporters in the stand and skidded before them. It was the first ever time the Junior Boys GAA team has ever won the Junior Fingal Schools League.

The 1913 Lockout

Graffiti Art commemorating the 1913 lockout Memorial Garden Marino College  Dublin

This year is the centenary of the 1913 Lockout. A hundred years ago  Dublin was a very poor city and many people lived in tenements. Many families shared the same tenement building and these were very run down. Jobs were scarce and most people lived on tea and bread. One quarter of the children that were born around that time in Dublin died before their first birthday. 

The graffiti shows the lock being broken but poverty and hunger drove the workers back to work without benefiting from the strike

James Larkin  was a union leader who came over from Liverpool.In 1913 he encouraged the people to go on strike in order to get an increase in their wages.The employers locked the workers out. 
What started as a strike ended up with thousands of workers going without pay for many months.This meant that a lot of people suffered starvation  because there was no money. Ships brought food from England to help the strikers.
The people suffered great hardship and in 1914 many of the people who were locked out returned to work even though they didn't get any more money

There is a statue of James Larkin in O'Connell Street. When the strikers returned to work he left Ireland and went to live in the USA.

How to Make a Scoop

I recycled an old plastic milk container and made a scoop to lift the compost out of the bag.Watch my movie to learn how to do it.

FAI Junior Cup Final

Kilbarrack United have reached the FAI Junior Cup final. They will be playing against Sheriff YC in the Aviva Stadium on Sunday next June 2^nd. Some of the team members from Kilbarrack United came to the school to tell us about the Junior Cup Final. They were accompanied by the men from Aviva board.

We all went out to the yard to see them. First came a marching band and they were followed by members of the team. They brought the FAI Junior Cup with them. I held it and it was very heavy. They had workers walking around with flags and Kilbarrack United crests.

Then their special guest arrived it was Ray Houghton. He played for Ireland and he scored a famous goal against England in Stuttgard 1988 in Euro 88. Everybody in the school got his autograph. At the end of the day all of the school including me wished them luck for the Fai Junior Cup. It was a fantastic day and I enjoyed it.

Gonggi a Game from South Korea

On Thursday Miyoung taught us how to play Gonggi an ancient Korean children’s game. It is played with five grape-sized pebbles. Gonggi can be played alone or with other people. When you play Gonggi, you throw a pebble up in the air, and then you pick up another pebble and catch the pebble that’s in the air. In Gonggi there are five levels. Inside the pebbles are tiny balls of led. We dropped one and all the tiny balls of led fell on the floor. We played it for about 20 minutes and really enjoyed ourselves.

A Glimpse of South Korea

Miyoung's portrait by Jennifer O'Hara Doyle

This is Miyoung a teacher from South Korea who has been working with our class all week. She taught a lesson on South Korea and showed us many interesting pictures of life in her country.We enjoyed comparing our lives with the life  in her country almost nine thousand kilometers  miles away.

Korean pictures by Miyoung

I was interested to hear about the ancient observatory at Chumsungdae. The tower is cylindrical in shape and was built in 600 A.D. It  is the oldest surviving observatory in East Asia.

I was intrigued by this roof that is made of wood. These roofs are usually found on temples or on the homes of wealthy people.

We were fascinated to hear that Miyoung has a pet hedgehog at home. In Ireland hedgehogs are wild animals and don't usually live in captivity. Miyoung assured us that this is a genetically modified hedgehog. He looks cute and tiny and is ten months old.

Images of South Korea

Microsoft Education Summit

I’m attending the Microsoft Education Summit in the Aviva Stadium Dublin. What a fabulous location for the summit.

 Pupils from Clontuskert National School gave a marvellous presentation on their use of digital technologies. Their Ringfort Project was a winner at the Eircom Junior Spiders in March.They also demonstrated some new pieces of software that I hope to introduce to my pupils in the next few weeks.

 Click Clontuskert Blog to read more about their projects.
 Today you were amused when you saw a picture of the first Smart phone in an old text book. How technology has advanced since you were born!

Now view Microsoft's Vision for 2019 to get a glimpse of their vision for the future.





 Some of the products depicted are already a reality. Look out for the coffee cup with the drink’s temperature displayed.

 I couldn't resist taking a few minutes off to view the fabulous stadium.

Aviva stadium Dublin 

Can you see the light shining at the exit for injured players. I think that this is a machine for irrigating the pitch.

The irrigation machine is resting.