The excursion also included a walking tour of English Street and exploring the history of the Cathedral - did you know that historical reports suggest an Earthquake in Downpatrick caused the roof of the Cathedral to cave in?! 🤯

#HandOfGodAtWork

Recently, Emily and Caolan, our amazing Digital Leaders, received training on creating animations and today they led a fantastic lesson teaching us how to code LED animations to look like dance moves and gymnastics. They were brilliant teachers, and we’re so proud to have such talented ICT ambassadors in our class! Thanks Caolan and Emily!

In groups, we dissected the language of The Jabberwocky by Lewis Carroll, discussed what the words could mean, and explored the imagery they created.

Using our imagination, we performed our verses in groups for the rest of the class—bringing this classic poem to life!

This was a very memorable and enjoyable lesson!

His enthusiasm, kindness and support made a real impact on our class, and we’ve learned so much from having him with us. It was a wonderful experience, and we’ll really miss him!

These pupils have shown great enthusiasm and responsibility, and we’re excited to see how they’ll help make our school an even better place for everyone. Well done to each of them! 

We had a fantastic time exploring the French language and culture as part of our European Day of Languages celebration!

In class, we practised using basic French conversational phrases and learned how to follow classroom commands en français. We also delved into French traditions and finished off the day by sampling some delicious French food — Bon appétit! 🥐🧀🥖

It was a brilliant way to celebrate language learning and broaden our understanding of the world around us!

We’re excited to share all the wonderful things happening in our classroom. This half-term, our current topic is ‘Natural Disasters’ — we’re exploring the different types, what causes them, and how they impact the world around us.

Throughout the year, we’ll also dive into fascinating topics like The Vikings, The Rainforest, and Ireland, using creative activities and exciting STEM projects to bring our learning to life.

In P6, we absolutely love Art and PE, and we look forward to expressing ourselves through different forms of writing and challenging ourselves with tricky numeracy problems. There’s always something new to discover, and we can’t wait to share our learning journey with you!

Today we explored the theme of "Life to the Full in Our Families" which was marked by our favourite celebration - Grandparents Day. Grandparents hold a very special place in our family and school community, helping us to live life to the full. Today we honour the vital role our grandparents play in our lives - nurturing us, supporting our talents, encouraging us, and passing on the faith from one generation to the next.

To show our love to our parents and grandparents, we made cards filled with messages of appreciation, gratitude and love for our loved ones and then we will post them to our relations.

Today the pupils enjoyed making gas-powered boats as part of their chemical sciences experiment. It was very exciting to see which group’s boat travelled the farthest and what adaptations resulted in this effect.

We were blown away by the talent of the St Colmcille's pupils and were very inspired by their performance of our class song, Song of the Kings. We were especially delighted to meet the cast at the end of the production.

The ladies delivered a very informative and interactive workshop on the importance of getting the balance right between food and fitness and how we can help our bodies to perform optimally each day. 
 

If by any chance you do see any of these animals in real life, we recommend that you run as fast and as far as you can! 

We used our time with the coaches to understand the rules of cricket and then develop our skills in fielding and batting. 

To showcase our skills, we were invited to participate in an indoor cricket festival coordinated by the Northern Ireland Cricket Union. 

We were able to bring two teams and both enjoyed their games, proving confident and motivated against some very talented teams. 

The children were brought to the Longhouse, where the Jarl greeted them and talked about Viking life.

The children then rotated around a number of practical learning opportunities, activities and demonstrations related to Viking life.

To conclude the trip, they witnessed a performance of fight techniques and battles skills, demonstrated by the warriors before partaking in a Viking battle drill, taking on the real Vikings in a shield wall battle formation.

On our class page you will find out about the new and exciting things we have been getting up to!

Our current topic is ‘The Vikings.’ This half-term we will be learning all about what happened during the Viking era; who the Vikings were, where they came from, places they raided and settled in, how and where they lived, how they battled including battle wall formations and much more!

During the school year we will also study Natural Disasters, the Rainforest and Ireland.

We are very excited to learn all about the World Around Us!

Although the sun was hiding, it was a dry, warm morning and we had lots of fun. We began with the parade from the clubhouse to the field and then we watched the Sprint heats and finals before breaking into our groups for the remainder of activities.

Enjoy a look at some of our photographs from the day... Also thank you Conor F for being our wonderful photographer!

We have been revising how to gather data, collate it and then present it using an appropriate format, and today we focused on 'Number of Coloured Cars on Edward Street during a 15 Minute Period'. In pairs, we monitored the cars that passed us on the road and recorded our data using our clipboards before choosing which type of graph we should use to present it. 

We are very fortunate to have the opportunity to participate in the Tools for Solidarity Education for Sustainable Development programme. This programme aims to create awareness about poverty, global injustice and environmental issues, encouraging us to be more conscious of our actions, as well as helping us to develop and challenge our abilities to be critical thinkers. 

We will be looking at the issues of inequality, poverty, natural resources and reducing waste and fairtrade.   

Today we were introduced to screenless coding by using the indi robots. With indi’s onboard colour sensor, the children communicate instructions to indi by placing coloured tiles on the floor that tell it what to do and where to go (and how fast!). 

To facilitate a fully independent, pupil led investigation, we moved all the tables and chairs and cleared all accessible floor space to provide limitless opportunities for computational thinking. 

We worked out how each coloured square controls indi and then we used our problem-solving skills to plot various routes and patterns for the robot to follow.

We didn't realise angels are everywhere! Therefore, we decided to identify angles around us, investigate which types of angles are most common and where we can find them. 

We learned that the United Nations General Assembly unanimously declared 2 April as World Autism Awareness Day to "highlight the need to help improve the quality of life of those with autism so people can lead full and meaningful lives as an integral part of society." We learned about inclusion and how to be more kind and inclusive in our everyday lives, both in and out of the classroom and we discussed Autism Spectrum Disorder (ASD). 

To celebrate as a school we had a colour party and our colour in P6SS was green. We all dressed in green and brought in green coloured snacks to enjoy. 

In P6SS, we are proud to be different and proud of each other. 

We have researched the vegetation, climatic conditions and animals that make up each layer, and now we are putting our knowledge into practise to bring the rainforest to our classroom. 

Stay tuned for updates about our finished masterpieces!

The Sphero programmable robots helped us to learn fundamental STEM concepts through play-based learning and group challenges. We had great fun familiarising ourselves with the Sphero app as we developed our spatial awareness and teamwork skills, while linking in with our Numeracy topic Time, to see who could record the fastest times moving the Sphero's around the obstacle courses. 

We had a lovely time welcoming Ellie into our class each week and we look forward to implementing all of the useful strategies she taught us. 

Following on from this, we revisited our debate to reflect on how our thoughts on certain topics can change over time. Unfortunately for Michael's parents, things didn't exactly work out as planned therefore we explored their new thoughts through a hot-seating style interview.

We learned about the life and work of St Brigid before taking a step back in time to discover how St Brigid's crosses are woven with reeds.

We carefully followed a step-by-step tutorial and were able to make beautiful crosses to take home and bless our homes.

This challenge required us to work in groups to design and build solutions to structural problems using a combination of science, technology, engineering and maths skills.  This was a fair test and each group was given 40 cocktail sticks and 20 marshmallows and the aim was to build the tallest structure that could withstand shaking and remain intact for the longest period of time. I think it is fair to say that we have some of the finest engineers, designers and architects of the future in our class.

We have been learning about areas in the world where earthquakes happen, and how civilians manage their unpredictable lives by preparing an 'emergency kit' to have on standby should disaster strike!

The boys and girls raided their cupboards at home to gather all the essential items they would need to build an 'earthquake emergency kit' and then they presented their work to their classmates. 

Our Christmas Challenge was to raise enough points to earn a pyjama day, during which we could watch a film and enjoy hot chocolate / tea, biscuits and goodies.

Needless to say the children surpassed all expectations and smashed their target and enjoyed a very well-earned reward. 

It was an intense competition and more than 250,000 times tables questions were answers during the tournament. Although holding 1st position for much of the competition, we concluded in 3rd place, following very closely behind P6CM and P7AV. 

Credit to our class who worked tirelessly to the end, determined to do P6SS proud. 

The children sang a range of Christmas carols and then Niall told jokes, Caragh played the piano and performed a jig, Chloe did some dancing and Amy played her violin. How lucky and proud is Miss Sweeney to have such a talented bunch of children. 

It was a truly heartwarming morning shared with members of our community and the children made wonderful memories to treasure for a lifetime.