Happy St Patrick's Day!

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St Patrick

Jr & Sr Infants: Tree Tours

We went outside with Ms Dunne, Mr Fahey and Mary. We learnt new words about trees.

 roots

  trunk

 branch

  twig

 

nest 

 We heard the birds.

  We saw worms.

  We saw worms in the compost.

  The compost was stinky!

  We saw a robin on a branch.

Sr Infants:Spring

Bear and the Sr Infant girls went on a hunt for signs of spring. Look how well they are reading and writing!

Bear with his trowel.

Old Friends

Look who came to visit from last year's sixth class! Gavin, Corey, Justin and Seán were enjoying an afternoon off from St Joseph's as the current 6th class were doing their entrance exams. I was delighted to see them so happy and obviously thriving in secondary school. Thanks for calling in boys!

Time to say goodbye....

Firstly, we don’t want to say goodbye! We feel very comfortable here and we have learnt alot. Regina asked us to write a little piece about our experiences in St Catherine’s. We hope you enjoy reading it.

The thing that has impressed us the most is the great behaviour in this school. The children know exactly what they are supposed to do. They are rewarded for good behaviour (like maith tu tickets) and they understand the clear consequences for not behaving well. It is wonderful to see how kind the children are to each other, especially on yard. When someone is upset, sad or hurt others come to help them and try to make them smile or bring them to the teacher. If they crash into each other by accident they immediately go to the teacher and tell them. This is really different to our experience in Spanish schools, children don’t really talk to the teachers unless it is something really big or serious. If someone tells anything to a teacher he might be called a tell-tale.

It is great on yard that everyone freezes when the bell rings and everyone knows that they have to walk to line and wait there patiently until their teacher collects them.

What also taught us alot was the way the children are taught in groups or ‘stations’ in the classes. This means that the children here have very good social skills and know how to work together and different abilities can get different work. This is brilliant compared to Spain where they children are not used to working in groups. Even in university we find it hard to work in groups.

Another thing that really is wonderful is that the children from all different nationalities are friends. Groups of friends are made of different nationalities, you don’t see all the same language speakers sticking together.

The teachers have been very kind to us. They have observed us and taught us alot about teaching and about English. It has been very rewarding to teach the children here. They always asked us when we were coming back to their classes, they made us feel very welcome in the school.

We want to say thanks to all the 44 children who came to Spanish club. We are so proud of them and what they learnt. It made us happy when they called ‘ Hola, Seňoritas’ to us in the corridor.

So, goodbye everyone and thank you! We will follow you on the blogs!

From Lucía and Begoňa