St. Peter's Primary Bray Blog

  We’re absolutely delighted to say that our blog (specifically our work on our podcasts) has been selected as a a finalist in the international EduBlogs Awards. You can find the link to the list of finalists here. The Edublog Awards reward people who contribute to life online with their education posts, tweets and podcasts. Last year one of our favourite Irish sites won it outright! We would really love it if you would vote for us. We are against some incredible podcasts and sites and it would be a fabulous achievement to get to the final voting selection. Voting is open until 11:59pm... 

Big news this week on the blog! Our first post of this week and our most recent deal with the same exciting story… And that’s before we discuss the Mini-Scientist Showcase and Hallelujah Choir Concert! We’d better get started… The headlines from this week are: Last Sunday, we posted our nominations for the EduBlog awards and we were delighted to receive nominations from ‘If only the best birds sang’, anseo.net and Seomra Ranga. We were delighted to find out on Friday that we’ve been shortlisted for the voting stages for the awards. We’d be extremely... 

Over the past few weeks, St Peter’s has been a hive of activity preparing for our Mini-Scientist Showcase. You can see all of our previous posts about preparing for it here! We were delighted to welcome two judges from Intel to the school – Sarah and Emily. We’ve had plenty of interaction with them over the past few months, by email and on Twitter so it was lovely to put faces to names! All of the staff remarked on how much time and attention that the judges gave to each project. It was an amazing opportunity for the students to present their work and to answer questions about... 

On Thursday night, Singing Club showed off all their hard work from the first term at the Hallelujah Choir Concert in CityWest Hotel. 24 boys and girls travelled on a bus for an afternoon of rehearsals and practice. The concert kicked off at 8pm and we were delighted to see plenty of familiar faces in the audience! The St Peter’s group were the life and soul of the party – even starting dance moves in the crowd. Special guests at the concert included Seo Linn, who during the Summer teamed up with Lurgan for their take on ‘Wake Me Up’, Connie Talbot and Tabby Callaghan. We... 

On Thursday, we’d a visit from Hugh and Ian from Wicklow Mountain National Park. Each class got to choose a topic to learn about. 5th class chose to learn about Irish mammals. We learned a lot and we got to hold stuffed animals and skulls. We also listened to recordings of wildlife sounds. We really enjoyed the visit and put together a podcast of facts about Irish mammals. Andy interviewed the class for this podcast. Thanks to Hugh and Ian for such an interesting talk! [soundcloud url=”https://api.soundcloud.com/tracks/123359968″ params=”color=ff6600&auto_play=false&show_artwork=true”... 

2nd Class were delighted to welcome Baby Tristan on his first visit to St Peter’s. He was a brilliant teacher and we learned so much. We are looking forward to the next few months getting to know our great teacher. Thanks Tristan and Gwen!  

Between preparations for the Mini-Scientist showcase (photos to follow) and Hallelujah Choir, not to mention our Christmas play, this week’s post is a little bit late! This week is a tutorial on how to use Animoto! We discovered Animoto last June as a way to display our photos. The Animoto that made the most impact was the one on our Open Day. Animoto can be used as a way for your child to present a project. It’s also a lovely way to display photos as a slideshow. It can be shared online by email or social media. Today we’ve a step-by-step way to set up an Animoto project. We... 

2nd Class have done so well with their reading this term. They have read three books, all written by Roald Dahl! They have read The Magic Finger, The Giraffe, the Pelly and Me and Esio Trot. Why not listen to our latest podcast about Esio Trot? We also think back and chat about all of the books! [soundcloud url=”https://api.soundcloud.com/tracks/123014045″ params=”color=ff6600&auto_play=false&show_artwork=true” width=”100%” height=”166″ iframe=”true” /]    

As you may know already, we’ve close links with South Dublin Library Service! You can read our post on Leon’s review for them here. We asked our friend @SummerBuzz if she had any good suggestions for books to make Polly feel more at home (especially because Polly was reading the ‘Frozen Planet’ book on Kia’s chair when we came in this morning). Summer Buzz’s cousin, Winter Buzz, left us a Voki with a suggestion! Thanks Summer Buzz and Winter Buzz! It’s so cool that we can interact with different groups, organisations and even bees through all our technology... 

This year the #eddies13 (EduBlog Awards) are 10 years old. The awards reward educators, students, teachers and educational communities who reach out to inform, include and inspire others. We were absolutely delighted when three of our favourite blogs, www.anseo.net, www.seomraranga.com and www.merrybeau.edublogs.org nominated us for our blogging and podcasting work, and we only felt it appropriate that we give back by nominating those sites that have helped us in the past 11 months on our blogging road. We hope that it reflects the help and guidance we have received from those below, and please...