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Newsletter

29^th April 2016

Dear parents, carers, staff and friends,

National Award Winners!

We are thrilled to announce that our 5^th Class team – Andrei, Briana and Emilin, who were national finalists in the ‘Scratch’ computer programming competition have won a prize for ‘Best Technical Sophistication’ for their project. This is an outstanding achievement. 800 projects were submitted from school across Ireland. Just 34 were selected as finalists, from both primary and secondary schools. The childrens’ award for ‘Best Technical Sophistication’ was across all categories, even the secondary schools! We are enormously proud of the children and congratulated them at assembly this morning. Our congratulations and thanks also to Mr. Kerr and Pirooz, one of our volunteers, who taught and supported the children.

Feis Átha Cliath

Our 5^th and 6^th Class took part in a special Irish dance competition this week, Feis Átha Cliath. The children have been practising hard and performed four-hand and eight-hand dances for the judges. There were lots of schools from across Dublin and we were delighted that four of our teams in 6^th Class won medals! Congratulations! Our thanks to our Irish dance teacher, Aedín Uí Mhaoileidigh who prepared the children so well and to Ms. Graham, Dolores, Mr. Kerr, Amy and Ms. King who supported the children on the day.

Summer Works Scheme

The Department of Education announced €30 million of funding for upgrading schools this summer. We are delighted to let you know that we are on the list of schools to have a full upgrade of our electrical systems, including re-wiring and new fire alarm system to make our building safer and more modern.

SAVE THE DATE – Wednesday, 1^st June

On Wednesday, 1^st June, the school will close at 12 noon for staff training on the new language curriculum.

Attendance and Punctuality

Well done all families for overall attendance for the month of April of 95%. Best attendance was in 2^nd Class with 96.8%, well done!

Dates for your diary

10^th May – Ceremony of Light (Confirmation)

12^th May – Confirmation at 11.00am

29^th May – First Communion at 11.45am

1^st June – School closes at 12 noon for staff training in new language curriculum

6^th June – Bank Holiday – school closed

10^th June – International Day

30^th June – School finishes at 12 noon

The Active Schools team have attached a Fact Sheet on encouraging your child to be active on the back of the newsletter. Do have a read and get out and about with your child if you can over the holiday. Have a lovely time!

Éadaoin Kelly – Principal

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We are so proud of our 5th Class team who have won the overall award for ‘Best Technical Sophistication’ at the National Finals of the ‘Scratch’ computer programming competition.

The children have been learning about computer programming using the online tool ‘Scratch’ since September with their teacher, Mr. Kerr and one of our volunteers, Pirooz. We entered several projects into the national competition. There were over 800 applications from all over the country and we were thrilled that one of our projects was selected as one of the 34 finalists.

Today, the team went to the RDS for the TechWeekIreland showcase and competition final. They had to prepare a presentation for the judges and spoke very confidently about their project. At the end of the afternoon, the winners were announced. Each child got a medal for being a finalist and we won a very special trophy for the ‘Best Technical Sophistication’ award. This award was given across all categories – primary and secondary schools.

You can see all of the finalists’ projects here: http://scratch.ie/competition2016

You can see our winning entry here: https://scratch.mit.edu/projects/94174059/

This is an outstanding achievement – congratulations to Andrei, Briana and Emilin, our tech genuises! And a big thank you to Sid from 6th Class who gave some last minute help and advice, and to Mr. Kerr and Pirooz for their support throughout. Well done to you all, the whole school community are immensely proud of your success!

Our wonderful dancers in 5th and 6th Class attended Feis Átha Cliath today. The children performed in several competitions, including four-hand and eight-hand dances. They had to compete against teams from six other schools around Dublin.

The children have been practising for several weeks and their hard work paid off. Four teams were awarded medals! This is a huge achievement and we are very proud.

Have a look at some of the highlights of the day:

A special showcase event was held today in Dublin Institute of Technology (DIT) Grangegorman. This event was organised by the ABC programme, which has been given several million euro to run education programmes in the local area.

In our school, the Doodle Den programme for Senior Infants and the Incredible Years parenting programme are all funded through ABC. Miss Kelly spoke at the event about the positive impact the programmes have had on the children in our school.

You can read more about Doodle Den here: http://www.twcdi.ie/our-programmes/doodle-den

You can read more about Incredible Years here: http://www.archways.ie/our_programmes/incredible_years/

We hope to continue these programmes next year and take on some new ones too.

We have had two fantastic afternoons showcasing science learning across the school. Last Friday, our Infant classes invited parents to come in and help with their experiments. We had a great turnout and we were amazed by the range of different activities. The space stations in Senior Infants were super and the Junior Infants had great fun blindfolding their adults to guess different kinds of food and describe if they were sweet, salty or bitter!

This afternoon, it was the turn of the older children. Again, we saw a wonderful range of topics on show, everything from volcanoes to photosynthesis and electrical circuits.

We will be submitting all of this learning for a special award for ‘Science Excellence’ shortly. Our thanks to Mr. Kerr who has coordinated this work.

Newsletter

22^nd April 2016

Dear parents, carers, staff and friends,

What a busy week! We have a bumper edition of our newsletter for you, there has been so much happening. Have a look at our website or Twitter page for photos: @stmarysdorsetst

Young Achievers

Congratulations to the winners of our ‘Young Achievers’ awards for this year. These children are nominated in eight categories by the other children in the school and school staff. Each child showed exceptional talent and strength in their winning category. They received special certificates at a ceremony at the Lighthouse cinema on Wednesday. Well done to you all, and thanks to Claire Shortall, our Home-School teacher for coordinating!

Award Winners for 2016:

Amelia, 6th Class:            Drama
Sid, 6th Class:                      Academic
Darius, 6th Class:             Community
Briana, 5th Class:             Helping Others
Haroldas, 5th Class:       Art
Denisa, 4th Class:            Bonus award for personal academic achievement

Matrida, 4th Class:          Music
Maureen, 3rd Class:       Dance
Leighton, 3rd Class:        Sport
Rebeca, 3rd Class:           Creativity

Science Fair

We have had two fantastic afternoons showcasing science learning across the school. Last Friday, our Infant classes invited parents to come in and help with their experiments. We had a great turnout and we were amazed by the range of different activities. The space stations in Senior Infants were super and the Junior Infants had great fun blindfolding their adults to guess different kinds of food and describe if they were sweet, salty or bitter!

This afternoon, it was the turn of the older children. Again, we saw a wonderful range of topics on show, everything from volcanoes to photosynthesis and electrical circuits.

We will be submitting all of this learning for a special award for ‘Science Excellence’ shortly. Our thanks to Mr. Kerr who has coordinated this work.

Mission

Our thanks to Sr. Mary, Frances and Pasi, our school mission team this week. They have worked with all of our classes in assemblies and in class. The children performed beautifully on Thursday evening in the church, sharing the songs and stories they had worked on during the week – we heard the story of creation, the story of Noah and the ark and some lovely singing, including an Irish blessing. Thank you to the parents and carers who came to support the children at this special event. The final event is our family Mass on Sunday at 11.45 a.m. in the church. The children will be singing and involved in the readings, so please do come along.

SAVE THE DATE – Wednesday, 1^st June

On Wednesday, 1^st June, the school will close at 12 noon for staff training. The government are introducing a new language curriculum for English and Irish and this half-day will allow our teachers to have time to prepare for this change. We apologise for any inconvenience this may cause.

ABC Showcase

This afternoon, several teachers attended a special showcase event in the DIT Grangegorman. This event was organised by the ABC programme, which has been given several million euro to run education programmes in the local area.

In our school, the Doodle Den programme for Senior Infants and the Incredible Years parenting programme are all funded through ABC. Miss Kelly spoke at the event about the positive impact the programmes have had on the children in our school.

We hope to continue these programmes next year and take on some new ones too.

Attendance and Punctuality

Attendance has been excellent again this week, with 96.5% of children attending across the school. We were particularly thrilled to have 98% attendance on Thursday – our highest so far this year!

Well done to the following classes who have attendance above our target of 95% for this week:

6^th Class (Miss Graham)                 95.1%

Junior Infants (Miss Brophy)                     96.7%

3^rd Class (Miss Collins)                               97.4%

4^th Class (Miss Kilkenny)                98.1%

Senior Inf/1^st (Miss Todd)              98.5%

Junior Infants (Miss McDonnell)  98.8%

1^st Class (Miss Palmer)                   98.9%

Congratulations to 5^th Class who are winners of our attendance cup for the third week in a row with 99.1% – amazing!

Dates for your diary

Sunday, 24^th April – Family Mass at 11.45am

27^th April – 5^th/6^th Class to Feis Átha Cliath

28^th April – Scratch Finalists to RDS

2^nd – 6^th May – Mid-Term Break

12^th May – Confirmation at 11.00am

29^th May – First Communion at 11.45am

1^st June – School closes at 12 noon for staff training in new language curriculum

6^th June – Bank Holiday – school closed

10^th June – International Day

30^th June – School finishes at 12 noon

Community News: Opening of Centenary Garden at Hardwicke Street – 1916

On Sunday, there is a special opening event of the new centenary garden on Hardwicke Street. The garden remembers especially the children involved in the 1916 Rising. The project has been completed by a local gardening group in the area and the opening will take place this Sunday, 24^th April at 1.30 p.m. Stop by and take a look!

Ozanam House – summer camp

We have application forms for a summer camp run by Ozanam House during the holidays. If you are interested in your child attending, please see Claire.

We are receiving lots of information about other summer camps – if you are looking for an opportunity for your child, please let Claire know and we will also post information on the Parents board on the ground floor corridor.

Have a lovely weekend – let’s hope the sun stays out!

Éadaoin Kelly

Principal

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Our thanks to Sr. Mary, Frances and Pasi, our school mission team this week. They have worked with all of our classes in assemblies and in class. The children performed beautifully on Thursday evening in the church, sharing the songs and stories they had worked on during the week – we heard the story of creation, the story of Noah and the ark and some lovely singing, including an Irish blessing. Thank you to the parents and carers who came to support the children at this special event. The final event is our family Mass on Sunday at 11.45 a.m. in the church. The children will be singing and involved in the readings, so please do come along.

Here are some photos from the celebration on Thursday:

Congratulations to the winners of our ‘Young Achievers’ awards for this year. These children are nominated in eight categories by the other children in the school and school staff. Each child showed exceptional talent and strength in their winning category. They received special certificates at a ceremony at the Lighthouse cinema on Wednesday. Well done to you all, and thanks to Claire Shortall, our Home-School teacher for coordinating!

Award Winners for 2016:

Amelia, 6th Class:            Drama
Sid, 6th Class:                      Academic
Darius, 6th Class:             Community
Briana, 5th Class:             Helping Others
Haroldas, 5th Class:       Art
Denisa, 4th Class:            Bonus award for personal academic achievement

Matrida, 4th Class:          Music
Maureen, 3rd Class:       Dance
Leighton, 3rd Class:        Sport
Rebeca, 3rd Class:           Creativity