the ride | by Niamh

wheels zooming 
trees blurring 
waves passing by 
crashing against the breakers 
a rough and tumbling ride

Peer mediator play: Niamh, Brendan, Jamie

POETRY SLAM

On Monday we had a poetry slam. We were celebrating the fact that we've now had more than 2000 visitors to our blog, and combining this with a chance to share all the fantastic poems we've been writing lately.

Slam Poetry is a way to perform your poems for others. We also drew our inspiration from the Beat Poets, a generation of writers from the 1950s who used poetry to tell the world about their ideas. As well as some fabulous costumes,

we even had Beat-inspired food!

In the afternoon everyone had a chance to perform a poem - we'll post these performances to the blog soon...

Ireland | by Niamh

Ireland

The dusty blankets feel cosy. Old photos of guns and little girls rest on the wall. From downstairs I can hear laughing. I wonder when I can meet my aunts, uncles and cousins.

I was excited and shy at the same time. The house was creepy. The curtains shook and the wind howled.

In the morning

The sun shone through the windows. I got dressed and went downstairs. The house was quiet and I walked in to the living room. I snuggled up in my grandad’s armchair. Suddenly I heard a thumping sound. Someone was coming down the stairs. It was Thomas with a game of monopoly. He won.

I put on my jacket and went outside. It was a small garden (it wasn’t really a garden) and only the little plants made their way through the cracks in the concrete. I stayed out there until Grandma came down to make breakfast. I sat up at the table and ate my pancakes.

It was 4 weeks until we left Ireland and I wanted to make the best of it. In those 4 weeks I fed horses, met my extended family and had fun. Then it was time to go. I hugged my aunts and uncles and hugged them again. I can’t wait to meet them again.

By Niamh 

The Autumn Winds | by Niamh

The wind brushed
against my face
not as strong as yesterday,
as the day before,
just soft.
It whistles in the breeze;
it blows the leaves of the trees.

I love Autumn
and its wind.

Our multiple intelligences

Today we were thinking about the health of our BRAINS.  We looked at a whole lot of pictures of kids doing different things, and discussed what we think they might be good at.  We wrote these ideas in yellow.  As we placed the pictures on our poster, we thought about how these talents might be connected, and tried to place and group similar talents together.  Then we talked about Howard Gardner.  He has done a lot of research on how we think and has come up with a theory of multiple intelligences, describing how different people's brains work in different ways.  When we looked at his list of multiple intelligences we found that it was very similar to ours.  We stuck his words (in white) alongside our own ideas.

Howard Gardner says, "All of us have the full range of intelligences; that is what makes us human beings, cognitively speaking. No two individuals—not even identical twins—have exactly the same intellectual profile."

Our intellectual profile is a way of describing which intelligences we feel more or less confident in.

Tomorrow we're going to think more about our own intelligences.   Which do you think are your strengths?  Which do you want to develop more?