Hello everyone
I am writing this blog post in response to the question box I put up last night on my Instagram page about the end of year act tasks and to do list for 6th class so I’m going to list them below now. It’s a very busy time of year for 6th class teachers and I had forgotten that because it’s been a while since I’ve had sixth class.
- The first thing I’ve been working on are the end of year school reports I’ve 34 in my class and I’ve only eight reports left to do but I’m going to try to finish those by the end of this week so that’s one thing to have out of the way. I know we have to do the standardised tests but I don’t base my reports comments off those anyway because I’ve had the children since September and if I don’t know what to say in their reports by April then there’s something wrong!
- Next were the education passports. https://ncca.ie/en/primary/reporting-and-transfer/education-passport/ . I sent these home for homework last week and have them all back now.
- Another task was to book the school tour. We are going to Clara Lara on the 6th of June, that’s booked and the bus is booked. We are also very lucky because we are going to Flynn Park as well which is very close by. I am planning one if not two more trips into town because we are doing lots of local history at the moment and I just feel like the best way to really make that come alive is to go and see the sights. We’re so lucky to be within distance of Dublin where you can go into these museums and go on these trips because it makes learning a lot more fun for everyone and my classes are really good, there is a lot of them but it’s very doable to bring them places so why not!
- The next thing was to order the hoodies. We ordered those already so they should be with us in a couple of weeks!
- Yearbooks: We are going with Lettertec for this. This is one of the bigger tasks because it’s quite time consuming to gather all the photos from junior infants up to 6th then all the photos etc from this year and then all the children’s writing as well. It has to stick to a certain word count so I started that yesterday with the class.
- Another job is the end of year video. I’m very lucky because a colleague has very kindly offered to help me out with it so I just need to gather all the photos, videos and pick nice music and my colleague is going to put it together with his software so I’m really grateful for that -any bit helps at this time of year!
I teach in an Educate Together school so it’s not a graduation mass. It’s my first year doing graduation in this school but the teachers who had sixth last year sent me a very helpful e-mail in September with a clear outline of what the graduation includes, what it entails, what’s involved and that was really helpful for me to get my head around it. We just have the speeches, we call them up one by one and give them their yearbooks and their certificate and then we sing songs , the principal says a few words and there’s tea and sandwiches and what not for parents. Once you get all the tasks done beforehand , such as the photo story and yearbooks etc then the graduation is more or less planned you just have to do your speech and prepare the songs. We’ll start practicing our songs in May. I do love a good graduation they always make me very emotional! In my last school we did certificates like class joker, best at keepy-uppys, most likely to make you laugh and those kind of individual certificates so I might do those as well.
Here is a link to a post on the graduation I did nearly eight years ago in my last school!https://www.muinteoirvalerie.com/16251-2/