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Just before mid term break we wrote 'Our News' for the very first time in our copies. Here we are busy at work:  The Cell Explorers team from NUI Galway's Biochemistry section visited Fifth Class yesterday. We got to act as scientists, work with laboratory equipment and techniques and understand how to extract DNA from a banana. We also had the chance to build our own DNA double helix. There were fun and informative presentations and the team of demonstrators was on hand to help us in our investigations. We did a quiz at the end to check our understanding and we received certificates of achievement for our cell exploration. Thank You very much to Muriel Grenon, PhD and to her students who have inspired us to be Scientists!  Yesterday the Nuig Cell Explorers came to our class. They are a group of biologists from the college who came to teach us about DNA and cells. We had great fun with them! They gave us lab coats and then showed us a presentation on DNA. We learned that there are 1,000,000,000 cells in the human body and that each cell contains a strand of DNA. DNA is like the 'brain' of the cell, telling the cell what to do. Each group had demonstrators who were very helpful. We were shown how to extract DNA from a banana. We had to squash up a banana in a plastic bag and then add saline. To get rid of fat from the banana we added soap. Next we added an alcohol called ethanol. Bananas don't like ethanol so when we poured the solution into a tube, bubbles appeared. This was the bananas DNA. We then scooped out the DNA and put it safely into small test tubes that we placed in a bag and brought home to show our families and friends. After the experiment we watched another presentation and discovered that a strand of DNA is 1.8 meters tall but 32,000 times thinner than a strand of human hair! We learned that DNA has a backbone and without it the strand would fall apart. We were then instructed to build a strand of DNA in pairs. The pieces that make up DNA are sugars, phosphates and bases. The bases are called C,G,T and A. T and A attach and C and G attach. The sugars and phosphates are then added and the final product looks like a spiral staircase. It was all very interesting and we had so much fun! By Tom, Kate and Aenghus.
Our 5th and 6th class students have been taking part in the Mathletes Challenge 2014. The children have been working on improving their maths in their own time at home and have been doing fantastically so far. The challenge involves children using the Khan Academy website to practice and master a variety of Maths skills.
So far we are in 2nd place overall in the country for primary schools. We are also very proud of our 3 fifth class students Kyra, Natalja and Marcus who are all in the top 10 in the country for fifth class and also Stephen C who is in the top 10 for sixth class. We will have to keep working hard to keep ourselves up the leaderboard. We decided to treat ourselves to chocolate muffins. Watch carefully and you will see exactly how to make great chocolate cakes! You will see some of our story on the whiteboard. We didn't keep everything for ourselves! We hope you liked the cards and wreaths we made for you. We love to share with each other. Look, we brought treats for all our friends. Thank you parents for your help. Thank you friends from Second Class for coming to sing to us. Happy Valentine's Day to all of you too. Senior and junior infants learned all about sequencing. We had great fun telling the stories and putting all the pictures in the right order Senior and Junior infants made lovely cookies for St. Valentines Day. Then we iced them. They looked yummy!!!! We made special gift boxes with a little surprise inside! Happy Valentine's Day everyone! An Haka Gaelach Uillinn dheas, uillinn chlé,
Bualadh bos, bualadh bos. Gualainn dheas, gualainn chlé, Bualadh bos, bualadh bos. Lámha ar na glúine. Cromaigí, cromaigí. Lámha in airde. Éirigí! Éirigí! Síos ar na glúine. Lámha sna cluasa. Bualadh bos, bualadh bos. Léimigí suas …… Sea !!!!!  In Fifth class, room 13, we have been investigating Length in our Maths lessons. We have used trundle wheels, measuring tapes, rulers, and metre stick to measure various items in our classroom environment. We have had answers in mm, cm and m. We particularly enjoyed measuring the perimeter of our courtyard. We put on our scientists hats today in Junior Infants to investigate whether moving air can make things move. We got lots of different shaped objects to test out. First we predicted whether the object would move when we blew air on it through our straw. We found out that we could move lighter things like counters and lollipop sticks but couldn't move heavier things like blocks. After midterm we are going to make kites and see if we can get them to fly on a windy day. In 3rd class we recently did some lovely baking/cooking with Ms McNicholas. We first made vegetable soup. It was very tasty - some people even asked for more! We then baked a pineapple upside-down cake and some buns. There were none left by the time we were finished!! YUMMY!! We have been busy working on our 'American History' projects since Christmas! We chose a particular person or event in American history to discuss and presented our finished projects to the entire class. Everyone did a great job! We have also been writing narrative stories in English. They are on display in the classroom and everyone is welcome to have a read! In art we have been working on symmetrical Chinese Dragons, Pointillism, Paul Klee inspired drawings and Lighthouse Silhouettes.  As mentioned in our earlier post we have been working on the the topic of the Normans and have completed projects using technology. Enjoy reading all about the Normans! 
 In Fifth Class we were recently very pleased to award our fellow classmate Sahil Gupta with a special achievement award for the quality of his English writing. Sahil wrote a summary of our class novel "The Summer of Lily and Esme" by John Quinn. The summary was not only a great way of revising all of the main topics and themes that arose during our reading of the novel, but also the quality of the language used by Sahil showed great insight into the novel and transported us into another world, as if we were reading a shorter version of the novel by the great author himself. Sahil aspires to be a writer one day, and we have no doubt that he will succeed in anything that he sets his mind to! We are very proud of him :-)
 In Fifth class we have been studying the Normans, their origins, their invasion of Ireland and their legacy. We have researched, completed and presented projects on this topic, either electronically or on paper. We have constructed castles in Art classes, incorporating as many features of the Norman Castles as we could. We have further explored the theme of the Normans through literacy, with the story of "Strongbow" by Morgan Llewellyn striking a great chord with us, especially learning about his first conquest in battle at the tender age of 15. We have used Hotseating and Conscience Alley techniques in Drama to further our understanding, appreciation and enjoyment of the topic. We have loved exploring this topic, and we hope that you enjoy looking through our work!  Reading is so important as it develops our imagination and vocabulary. This past week we were discussing some of our favourite authors and names like Roald Dahl, Robert Muchamore, Jeff Kinney, Jacqueline Wilson and J.K Rowling came up. We chose our personal favourite and created a small project on them. Take a look...
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