Class 3 News
Hello from class 3.
We are a Key Stage 1 class combining visual and hearing impairments along with a range of abilities. We have two teachers – Mr Dougherty on Monday’s and Tuesday’s and Mrs McClelland the rest of the week. We like to think we are the best class in the school – our teachers think so.
Soooooo, what sort of things do we do. It depends on us and our ability. Our teachers are really good at giving us individual work for numeracy and literacy, we get together as a class for the other subjects. We’re very busy, every day. We love coming to school.
We do the usual – numeracy – some of the class have learnt all about equal additions, decomposition and we’ve started times tables! Some of us are working with numbers to 10 or 20. We’ve learnt data handling and representing data on graphs, 2D and 3D shapes, time and money. We’ve been learning all about fractions too!
In Literacy, we do the same as mainstream primary – spellings, comprehension, reading, grammar, writing stories and lots more. Our teacher really focuses on reading. She says it is very important and tells all our mummy’s and daddy’s – ‘If you can’t read, you can’t do your work’. It’s true!
We get our worksheets and curriculum adapted for us. Pictures for the hearing impaired, large print for the partially sighted and tactile for braille users. We all enjoy multi-sensory activities – who wouldn’t? In fact, because our teachers cater for a variety of impairments, we are really engaged in the activities – visual, auditory or kinaesthetic.
This term we started swimming. We go to Carrickfergus pool. Some of us will improve our swimming, learn to swim or enjoy playing in the pirate ship. Whatever is appropriate to our needs.
We all love the World Around Us – yes, even our teachers! In the first term we learnt all about ‘Vikings’. That was pretty cool. We made a Viking long boat. Unfortunately, it won’t sail on Belfast Lough but we can go places in our imagination.
Last term we learnt all about Space. We went to the planetarium where we made rockets and blasted them into the sky. We found out our teachers had taught us well – we were able to tell the tour guide lots of interesting facts we learnt in school.
This term we’re deciding if we want to do Egyptians or Australia. We started Moses in RE so we are all swayed towards Egyptians. Watch this space to find out!
