News from Yr 4/5/6

The cloak of St Brigid is a prominent story of the school's patron saint. It is said that the  story goes like this.

 Brigid was a nun. She spent her days praying to God. She looked after poor people and cared for the sick. Brigid dreamed of building a church. She had neither land nor money to buy any land. However, she came up with an idea. Brigid and her friends went to visit the King. She told him of her plan and he laughed at Brigid. The King showed Brigid all of his land. 'I would not even give you a blade of this grass,' said the King. Brigid was very sad. That night, she prayed to God to make the King a kind man. The next day, Brigid went back to visit the King again. Will you give me as much land as my cloak can cover?' she asked. Again, the King laughed at Brigid. “You can have whatever land your cloak can cover but it will be of no use to you,' he said. Brigid put her cloak on the ground. Suddenly, the cloak began to grow and grow. ‘Stop! Stop now!' exclaimed the King. He couldn't believe what was happening. Before long, the cloak had covered enough land to build the church. The King fell to the ground. He vowed to help Brigid in any way he could from that day on. He wanted to help the poor and sick especially. This is why on St Brigid’s feast day we celebrate the story of Saint Brigid and her cloak. 

In 4/5/6 to commemorate this story we made our own cloaks that represent what we thought the cloak might have looked like.

As part of our Inquiry unit, the students in 5/6 are preparing for a big journey, a journey of epic proportion. We are journeying to the Red Planet! These are a few of the many questions we had when being introduced to the Inquiry unit of Journey to the Red Planet. What is the Red Planet? Is there water on the Red Planet? Can we grow things on this planet and how can we possibly have sustainable life on another planet other than earth? 

During this unit we are learning about how to live sustainably on another planet and if some or any of the strategies can be translated back to earth and make this planet more environmentally friendly. 

 In the first two weeks of term, we have been coming up with questions and started our deep dive into exploring and discovering how we can begin to answer the questions we are posing.

As part of 'Bounceback' our Social and Emotional program, we had a talk about needing help. The students all pretended to have injuries that could be fixed by one or many band aids. The students in a circle all explained their injuries. The only band aid that was placed was on every student's elbow. Is this fair? Everyone got one band aid. The students then said it is fair but we all have different injuries making it unfair. 

Through discussion we came to the conclusion that all students need help at some point in the year and some students need more help or band aids than others. It doesn’t make it any less fair or make another student any less important. Everyone has different needs and these needs make us all unique. We then reflected and every student drew a portrait of themselves with positive things that make us all unique written around our self portrait.

This reinforced the point that everyone is different and unique in their own way and it is what makes each of us a valuable person in our classroom.

Kind Regards

Mr Jack Cirillo

SLC Classroom Teacher