Newsletter 15.5.17
Newsletter
15th May 2017
Dear parents, carers, staff and friends,
News from last week
On Tuesday, we were delighted to host an after-school activity for families with Julianne, our ‘Reader in Residence’ from Dublin City Libraries. The group of Senior Infants and their parents met together to share stories and complete activities about what they read.
On Thursday, 5th Class visited the Hugh Lane Art Gallery on Parnell Square as part of their learning in art.
The Local Education Committee launched a leaflet for families outlining all of the after-school clubs and activities for children in the area on Friday. Look out for a copy which will come home to all children this week.
Walk to School Week
This week is ‘Walk to School Week’. We encourage all families to walk to school as much as they can. If you already walk to school, that’s great! If you don’t, perhaps you could park a little further away and walk the rest of the journey, or maybe get off the bus one stop early! We look forward to hearing about your journey walking to school.
Romanian Language Institute
Thank you to the families who attended a meeting on Thursday about an after-school class to develop their child’s Romanian language skills and learn about Romanian culture and traditions. Any families interested who did not attend the meeting should contact the office to add their child’s name to the list. We hope with enough interest that we can start classes from September 2017.
Mid-Term Reminder
A reminder that we will be closed for four days in June – Thursday 1st June, Friday, 2nd June, Monday 5th June and Tuesday, 6th June.
Dates for your diary
16th May – 5th Class to Aviva Stadium
19th May – Ms. Calvey’s Class to the Ark
Sunday, 21st May – First Holy Communion for 2nd Class Catholic children at 11.45 a.m.
23rd May – Athletics team to Santry Stadium
25th May – 4th Class to ‘Squirrel Scramble’
29th May – Junior Infants to Newgrange Farm
29th May – 5th Class to SurfDock
Thursday 1st, Friday 2nd, Monday 5th, Tuesday 6th June – School Closed for Mid-Term
7th June – 3rd Class to Trinity Sports
9th June – 6th Class to Carlingford
13th June – 5th Class to National Gallery
27th June – Whole-School Performance
29th June – 6th Class Graduation
30th June – School closes at 12 noon for Summer Holidays
Attendance and punctuality
Well done to Ms. Barry’s Senior Infants and 4th Class who both had 100% attendance this week! The classes will be sharing our attendance trophy this week.
Fidget Spinners
You will all be familiar with the current craze ‘fidget spinners’. We would ask please that children do not bring these to school from now on. If children do have them at school, we will ask them to put them in their bag until home time.
Best wishes,
Éadaoin Kelly
Principal
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Newsletter 5.5.17
Newsletter
5th May 2017
Dear parents, carers, staff and friends,
News this week
We have a busy term of visits ahead and it is great to see classes getting out in the sunshine. On Wednesday, 2nd Class visited the Natural History Museum to see animal fossils and skeletons. Miss Brophy’s Class visited O’Connell Street to look at different modes of transport. On Thursday, 5th Class visited an allotment to plant vegetables and today, 6th Class visited the National Gallery of Ireland to see the Caravaggio exhibit.
Information about other visits taking place this term will come to each class in a letter. Please make sure you sign the permission slips – we must have your consent for visits that involve public transport or anything outside the local area.
Young Achievers
On Wednesday, the annual ‘Young Achievers Awards’ took place at the Lighthouse Cinema. This event is organised by the Home-School teachers in all of the local schools and nine children from our school were nominated by teachers and students across nine categories.
Our winners were:
Creativity – Dilan (3rd Class)
Art – Carl Shane (4th Class)
Music – Milena (6th Class)
Drama – Arun (6th Class)
Dance – Hannah E (5th Class)
Sport – Olaf (6th Class)
Academic – Szymon (4th Class)
Helping Others – Troy (6th Class)
Community Involvement – Anya (5th Class)
The children and their parents/carers attended the ceremony and were presented with special awards – well done to them all!
Romanian Language Institute
This week, we met with representatives from the Romanian Language Institute and the Romanian Embassy who are interested in running after-school classes for Romanian children in our school. The classes will focus on developing children’s Romanian language skills and Romanian culture and traditions. Nearly a quarter of the children in our school are from a Romanian background so we hope this will be something that interests families.
The course is suitable for all ages, from Junior Infants to 6th Class and children will be grouped according to their age.
There will be a meeting for any parents/carers who are interested in finding out more in the school hall on Thursday, 11th May at 9.00 a.m. We hope with enough interest that we can start classes from September 2017.
Parent Questionnaire
Thank you to the families who completed our parent questionnaire which we sent out before the Easter holidays. The results were very positive and we will work to ensure they continue to improve. Some of the top responses (e.g. over 98% of parents responded positively) included – ‘my child is happy at this school’, ‘my child feels safe at school’, ‘my child is taught well at this school’, ‘the school meets my child’s needs’, and ‘the school is well led and managed’.
Responses were lower when parents were asked about the age-appropriate information we give children about drugs and alcohol and parents of children in younger classes were also unsure about how we work with families and children on the transition to secondary school. Parents were also unsure about how the school supports their child to make a positive contribution to the local community.
In the comments section, many parents/carers asked for more after-school provision. We know there are childcare issues for many families in the afternoons and we will do our best to continue to look at ways we can help. The after-school clubs run by the school are funded through the School Completion Programme but we rely on the goodwill and time of our teachers to run them. We will post any information we have about after-school clubs and activities outside of school on the Home-School noticeboard just outside the Hall.
We really appreciate all of your feedback and will do our best to improve our communication to you in these areas. If you have any further comments to make, please feel free to come and chat with me or Síle.
PDST Visit
Today teachers attended workshops throughout the day with Maureen Colleran, an advisor from the Professional Development Service for Teachers (PDST). Maureen worked with teachers to look more closely at our teaching of oral language and ways to encourage and extend children’s speaking and listening skills. We got lots of new ideas that we are looking forward to sharing with the children over the coming weeks.
Dates for your diary
11th May – 5th Class to Hugh Lane Gallery
16th May – 5th Class to Aviva Stadium
19th May – Ms. Calvey’s Class to the Ark
Sunday, 21st May – First Holy Communion for 2nd Class Catholic children at 11.45 a.m.
25th May – 4th Class to ‘Squirrel Scramble’
29th May – Junior Infants to Newgrange Farm
Thursday 1st, Friday 2nd, Monday 5th, Tuesday 6th June – School Closed for Mid-Term
9th June – 6th Class to Carlingford
27th June – Whole-School Performance
29th June – 6th Class Graduation
Mid-Term Reminder
A reminder that we will be closed for four days in June – Thursday 1st June, Friday, 2nd June, Monday 5th June and Tuesday, 6th June. If you are planning any time away this term – this is an ideal time for a short break without the children missing school.
Attendance and punctuality
Well done to Ms. Barry’s Senior Infants who have top attendance of 97% this week. It was a close race with Ms. Brophy’s Class, Ms. Dolan’s Class and 5th and 6th Class very close behind! Well done everyone.
Let’s hope the sun keeps shining for the weekend.
See you on Monday!
Éadaoin Kelly
Principal
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Show Racism the Red Card
5th Class attended the awards ceremony for the ‘Show Racism the Red Card’ poster competition this week. They met Roy Keane and were featured in a number of national newspapers! We were so proud of them for taking part in such an important campaign. The children presented their posters in assembly – they were super!
Newsletter 28.4.17
Newsletter
28th April 2017
Dear parents, carers, staff and friends,
Welcome Back!
It is lovely to see everyone back at school following our two week holiday. I hope you all had a good rest!
A reminder that Monday 1st May is a Bank Holiday and school will be closed. We are open as usual from Tuesday, 2nd May.
DEIS Inspection
As you know, we had inspectors from the Department of Education at school this week for an evaluation of our ‘DEIS’ (Delivering Equality of opportunity In Schools) programme. The two inspectors spent three days with us, visiting every class and support setting and looking at teaching and learning across the school. They were looking particularly at English and Maths lessons but also saw some of our lessons that teach children about their emotions and building resilience, like the ‘Friends for Life’ programme in 6th Class and the ‘Incredible Years’ programme in Senior Infants.
The inspection also included surveys of 6th Class parents/carers and children, interviews with staff and a group of parents, talking with children, meeting Síle, our Home-School teacher and Conor, our School Completion Programme coordinator, and visiting the breakfast club and after-school clubs.
Today, the inspectors came back and gave feedback about what they saw. I am delighted to let you know that they saw lots of good teaching and they were very pleased with the many programmes we have in place to ensure children make good progress in their learning.
The inspectors particularly commented on the children’s positive attitudes to learning, the welcoming environment and the structures and systems we have in place to support learning. They loved watching our younger children playing and talking in the farm shop in Junior Infants and in the garden centre and airport in Senior Infants. They commented on the progress children were making in programmes like Reading and Maths Recovery, Literacy Lift-Off and Ready, Set, Go Maths. They were delighted to see parents supporting their children’s learning in the ‘Maths for Fun’ stations in Junior Infants.
They were particularly impressed with our attendance figures and our target of 95%. Well done to all families who work so hard to help us achieve this!
Our school planning had already identified a number of actions for next year, and the inspectors agreed that a number of these actions should be started as soon as possible.
The first is to establish a Parents’ Association, so that parents and carers have another way to communicate their thoughts and ideas to the school and support our work. Síle will be letting you know about ways you can get involved. We would love to have an active parent group, so keep an eye out for more information.
Our teaching team will also be looking at ways we can make our assessment practices even better by further analysing our test results. We are very confident that we will be able to implement these recommendations.
The inspection team will now finalise a draft report and once this has been agreed by the Board of Management, it will be published on the Department of Education’s website and we will send you a copy for your information.
I would like to say a very big thank you to the entire staff who worked so hard in preparation for the inspection, including during the holidays. They work so hard to give our children the very best learning opportunities each and every day and I know you are as grateful as I am for their hard work and dedication.
The children, as always, were wonderful! They really took the opportunity to show their very best learning, they spoke confidently about their learning and experiences of school.
The results of the questionnaires for both children and parents were overwhelmingly positive and we thank you all for your participation.
Pushkin Art Competition
We were delighted to hear that Miranda from 4th Class was chosen as the 1st Prize Winner of the Pushkin Art Competition, part of the Festival of Russian Culture. Miranda was presented with her prize yesterday at a reception with the Lord Mayor of Dublin and the Russian Ambassador at the Mansion House in Dublin city centre. What a fantastic achievement – well done Miranda and thank you to Ms. Kilkenny for preparing all of the art work for the competition.
Dates for your diary
1st May – Bank Holiday – School Closed
3rd May – 2nd Class to Nat. History Museum
3rd May – Young Achievers’ Awards
5th May – 6th Class to Caravaggio exhibit
11th May – 5th Class to Hugh Lane Gallery
16th May – 5th Class to Aviva Stadium
19th May – Ms. Calvey’s Class to the Ark
Sunday, 21st May – First Holy Communion for 2nd Class Catholic children at 11.45 a.m.
25th May – 4th Class to ‘Squirrel Scramble’
29th May – Junior Infants to Newgrange Farm
Thursday 1st, Friday 2nd, Monday 5th, Tuesday 6th June – School Closed for Mid-Term
9th June – 6th Class to Carlingford
27th June – Whole-School Performance
29th June – 6th Class Graduation
Attendance and punctuality
Well done to 5th and 6th Classes who both had a fantastic 100% this week! Wonderful!
Best wishes for a lovely weekend,
Éadaoin Kelly
Principal
Newsletter 7.4.17
Newsletter
7th April 2017
Dear parents, carers, staff and friends,
Holiday Reminder
We close today for the two week Easter break. School will re-open on Monday, 24th April at 8.50 a.m. Breakfast Club will be open as usual from 8.40 a.m.
News this week
4th and 5th Class along with our Green Schools team took part in the National Spring Clean on Tuesday. They had special equipment to help clean our local streets and around Blessington Street Basin. They also recorded the kinds of litter they found for a survey. We have lots of bags ready for collection by Dublin City Council!
Also on Tuesday, we met the parents of our new Junior Infants for September 2017 who are very excited to get started! The children will have the chance to visit the school over the coming weeks and we will be speaking with the adults in their pre-schools to help get them ready for the move to big school!
Thank you to the parents who joined Junior Infants for ‘Maths for Fun’. The parents helped the children to play fun maths games in their class for the morning and everyone really enjoyed themselves! Do let your child’s teacher, or Síle know if you would like to help out.
On Wednesday, Miss Dolan’s Class visited Pearse Street Library for the launch of a springtime reading initiative. They met Minister English and had their photo taken. Everyone was very impressed by their excellent listening and behaviour. Well done!
The children involved in the ‘Time to Read’ programme were invited to visit the Business in the Community offices on Wednesday to see where their volunteer readers work every day. They had great fun and even got to try some interviewing and filming!
Feis Átha Cliath
Our very talented Irish dancers in 5th and 6th Class attended a dance competition known as a ‘Feis’ on Wednesday. The children danced in groups of four and groups of eight. We were delighted to hear that three groups won medals on the day – well done!
Board of Management meeting
The Board of Management met yesterday afternoon and were delighted to welcome some of the children from the children’s teams to the meeting to hear all about the super projects they have been running this year in the Green Schools team, the Active Schools team, the Safety and Anti-Bullying team and the Intercultural/Young Interpreters team. We were so impressed with how much as been achieved and all led by the children themselves!
Dates for your diary
Monday, 24th April – School Re-Opens
1st May – Bank Holiday – School Closed
3rd May – 2nd Class to Nat. History Museum
5th May – 6th Class to Caravaggio exhibit
Attendance and punctuality
Well done to 1st Class with top attendance of 97.8% this week!
Have a lovely holiday. We look forward to seeing you on Monday, 24th April!
Best wishes,
Éadaoin Kelly – Principal
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Newsletter 24.3.17
Newsletter
24th March 2017
Dear parents, carers, staff and friends,
International Day – Thank You!
What a fantastic week we had last week! We began celebrating ‘Seachtain na Gaeilge’ or ‘Irish Week’ with our céilí dances and a tricky table quiz for the older children all in Irish!
Then on Thursday we had our International Day which began with performances from 1st and 2nd Class with our super music tutors from Masamba Samba School. The children were fantastic and had learnt so much so quickly. We were really impressed. Next, we had our sean-nós after-school club with a traditional Irish brush dance.
Later in the afternoon, lots of parents and carers came to join us for a family Céilí outside and then we had our annual International Food event in the hall to finish off a great day.
If you haven’t had a chance to see the Family Learning Project, a beautiful tapestry of all the countries represented in our school, then do pop into the hall to have a look.
All of the action from the day was filmed by RTE’s ‘News2Day’ programme – you can see a video on our website or Twitter account @stmarysdorsetst! It gives a great overview of the day, of our school spirit and how we celebrate our diversity.
Our thanks to all of the families, children and staff who contributed to our events in many different ways – bringing food, dancing, contributing to the intercultural project, made projects or flags or came to an event.
Kindness Week
This week was ‘Kindness Week’. We have all been doing ‘random acts of kindness’ for one another and the children have been learning about our invisible buckets that you can fill with kindness by saying or doing something nice to someone!
News this week
1st Class visited the Ark, cultural centre in Temple Bar on Thursday for a workshop on self-portraits using charcoal. I hear they were beautiful!
Sports News
The children in 3rd, 4th, 5th and 6th Class have begun their six weeks of swimming lessons at Belvedere Pool. I hear they are already making great progress and having lots of fun!
Last week, a team of 5th and 6th Class children went to a basketball tournament in the National Basketball Arena in Tallaght Mr. Carney and Ms. O’Callaghan were so impressed with the children’s focus, attitude and sportsmanship. They ran the games themselves, played with children from other schools and represented our school with pride. Well done!
Next week, another of our sporting teams will take part in a football tournament at Irishtown Stadium. Good luck!
Visit from Department of Education
We received a letter this week from the Inspectorate of the Department of Education to let us know we will be visited by two inspectors as part of a review of our DEIS programme in the week after Easter.
The inspectors will spend three days with us, looking at the teaching and learning in classrooms, talking with staff, Board of Management members, parents, carers and children about their experiences at school.
They will be looking particularly at programmes we use to teach literacy and maths, how our Home-School-Community Liaison teacher supports families, how we work with the School Completion Programme to provide things like free after-school clubs, Doodle Den, Incredible Years and Life Skills sessions and the ways we promote good attendance.
We are looking forward to sharing all of our exciting learning with the inspection team. They will give some feedback to us at the end of their visit and then publish a report which we will share with all families.
Mr. Kerr for INTO President!
We wanted to let you know that Mr. Kerr, who is a support teacher in 5th and 6th Class this year and who many of you will know as one of our very experienced teachers, is running as a candidate in an election for President of the Irish National Teachers’ Organisation (INTO). The election is coming up very soon and Mr. Kerr has been campaigning hard all over the country to encourage teachers to vote for him.
If he is successful, Mr. Kerr will leave us for a short time, on a one-year secondment after Easter. Luckily for us, the INTO offices are on Parnell Square – so he won’t be too far away and hopefully he will come and visit us!
For now, we wish Mr. Kerr the very best in his preparation for the election and we will have our fingers crossed for his success.
Dates for your diary
Wednesday, 29th March – First Penance service for children making First Communion
Sunday, 2nd April – Family Mass at 11.45am
Tuesday, 4th April – National Spring Clean Day!
Wednesday, 5th April – Feis Átha Cliath (Irish Dance Competition) for 5th and 6th Class
Friday, 7th April – School Closes at 12.00 p.m. for two-week Easter Holiday
Monday, 24th April – School Re-Opens
Visiting teachers
For the next few weeks, we will have two teachers from Dublin City University’s Institute of Education working with us. Mr. Allen will work alongside Ms. King in 5th Class while Ms. Lougheed will work with Ms. Brophy in Senior Infants. We look forward to welcoming them.
Attendance and punctuality
Well done to 3rd Class with 100% attendance this week! Not far behind were Ms. Barry’s Senior Infants on 99%! We’re seeing really impressive attendance figures across the school this month – let’s keep it up!
And finally…
We’ve been speaking to lots of children and parents about staying safe online. We hope to organise a speaker for parents and carers in the summer term. In the meantime, if you are looking for advice on how to keep your child safe when they are using a computer, tablet or phone, there are some great tips, videos and fact-sheets for parents on www.webwise.ie. I would recommend you take a look and if you have any concerns, please come and talk to us and we will do our best to help.
I’m told the sunshine is here for the weekend! Enjoy it!
Éadaoin Kelly
Principal
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International Day 16.3.17
We celebrated our annual International Day on 16th March 2017. The highlights were recorded by RTE’s ‘News2Day’ programme – have a look below!
.@news2dayRTE went to a Dublin school that is holding an international day to celebrate the 30 different nationalities in the school pic.twitter.com/mlp2K7YWlQ
— RTÉ News (@rtenews) March 16, 2017
Our day started with a special samba performance by our 1st and 2nd Class children who have been working with Masamba Samba School over the last few weeks and learning to play together beautifully!
What a super performance! #InternationalDay @masamba pic.twitter.com/7bfdF9FEc2
— St. Mary's Primary (@stmarysdorsetst) March 16, 2017
Next up, were our after-school ‘Sean-Nós’ Irish dance club, also from 1st and 2nd Class who performed a traditional brush dance.
Our dance club showed us their brush dance next! Well done and thanks Ms Sheridan! pic.twitter.com/9PpnkqTvVJ
— St. Mary's Primary (@stmarysdorsetst) March 16, 2017
All around our hall, there were projects created by teams of children, displaying information about each of the countries represented in our school community. The children worked in cross-age teams, from 3rd to 6th Class to research the information for their projects. You can see each project below:
We also unveiled our family learning project, coordinated by Sile, our Home-School Liaison teacher. The intercultural project invited parents and families to create a fabric piece depicting information about their home country. These individual pieces were then brought together to create one tapestry. It is beautiful!
Later in the afternoon, all families were invited to attend our family Céilí Mór. We held the Céilí outside and the children partnered with their parents and carers and showed them the steps. We had great fun!
Our day finished with our annual International Food event, with families bringing dishes from their home countries to share with one another. A wonderful way to end a fantastic day. Thank you to all the families who contributed and came to support the children. Well done everyone!
Seachtain na Gaeilge March 2017
We celebrated Seachtain na Gaeilge, a celebration of Irish language and culture, this week.
In preparation for our annual Céilí Mór, the older children spent time with their partners in younger classes to show them our three céilí dances. Have a look at our practice in progress!
Here's our first outdoor rehearsal for our Céilí Mór #SeachtainnaGaeilge #ActiveSchools https://t.co/en5bdvFvio
— St. Mary's Primary (@stmarysdorsetst) March 10, 2017
Bhí Tráth na gCeist againn ar an Máirt. Bhí an-spórt againn! We had an Irish quiz on Tuesday. We had a great time!
Ar an gCéadaoin, bhí an Céilí Mór ar siúl. On Wednesday, we had our Céilí Mór.