Newsletter
March 24th, 2023
Senior Céilí on the yard.
The sun shone on Wednesday morning while the children learned The Siege of Ennis.
Good afternoon parents / guardians,
Friday again and what a fast week it has been.
Our week started with an incidental visit on Monday from our Department of Education inspector. I am delighted to report that it went very well. Our cigire was most impressed with the quality of our planning, our teaching and, of course, our children.
We have another busy week next week next week.
We are planting an orchard, thanks Clodagh!
Our Senior Girls and Senior Boys are taking part in a soccer blitz in Irishtown.
Our 6th class children are going to Huntstown for another choir practice for our National Children’s Choir performance.
Hurling, soccer and rowing will continue as normal.
Friday marks the end of this busy week. School will finish at 12pm for all children.
Finally, a massive thank you our our PGSA who organised a fabulous evening in The Bernard Shaw last night. What a fun evening it was!
Mind you, I didn’t think we would need to be experts in such niche areas as chocolate and horn instruments!
Thanks Maria, Laurence and Bryan for the questions.
Wool
Ciara’s crochet club has now got 35 members from both 6th classes. We have already used all the wool that has been kindly donated. If you have any more wool, can you please bring it in. The children love having this opportunity to learn a new skill and showcase their creativity.
Say Yes to Languages
Earlier this year Minister for Education Norma Foley TD has announced the extension of the primary languages sampler module for a this year and invited primary schools to apply to participate. We applied and have just completed our module. The language we selected was Irish Sign Language. We were lucky enough to have an experienced teacher, Cathal Duffy to teach this module to both our 6th classes.
The outline of what 6th class did was more or less familiarising the students with the Irish Sign Language hand alphabet and teaching them to fingerspell words.
Over the 8 weeks they learned about many aspects of Deaf culture and Community, the different levels of hearing loss, types of aids, the experience for Deaf kids in Deaf schools and mainstream schools and the various challenges generally faced by Deaf people. In terms of the actual language the Say Yes to Languages Programme provided them with a Language Passport which helped them explore languages around them and record their own personal experience of the process of learning any language and in particular ISL in this case. They learned some basic sign language skills around several topics such as “My family” My hobbies” “colours”, “food”, favourite things, likes and dislikes, and overall they were introduced to the visual aspects of ISL. They clearly enjoyed exploring the physical and non-verbal ways of communicating in what is Ireland’s third officially recognised language, after Irish and English.
Thank you, Cathal.
This is Art
Some of our 6th class children participated in This is Art, a series on RTE. Delighted to report our students will be appearing on Thursday 30th March (Episode 3) and Thursday 20th April (Episode Six) at 5.00pm on RTÉ2.
Anna’s third class had a very productive and fun morning on Wednesday planning and mapping out the orchard with Clodagh Emoe. Using the maps provided by Grangegorman the children made sure to avoid the underground utilities ( water tanks, water pipes etc.) leaving enough space for the tree roots to expand.
A reminder that we are looking for parent volunteers to help pre – dig the orchard on Monday morning. Please meet in the school playground after drop off at 8.30 and bring along a shovel or fork if possible.
Attention parents and guardians of children in senior classes.
Finally, I don’t want to sound like I am preaching. I had a conversation with Wesley this week and we discussed the impact of screen use among our senior children in school. I know it is not my job to police screen use at home. However, Wesley has penned a few observations that I think will remind us how vigilant we need to be around internet and screen use at home.
Some of the children have been talking about topics that seem age inappropriate or beyond their capacity to understand. It appears some children have been accessing sites like TikTok where they are exposed to ‘influencers’ who seem to speak about topics and concepts like mental health, body-image, and sexuality. I have noticed the way some children speak to and about each other is sometimes taking on an unkind tone and they’re using language they don’t understand and terms and phrases that, I would imagine, could come only from social media. While it is of course fantastic to hear from a variety of perspectives in order to cultivate tolerance, understanding, resilience and positive practices, it’s important that this is done with an awareness of where the children are at developmentally and their capacity to discern what’s what.
As we all know, often sources of information and online operators are not what they claim to be and have nefarious reasons for their words and actions. I would strongly urge you not to provide your children with open and unsupervised access to the internet. I understand the various arguments for internet access and social media, from connectivity and education to entertainment. However, in my experience as a teacher, the use of smartphones and access to internet among children of our classes age has grown exponentially since the covid lockdowns and the impact has been a net negative. Unfortunately, it is extremely difficult to be vigilant all the time, the internet and screens are ubiquitous in our society. The reality is that it can expose children to inappropriate material and toxic ideas about relationships, self-image, and personal behaviour. I think it’s important that we allow the children to fully enjoy their childhood unincumbered by existential concerns even we adults struggle to comprehend and navigate.
Thanks Wesley.
Lots to think about there.
On a final note, some adult has collected their child at 1.10pm using a Dublin bike.
It is still outside on the yard.
We will store it safely in reception if no one picks it up before the school closes this evening.
Have a nice weekend,
Fionnuala