Welcome to Senior 4!
In our class this year are Ahmed, Georgi, Golden, Jimi, Marc, Patrick and Tino.
Laura, Bernie, Josie and Teresa are the staff.
We are all looking forward to an exciting year ahead filled with learning and fun.
International Children's Book Day
Children's book day is celebrated on April 2nd and this is a good opportunity to start reading at home. The pupils in Senior 4 love story time and 'Room on the Broom' by Julia Donaldson is a class favourite. Below is a YouTube link to watch and enjoy. Happy reading!
P.E. with Joe
Joe Wicks, The Body Coach, is currently going live with a P.E. class every weekday morning at 9am for 30 minutes on his YouTube channel. Why not let Joe takeover your sitting room and inspire our pupils to get active and have fun.
RTÉ Home School Hub
Every weekday from 11am to 12 noon on RTÉ2, RTÉ Player, and rte.ie/learn, pupils will be able to watch, download and engage with curriculum-based content, project work, and fun activities that will keep them entertained and learning. The TV programme will keep the pupils watching and learning for the hour and then redirect them to fun content and project work that will be housed on rte.ie/learn and RTÉ Player.
Junior Cycle - Personal Care - Independence Skills
Below are a list of practical skills pupils can be doing every day at home. This will benefit the development of pupils independence at home, start a routine as well as helping make home life a bit easier during the school closure.
| Things to do every day |
Keeping A Diary
Last week, emails were sent to parents including worksheets and activities to keep pupils busy during the school closure. In the email, a diary was mentioned to keep pupils communicating about their days at home, what activities did they do, who did they talk to or play with. It is a good idea for pupils to keep a diary as they can choose what to put into it and can talk and express to parents or brother and sisters about what is in their diary. It will also be a great source of communication for the pupils when we go back to school so staff can talk to pupils about their time at home. Below are two types of diaries, a school week (Monday to Friday) and a full week (Monday to Sunday), if parents wish to use the templates. Pupils can write sentences or words or draw pictures of what they did on that day.
| Diary - 5 days |
| Diary - 7 days |
Easter Art Ideas
Below are some Easter Art ideas that you can try at home. You can colour, decorate and make Easter Baskets for an Easter Egg hunt at home. There are a lot of different patterns of Easter Eggs in the second link that the children can colour, decorate and glue on with any art items you have, cut out and put up on windows or doors at home.
| Easter Baskets |
| Easter Eggs |
Music & Dance
During the year, we performed for the whole school at Assembly Time. We played the drums and sang to 'I Just Can't Wait To Be King' from the Lion King. We also danced and sang to 'Singing In The Rain'. Why not start your day at home by singing, playing music and dancing to these songs. Senior 4 pupils loved performing these at Assembly and I'm sure they will love to perform at home too. You can scroll down on this page and watch the two videos of our pupils in action during both Assembly performances.
Operation Transformation
Every morning we begin our school day at Assembly. We love to keep active and partake in Operation Transformation. We know all the moves and it is a great start to our day.
Communication & Literacy & Numeracy Resources for 'At Home Learning'
Below are a number of useful links for pupils to use at home on a computer, laptop, tablet or iPad. These resources are fun and interactive and the majority of games and activities can be completed independently by pupils.
Working from home during the School Closure
Unfortunately, due to Covid 19, all schools will remain closed until April 19th. Our class page will be updated regularly with resources and activities to keep pupils busy during the school closure. Regular emails will be sent out to parents with individualised work for pupils, so please keep an eye on them. To ensure our Personal Care element of the Junior Cycle is continuing to be met, please find two very important pictures below to help pupils understand how to cough/sneeze appropriately and wash hands properly. Don't forget, when washing hands, to sing 'Happy Birthday' twice.
Junior Entrepreneur Programme
Before our school closed, pupils in Senior 4 were very busy collecting data through surveys and displaying this data on bar charts. We decided, as entrepreneurs, to design re-usable bottles to sell to staff and pupils in St Joseph's. 100 bottles were ordered and delivered this week. They look incredible and we are very proud of our hard work and dedication throughout this project. We can't wait to get back to school to sell the bottles and make our school more environmentally friendly going forward.
Relaxing time in the new 'Chill Zone' in school
Enjoying listening to a small concert by the Whistleblast Quartet.
Our last music lesson with Cormac for a while. We had lots of fun developing rhythm on the bodhráns.
Bus Outing for a nice treat in the Clybaun Hotel
Completed Spice Racks in Woodwork
Spring clean in the garden!
As part of the Junior Cycle course, pupils are involved in Horticulture Activities. We prepared our garden beds for sewing seeds with different tools and made sure to remove and stones too.
Fun with Magnets!
We were shown lots of cool experiments with magnets by David recently. The pupils learned about the positive and negative sides of magnets and investigated with different objects to see if they would attach to magnets.
Principal's Award Winner
Congratulations to Tino receiving the Principal's Award from Sarah for great dancing during Operation Transformation in the mornings :)
Pancake Tuesday - 25th February 2020 :)
Swimming Award Winners
Visual Art - Marbling and Sensory Painting
GAP House :)
Independent Cooking - Fruit Salad and French Toast
Doctor's Visit to St Joseph's
Fionnuala, Rachel, Fiona and Catherine, four amazing student doctors, visited our school recently. They showed the pupils what equipment is used during a doctor's exam, found out what was wrong with the pupil's teddies and wrapped their sore bones in bandages. It was a great experience for all of our pupils who sometimes find the doctor's a daunting time and now can understand that there is nothing to be scared about.
Playground Fun!
Making Shelves in Woodwork
Independent Cooking!
Award winners!!
Georgi and Ahmed received the Principal's Award from Sarah for helping prepare dinners for the whole school. As well as this, Georgi and Ahmed received Super Swimmer awards for continuously improving during their swimming lessons in Leisureland. Patrick received an award for being very brave at a recent hospital visit.
Bus Outing to Pet World in Terryland!
Making bird feeders, filling with bird food and hanging them around the school
Our Prize Winner Georgi!
Georgi received his prizes at assembly for his winning entry to the Galway City Council's Environmental Calendar for 2020.
Bus outing to GAP House
Testing out our new playground equipment!
'Singing in the rain'
On our first week back we performed a dance and song called 'Singing in the rain' at assembly in front of the whole school. The Senior 4 pupils were excellent participating throughout the week, we are very proud of of everyone!
First cookery lesson of the New Year!
After all of the nice treats we had over the Christmas Holidays, we decided to make some healthy vegetable soup and brown bread in cookery this week. The pupils washed, peeled and cut the vegetables for the soup and weighed out the ingredients for the brown bread before mixing and placing it into a bread tin. Everybody enjoyed it and it really warmed us up before we went out onto the cold yard for lunch time.
Santa's visit to the school!
Santa's annual Christmas visit to the school went down a treat again with all of the pupils so excited to see the Big Man. We are very lucky that Santa visits our school and would like to give a huge thanks to the Lions Club for their continued generosity and support for St Joseph's. We are all feeling the Christmas spirit now after Santa's visit!
Christmas Dinner Day in St Joseph's!
We had an amazing day for our Christmas Dinner in school. The pupils enjoyed delicious food prepared by our super staff. Huge thanks to everybody involved! We raised money for Crumlin Children's Hospital on the day by wearing our Christmas Jumpers.
Art Competition Winner!
Congratulations to Georgi for having a winning entry in the Galway City Council's Calendar for 2020. Georgi designed a poster about the environment and is featured in the month of August in the calendar. Everyone is very proud of our winner Georgi!
Trip to the Eye Cinema to watch Frozen 2!
Christmas Time in Senior 4!
Getting into the festive spirit at the Christmas Markets in Eyre Square!
Senior 4 pupils busy engaging in the Junior Cycle
Junior Entrepreneur Programme 2020!
This year Senior 4 are taking part in the Junior Entrepreneur Programme (JEP). We will be developing our strengths and talents over the next number of weeks to come up with a business idea. We will also be working together as a team on our new project. We are all looking forward to seeing what the JEP has to offer.
Fruit Salad and Smoothies in cookery!
Preparing our garden in time for sowing early next year!
Warm Chicken Salad, YUMMY!!
We continued our healthy eating buzz this week in cookery by making a warm chicken salad using lettuce, cucumber, tomatoes and sweetcorn. We are learning about the different food groups and why it is important to have a balanced diet.
The O'Duffy Cup visits St Joseph's!
The victorious Galway captain Sarah Dervan and her team mate Niamh Horan visited our school with the O'Duffy Cup. The Galway team won the All Ireland Camogie Final, beating Cork in September. We were all thrilled to meet the girls and get our hands on and lift a very heavy cup!
Christmas Shoebox Appeal!
We were very happy to take part in the Team Hope Shoebox Appeal this year. We learned we have the power to make a difference to people less advantaged than us. We also learned about the wider world and the differences between our lives and others.
Healthy Eating in Senior 4!
As part of our Junior Cycle, we have been learning all about developing healthy food habits.This week in cookery we made some butternut squash soup with lots of healthy vegetables like celery, onions and carrots.
Happy Halloween from all in Senior 4 :)
We enjoyed a great last day in school before the Mid Term break. We went to The Haunted Hall where Senior 2 had lots of games set up for us to play. We then enjoyed a little party in our classroom to celebrate our Halloween holidays.
Dangan House Garden Centre & Garden Tea Rooms
We visited a local employment close to our school as part of the Junior Cycle. We learned about what you can buy in the Dangan Garden Centre and found out other information about it. We also enjoyed a little treat in the Garden Tea Rooms for a job well done on gathering information on the Garden Centre.
Finished Woodwork Projects!
Independent Cooking!
The pupils in Senior 4 were busy making their own lunch on our half day. They enjoyed toasted cheese and ham sandwiches, beans on toast, tea and hot chocolate with marshmallows. Everybody put in a great effort to make their lunch by themselves!
Halloween Art
Social Outing to the Galway Shopping Centre
We took a trip on the bus to the Galway Shopping Centre to see the different employment opportunities available and discuss the different shops and what they have to offer.
Development of skills in PE
This week in PE with Karen, we practiced developing our hand and eye coordination by trying to knock down skittles by throwing and kicking balls at them. We had lots of fun and everyone enjoyed getting involved.
Petersburg Visit to the school!
Some of our pupils were very fortunate last year to go on a trip to Petersburg with other young adults where they learned how to make a raft and participated in some excellent team building activities. Everybody gathered in the school hall to watch videos and pictures of the trip and received a certificate and t-shirt for completing the day. We would like to thank everyone involved in this amazing, rewarding day and hope it continues for many years to come.
Safety Week
This week in school marked Safety Week (7th - 11th October). We learned all about fire drills in school and how to cross the road safely.
Soup Season is here!
With the cold weather fast approaching, we decided to warm ourselves in cookery this week by making some leek and potato soup. The leeks we sourced from our school garden that we planted last year.
Treats on a Tuesday!
We went to the Nox Hotel on our bus outing and enjoyed some lovely hot chocolate. As part of the Junior Cycle, Living in the Community and Preparing for Work are important elements of the programme, it is great to have the opportunity to go out into the community and treat ourselves at the same time.
Working hard on the Junior Cycle
Birthday Celebrations!
We celebrated Jimi's birthday in our class. We had a great time with lots of yummy cake, sweets and danced to some music.
World Cup Fever hits St Joseph's!
We entertained pupils from other classes in the school today as we watched Ireland take on Russia in the Rugby World Cup today. Everyone was delighted with the treats made by Senior 4 and even happier when Ireland won!!
Fun in PE!
We had lots of fun practicing with ribbons in PE this week with Karen. Karen showed us different moves with the ribbon, like the figure of 8 and the snake, which we enjoyed trying out with the music.
OH I JUST CAN'T WAIT TO BE KING!
Our first assembly in front of the whole school went down a treat. We showed everybody our musical and artistic talents through our rhythm, singing and art work.
Rugby Blitz in Corinthians
Ahmed, Georgi, Jimi, Marc and Patrick went to a tag rugby blitz on Thursday with other pupils from the school. The blitz took place in the Corinthians grounds and everyone really enjoyed themselves. Not even the weather could dampen their spirits!
Trips out on the bus so far
Bus Outings - helping us to develop skills in the Junior Cylce like Numeracy, Communication and Literacy, Preparing for Work and Living in the Community, as well as having fun in the process!
Music & PE
We have been learning all about tag rugby in PE with Karen the last few weeks in preparation for a schools blitz in Corinthians. We also love to explore new sounds from different instruments in Music with Cormac every week.
Cooking up a storm in Senior 4!
We have been very busy in the kitchen since starting back into the new school year. We have made beautiful gluten free scones and buns, apple crumble and stewed apple with custard. We even picked the apples in the orchard for it. We made our own dough for pizza and choose our own toppings. It certainly went down a treat!
