Greystones Educate Together National School

Christmas Newsletter 2018

AED: On behalf of all the staff, students and

families in GETNS, Vice Deputy Helen and

Caroline Winstanley from the PAC would like

to thank Dublin Port Company for kindly do-

nating the money needed to purchase the

IPAD Automated External Defibrillator, for

our school. With over 500 people in our

school building on a daily basis, we feel very

privileged knowing we have such an amazing

vital piece of equipment . We hope we will

never need to use it, but knowing that we can

act quickly in case of emergency, really puts

our minds at ease.

Christmas Cards: Well done to everyone who

designed their very own Christmas Card this

year. Wayne Loveridge, from Wicklow Print Solu-

tions (Emily Loveridge’s, dad) printed the amaz-

ing cards for GETNS. Thank you Wayne.

School re-opens: 7th Jan-

uary 2019. All the staff at

GETNS wish you and

yours a very Happy Christ-

mas & Happy New Year .

GETNS Staff Automated External Defibrillator

Training: On the 10th December, the Greystones

First Responders attended our school. The crew

demonstrated how to use the defibrillator and

showed the staff how to perform CPR in case of an

emergency. Many thanks to Margaret Duggan and

her crew for volunteering their time and

expertise in this area.

Junior Infants: During the month of November, Junior Infants were learning about Shopping Centres in Aistear.

To begin, each of the junior infants opened their own class super-

markets! They perused Lidl catalogues, built their own supermar-

kets with Lego and made fabulous junk art creations of cash regis-

ters, trolleys and all things supermarket related! To top it off, we

had our very first class trip to Lidl. Each class took part in a super-

market hunt and we are happy to report they are now shopping ex-

perts! Big thank you to all the parents who accompanied us. Next

up, clothes shops were open for business! They all loved browsing

the rails and trying on clothes with the latest fashions. They became

designers and had to draw out their favourite outfits, use materials

to make a piece of clothing and also try building items of clothing

using Lego, very challenging! They also each made their very own tie

dye t-shirts and had great fun trying to perfect their designs.

Aisling and Sarah's class: We had great, great fun learning about the Sam Maguire Cup and it even came to visit us in school!! This month we have been learning all about reindeer also. We're looking forward to teaching our parents some fun facts at our Christmas show!!!! Nollaig Shona Daoibh

Halloween Disco:

The Junior classes had amazing fun at our Halloween Disco, (although I

think the teachers enjoyed it the most!) This year we raised €…. For Edu-

cate Together—One Day Together

PAC: The PAC would like to thank everyone for their time and support so far this year. None of what the PAC organise is possible without your diverse range of skills. We would also like to thank and wel-come our new PAC secretary, Marie Porter. This academic year we have so far had a clothes recycle, sourced a defibrillator, raised money for training, held Halloween parties and a craft fair. The PAC are currently planning with the school an outdoor classroom, which we hope will be ready to use by the summer term. We hope that you have a wonderful Christmas break and new year and we will see you in January. Your PAC

Principals Thoughts: Dear Parents / Guardians, We really can't believe that the first term is over! Maybe this is because it has been such a busy one, with the two new classrooms open for First Classes, induction of more new staff, births, deaths and marriages experienced by various staff members, sadness's and joys, and all the various performances, outings, speakers and events that have been organised. Aideen and Liz in the front office have been kept extremely busy!! We were delighted to welcome new teachers and worried about the dearth of substitute teachers. We advertised twice for 'maternity break' replacements for Emma, Caitriona and Carla but had no re-sponse. I continue to appeal to you to bring this shortage of substitute teachers to the attention of your Dail representatives. We have been fortunate to have sub Siofra, who is available to teach SEN four days a week and student teacher, Natasha, who has also assisted on a daily basis this term. How-ever, Natasha will not be available after Xmas, so, once again, we will continue to stretch the current teaching staff to take on extra caseloads for SEN, where possible. We are delighted that the NCSE has approved two extra SNAs. So Noreen, Fionnuala and newbie, Laura, are now permanent! We look forward to working with them in the new year. Unfortunately, the Breakfast Club was not as well attended as Sue and Rose expected, so it will terminate this week. Goodbye to some of our lovely families who are moving abroad. We continue to welcome new chil-dren to the school in the Senior classes also. Wishing you all a lovely break from routine and hope to see you in the new year, when we continue on our exciting journey together into Springtime! Catherine

HEALTH AND SAFETY:

Please be aware that some children in the school are playing the Fortnite game, which is aimed at over 12's and is quite violent. Children as young as 5 have reported to teacher

that they have been playing this on their home technology. Also, children are beginning to get access to their parents Whats App accounts on parents phones, where they are read-

ing conversations that may not be appropriate for them. They are conscious that their classmate's names and sometimes their own are mentioned in these conversations

and they feel uncomfortable about that. We would appeal to parents to be more guarded about the accessibility of phones and technology, especially to under 12's.

Christmas Raffle: Thank you to

Mum Lydia for creating our annual Christmas raffle cake , so many cakes, year after year, all artistical-ly delightful ! This year we raised a whopping €900!! Well done eve-ryone.

Christmas Raffle Winners:

Christmas Cake: Hazel Tang Choi

Carlton Voucher: Annette Kelly

Gold Membership for Kilruddery: Alessandra Farrar

Littlewoods €100 Voucher: Tara Jones

2 x tickets to the GAA Senior Hurl-ing: Lourda Scott

2 x tickets to the GAA Senior Hurl-ing: Paul Regan

Artwork Mojca Ivancic

Cookery Book: Jurate Siupine

Table Mats: Lisa Gallanagh

Children’s Book & Pen: Teacher Sa-rah Butler

Lidl Colouring Competition:

Well done to the children from

Aisling Jones, Aisling Donnelly and

Tom’s Classes. The children won a

wonderful Christmas hamper.

€4,358.58 WOW!! We would like to say a HUGE THANK YOU to all of you,

who were involved in our 7th Craft Fair. Without the help of the volun-

teers, our school would not be able to facilitate this wonderful annual

event. With over 1400 people through the doors on the day, there was a

great community vibe throughout the building. The school are thrilled with

the funds that have been raised and we will ensure they are put to excel-

lent use within the school.

Greystones Credit Union: Billy Coyle from Greystones Credit Union

presents a cheque of 1500 euro to Principal Catherine in response to an

appeal for a donation to our school to help fund the high netting required

around the school yard. The footballs escaping over the fence and onto

the road can be a hazard for drivers. The PA will continue to fundraise

towards the overall cost of the required netting, but we are very apprecia-

tive of this donation from the Greystones Credit Union.

1st Classes: This term first class have been busy learning all about different houses and homes and

the construction of these buildings. We integrated this topic all throughout the curriculum. After “Stepping Out” the story of the Three Little Pigs which involves retelling and adapting the story, we

used exploratory science to identify the best mate-rials for building a house. The children were asked to try to build a house using only one of the follow-ing materials; straw, wood and clay. From this ex-ploration we deduced that building a structure from just one of these materials alone was imprac-tical and that using a mix of materials gave better results. This then

caused us to wonder what other materials we could use to build with. Then we found eco bricks. EcoBricks are an unconventional building material which are made out of plastic bottles stuffed full with single use plastics. The key to a good EcoBrick is to shred the plastic first so that it can be tightly packed. The EcoBrick must then weigh around 660g.

Christmas Performance: We spent a lot of time in December preparing for our Christmas play “How Murray Saved Christmas”. Poor Edison Elf, a struggling inventor shows Santa his Jack in the Box (with a magical twist) The boxing glove inside pops out and knocks Santa out. Edison Elf then needs to find someone else to deliver the presents on Christmas. Edison needs to convince Murray, the local diner owner to do the deliveries for Santa.

Crazy Hair Day: Mallaidh in Laura’s 6th organised a wonderful Crazy Hair Day in memory of her big brother Danny.

Laura’s 6th class have been very busy since the

beginning of the year. We completed fantastic pro-

jects at home based on the Romans. We created

lots of artwork and ICT projects based on World

War II and thoroughly enjoyed reading The Boy in

the Striped Pyjamas. One of our highlights was Sci-

ence Week. We carried out a number of experi-

ments based on the various Science strands. Both

6th classes enjoyed a visit to the mosque in Clons-

keagh and have been loving our gym sessions in BPT

Fitness. Both classes will also be commencing the

Junior Entrepreneur Project soon. Please make sure

to have a look at our class page on the website for

lots more photos of some of the work we have com-

pleted since September.

Seán's 4th class We have

had an amazing 2018. We have had many high-lights including our performance of 'A Mid-Winter Tale' written and directed by our very own Saoirse Crean Nic Oi-reachtaigh and performances lead by Aoife, Fifi, Liv, Eleanor, Molly, Charlie S, Laila and Eva. Everyone played a fantastic role in de-livery, organisation and team work to bring this script to life! The class also arranged and performed a beautiful rendition of 'Winter Song' with solo performances led by Fifi and accompa-nied by Ben, Liv, Eleanor, , Aoife, Ayla. We are sadly saying goodbye to Taanvi and her sister Ishitha (6th Class Jessica), as this January they are moving to the beautiful city of Seattle in America. We would love to wish them both all the best for the future.

Esther's 2nd class : Our class were very busy during Science week. Jess's 6th Class visited us and helped with various Science experiments - lava lamps, mag-ic colour displays using Skittles with milk, balloon inflation using bicar-bonate of soda and colour dispersion using washing-up liquid. 6th Class were very helpful and informa-tive. We all had great fun being scientists for the week!

Science Week GETNS

We love Science! Over the course of Science

week this term all classes partook in a variety

of activities. These activities included doing

science experiments with our own class, do-

ing science experiments with a buddy class

and learning about famous scientists. It was a

great week!

Soccer: 3rd and 4th class Futsal team. A fantastic performance on the day by the whole team who won all their games, re-sulting in the school win-ning the competition for the very first time.

WOW!!

Straws:

On the 27th October we showed a screening of Straws, the movie, in the Whale Theatre, Greystones. The cam-

paign started when a few of our sixth class students were sitting in the Happy Pear and saw a giant box of plastic

straws. When we noticed this, we decided that we wanted to make Greystones a Plastic Free Community. We

had a great turn out of business people as the Café and restaurant owners attended the screening in the Whale

Theatre. Other school Principals attended. It was great to see the amazing students , parents and staff from

GETNS, who came together to support the cam-

paign. Since then there has been a great response

with a lot of businesses changing to paper straws or

other alternatives. Luca O’Shea Breen & Donncha

Gleeson were interviewed Paul Byrne from the Grey-

stones Guide about the Straws Campaign. Everyone

in sixth classes were involved in what turned out to

be a great success . There are many wonderful stu-

dents on the Green School Committee and great

teachers. Tom, Aisling, Rebecca and Jennifer are the

teachers who make the Green

School what we are today!

Written by Frances Simpson,

Lana Kummer, Freya Duffy Donnacha Gleeson & Luca O’Shea Breen.

Green Schools Biodiversity Theme:

Over the next two years, our school is focussing on improving the biodiversity of our school and attain-ing the Green School Flag for Biodiversity. We hope to build and develop an awareness of the im-portance of biodiversity and how we can improve it within our own environment. We will be doing many initiatives over the coming year and would welcome any support and expertise available from our school community. As part of our initiative we had guest speaker Paddy Madden in to discuss biodiver-sity and help us do our first biodiversity survey. Paddy Madden is a nationally renowned lecturer, au-thor, educator and expert in biodiversity in primary education circles. Our biodiversity survey showed that our school grounds rated as ‘fair’ (which shows great opportunities for improvement )

The Sam Maguire Comes to Greystones ETNS

Over the course of our 1st term in school, many girls and boys participated in

Gaelic football. Some of the older classes were coached by Tommy, an exter-

nal coach who came into our school every week to coach 5th and 6th classes.

Other boys and girls participated in G.A.A. with teacher Tom, who took differ-

ent class groups to a G.A.A. tournament in Bray Emmett’s G.A.A Club, where

many schools from all over Co.

Wicklow played against each

other.

After all of our hard work and

training in Gaelic football this

term, it was clear that the boys

and girls deserved a reward for

their efforts. The Sam Maguire

was brought into our school as

a special reward for their partic-

ipation. The Sam Maguire is the cup awarded

to winners of the All-Ireland Senior Football

Championship. Many young children dream

of lifting the Sam Maguire up during All-

Ireland Sunday, and after seeing the talented

G.A.A players in our school, it could very well

be a reality for many of our young players

someday.

GAA:

There has been a surge in the participation of children in Gaelic Football in recent years. In the first term alone we

had over 120 boys and girls representing our school in competitions against other schools in Wicklow. We also

fielded our first ever girls team in the 3rd - 4th class group. The boys and girls had great fun and represented our

school with great sportsmanship, enthusiasm and skill. Particular thanks must be given to our GAA coach Tommy

who instills enthusiasm for the sport and the teachers of all the primary schools who organised these events. We

would like to also thank Sean Jones's mum Tara and Cait Bishton's grandmother for their support.