My name is Mr McKenna and I teach P4/5. I am also very fortunate to have Mrs Karen McLaren and Miss Catherine Campbell as  classroom assistants.

In Literacy, we will be working on lots of different genres of writing, although we will mainly be focussing on Instructional, Report and Recount texts this year, having looked at Persuasive, Narrative and Explanation in depth last year. Within our writing, we will also be focussing on handwriting, punctuation & grammar. We will be kept very busy with our spelling programme (Sounds Write) and we are excited to complete the different activities within it. We will look at a variety of narrative and non-narrative texts and read a variety of fiction and non fiction books by lots of different authors, such as Roald Dahl and Julia Donaldson. We will also participate in the Accelerated Reading Programme.

In Numeracy, we will be learning lots about Processes in Maths, Number, Handling Data, Measures and Shape and Space. We will have opportunities to use ICT in Numeracy, including the use of laptops and iPads to access a range of Numeracy Apps, including Mathletics.

In World Around Us this year, we will be concentrating on three main areas. The first topic we will be studying from September until Christmas will be the topic of Eco-Warriors. We will complete lots of cross curricular activities that will incorporate Art, ICT, Literacy, Maths and PDMU, while learning about how we can look after the wider world, as well as our own local environment. We will also be looking at some of the effects of global warming and why it is so important we all contribute to making the world a more eco-efficient, sustainable environment.

In our second topic titled 'Where Our Food Comes From' we will gain an understanding of where some of our favourite food comes from, how it gets to us and we will research some food that is produced in Ireland as well as locally. We may even attempt to grow some of our own food!

Finally, our third topic will be titled 'Transport', where we will be exploring the different modes of transport from horse and cart,to tractors, planes, trains and automobiles, such as the DeLorean and Teslas!

For religion, we follow the Grow in Love scheme of work and of course P4 will make their First Confession and First Holy Communion. For PDMU, we will be following the Living and Learning Together scheme and we will aim to do PE every Tuesday and Friday. 

We are always very proud of all the work that goes on in our class - so please keep an eye on this page or on Seesaw to see what we are getting up to!

Finally, if you have any queries, wish to meet with me in person or discuss any concerns, please contact the school office and I will do my utmost to respond to you as soon as possible. Alternatively, you may wish to email me or send a message via Seesaw and again I will try my best to respond to you as soon as possible. My email address is gmckenna707@c2kni.net  

Here's to a great year ahead!