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 

Don Quixote de La Mancha

Don Quixote de la Mancha is the most famous novel of the Spanish Golden age and is considered to be the work from which modern western literature originated. It was written between 1605 and 1615 by Miguel Cervantes. The central character is a nobleman, Don Quixote, who has read too many books on chivalry. He sets off on his horse accompanied on his adventures by his servant Sancho Panza. In a central scene in the book he comes across windmills in La Mancha and mistakes them for Giants. He stabs the 'giant' with his lance and gets caught up in the sails of the windmill and is spun around. Many of our most common expressions in English come from this novel including:

-Out of the frying pan and into the fire

-It all comes out in the wash

-The pot calling the kettle black

-Tilting at windmills

-The proof of the pudding is in the eating

-All that glistens is not gold

-Tell me thy company and I will tell thee who thou art

 Miguel Cervantes

As part of our Book Week activities, I asked  Lucía and Begoña to visit every class in the school and give an interactive lesson on the Spanish classic, Don Quixote by Miguel Cervantes. Begoña worked with Infants to Second class and gave an outstanding interactive session based around the scene in the book where Don Quixote mistakes 40 windmills for giants and decides to do battle with them. The children acted the scene out in a drama and produced a little book of images and vocabulary as well as producing masks.  Lucía worked  with third to sixth class and had an equally dynamic seminar telling them about the characters of Don Quixote (who represents our noble self) and Sancho Panza (who represents our lazy self).

 

Don Quixote and Sancho Panza by Pablo Picasso

Begoña's Experience

Hello everybody! I have to say that the first time that I heard that I was going to teach “Don Quixote” I felt afraid, because it is a huge book and it´s very famous! After we had chosen the story, we thought about the main objective, which was that the children would learn the story and enjoy it.

Then the first lesson arrived and I was afraid.  What if they didn´t like it? It wasn’t the first time that I was going to teach the classes, so why I was so nervous? I took a deep breath and I started to talk. Thank God it all went perfectly. The children enjoyed the story of “Don Quixote and the Windmills” and they loved the drama we did! I think that I started to learn to teach the first moment that I stood in front of a class. Now I could feel the difference between the first lesson I taught and this last one.  My confidence grew. I have to say that I was a little exhausted trying to keep going during the lesson and I’m grateful that I had the 6 lessons on different days, because I had more time to prepare different activities and to change the methodology according to the feedback I got from the children and teachers.

For me these lessons were the best experience in my life! I will use them again without a doubt.

 Lucía's Experience

When I was first told that we were going to teach something about Don Quixote, I thought I would not be able to do it! It is tough to speak for a long time in a language that it is not your mother tongue, so I had to go through a lot of preparation with the vocabulary, activities and materials. Luckily, the teachers offered us invaluable help.The six sessions in two days were exhausting, but it was completely rewarding to see that they had learnt and understood the story. I enjoyed it as much as they did! Of course all hard work was worth it!