What is Bloomsday?
Bloomsday is a celebration that takes place both in Dublin and around the world.
Bloomsday celebrates the day depicted in James Joyce’s novel Ulysses. The day is named after Leopold Bloom, the central character in Ulysses. James Joyce’s masterpiece Ulysses was published 100 years ago in 1922. It was set in Dublin on 16th June 1904.
With 2022 marking the centenary of James Joyce’s Ulysses, our boys had fun marking the day in their own way!
On world book day, Cian in Rang V, recites by heart a letter from Abraham Lincoln to a mother who lost five sons in the Civil War.
World Book Day began with our older boys starting to do ‘Paired Reading’ again with our younger boys now that restrictions have been lifted. There was excitement in the air as boys travelled to classrooms they had never been to before. Paired reading will continue once a week for the rest of the school year. We have found that this has given our boys a love of reading and sharing stories. Our older boys read with their younger peers and discuss the book cover design, the illustrations, the author and they ask predictive questions. This activity gives the boys a purpose for reading and the boys both young and old, enjoy it immensely.
4th class wrote a great rap to celebrate the day below:
Our boys made book marks to celebrate the day, and we had Drop Everything And Read (DEAR) time in most classes. Some even got to read out in the garden as the sun shone – what a pleasurable experience!
Our infants had book club and book swop, and an interactive puppet show was provided by one of our very talented infants to his class.
Nick Sharrat visited via zoom and talked about his illustrations in so many books. Many classes dressed up as their favourite character from a book and that fun endeavour continued to the end of the week.
The boys completed a target breaking amount of AR quizzes on line and could be found in every nook and cranny of the school with head down in deep thought in a laptop.
All in all a great day in St Joseph’s BNS.
Our school was feeling the LOVE today – lots of quizzes and word searches on the history of St Valentine and flowers of all descriptions were carried into and out of school today. Beautiful cards and crafty bundles of love wrapped up with glue, paper, wool and clay were carried home carefully to loved ones. The boys in 3rd class gave a secret Valentine card to a class mate with a well chosen compliment for the receiver. A day of enhanced wellbeing for all.
A month on, we remember Ms. Ashling Murphy, her heart broken family, her pupils in Durrow National School and her colleagues and friends. The boys in Mr O’Flynn’s class recite a lovely poem as a tribute to Ms Murphy.
World Book Day 2021 fell on March 4th – celebrating everything to do with literature and reading. We had a fun day in school encouraging love of reading and dressing up as our favourite characters at home and at school,
English lesson: Reading and Writing – all you need is a good book
and a Twinkl book review sheet – it is that easy!
English and Art & Crafts: All you need are some pegs, glue, varnish, patience
and a Twinkl project sheet to record how you did it!
Well done to our 5th and 6th class boys who were awarded merit certificates for their entries into the Book of Kells Creative Writing Awards in Trinity College Dublin recently. A special congratulations goes to Conor who came 1st in the Primary School Section which had competition entrants from all over the world.
Next week, Oct 14th to 18th, we have the Scholastic bookfair visiting the school hall. You can check the books available by clicking here. Many of the books are in the Accelerated Reading book system which all classes from 1st to 6th follow. Boys may visit with their parents from 0830 to 0850 every morning. Classes will also be timetabled to visit the fair with their teachers during the week. Boys should consult the catalogue in advance and bring no more than €10 to school. Our thanks to Bean Uí Loinsigh who has organised this and to Pauleen McTague whose help has been indispensable.
Ms. Bleahene’s Rang a 6 were lucky to visit the new Microsoft campus in Leopardstown this week. As part of the visit they had to predict what the world would be like in 2050. You can read their submissions and an account of the visit here.
