Welcome To Mr McKenna's P5/6 class webpage

My name is Mr McKenna and I teach P5/6. I am also very fortunate to have Mrs Karen McLaren, Miss Catherine Campbell, Miss Niamh Monaghan and Miss Charmaine Kelly as classroom assistants.

In Literacy, we will be working on lots of different genres of writing, although we will mainly be focusing 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 focusing on handwriting, punctuation & grammar. We will be kept very busy with our spelling work (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 Accelerated Reading.

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 titled Reach for the Stars. We will complete lots of cross curricular activities that will incorporate Art, ICT, Literacy, Maths and PDMU, while learning about different aspects of space, including our solar system of planets, space exploration, famous astronauts/cosmonauts, as well as achieving our own goals by reaching for the stars. 

In our second topic titled 'Raiders of the Lost Tomb' we will be exploring the topic of Ancient Egypt, a civilisation lasting over 3,000 years, renowned for building massive pyramids as royal tombs; developing a 365-day calendar; practicing complex mummification; exploring how both men and women wore makeup, and how they worshipped over 2,000 gods. We will also explore how they invented early forms of paper, a writing system, and relied on the Nile for life.

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!