Newsletter May-June 2015

Summer’s here and even though the weather has been unpredictable, May has been a jam-packed month of interesting and stimulating events and activities for the children, and June promises to be the same.

Places in our classes have been offered, and we are now full with a substantial waiting list still active for Junior Infants. It is, and will continue to be, very interesting and exciting to see the school grow, develop and change dynamically year to year. In 2015-16, we will have two each of Junior Infants, Senior Infants, First Class, and one Second Class. Recruitment of new staff will take place as soon as we get the go-ahead from the DES and we will add at least three teachers to the school. When the new teachers are in place, by the end of July, I will let you all know who will be teaching each class next year.

Our new Junior Infant children visited the school on Thursday, 21st May. It was wonderful to see the children eager and ready to start ‘big school.’ On Thursday, 4 th June at 7p.m. we will have a meeting and presentation for the parents of these new Junior Infants to chat about the curriculum, what to expect and how best to prepare the children (and parents!) for starting in Primary School here at Ballinteer Educate Together.

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Learn Together Ethical EducationDuring May, the Stay Safe and RSE (Relationships and Sexuality) programmes were taught in the classes. These programmes tie in with our positive behaviour policy in the school and aim to empower the children to develop friendships, resolve conflicts, learn how to seek support in bullying situations, and learn age-appropriate strategies to stay safe in a variety of situations. It is our aim to be proactive in promoting positive behaviour and inclusion among the children and to ensure that we build on strategies and have evolving discussions on ways the children can recognise and deal with any bullying situations that they may encounter. Being proactive in this regard, we believe, is more effective and empowering in equipping children with the skills to both form positive relationships with their peers and to prevent bullying.

Other aspects of the Learn Together ethical education programme covered in May included Earth Week, Humanist Day, the Buddhist festival of Wesak and the Irish Bealtaine which falls on 1st May. Golden ‘rules’ we emphasised were, ‘Be brave, be kind.’ And, again at an age-appropriate level, the classes studied the concept of gender equality. This area of gender equality falls under the curricular strand of ‘Equality and Justice,’ and human rights in particular.

Multicultural Fortnight

During the first two weeks of June, each class will explore how children in certain other countries live. Here is the list of classes and countries:

Aisling: Kenya; Aoife: U.S.A.; Ciara: Brazil; Muireann: Russia; Órla: Spain.

The children will explore and learn about the food, families, songs, festivals and geography. At our weekly assembly, each class will present some aspect of what they have learned to the other children. We will also have a display of the children’s related artwork.

More….

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Fundraising Cookbook

Mark Weldon, Mairéad McGuire and Bairbre Byrne have worked hard to achieve a professional cookbook which contains some delicious recipes. They have managed to get sponsorship so that the cookbook is being published free of charge; this means that all proceeds go to the school and, in particular, to the development of the children’s playground. The cookbook is available to buy in the school now and costs €15. We hope to have a tasting of cookbook samples/cake sale before the end of school. More about this shortly.

Concert

On 8th May, we were delighted to welcome everyone to a performance by the children. Junior Infants with Aisling and Aoife took the theme of growth and new life in nature; Ciara and Muireann did a great job with Senior Infants exploring and singing about summer, sunshine and the natural world, and Órla’s First Class gave us rousing renditions of songs from The Wizard of Oz. Eamonn, the musician who came from the school’s programme at Dun Laoghaire Rathdown, took Senior Infants through what he had been working on for the past ten weeks including a musical

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composition involving percussion instruments; and Mischa, Lottie’s mum, performed the innovative musical process that she worked on with the children. Thank you Eamonn and Mischa. Thank you, also, to everyone for helping with the costumes which looked amazing. St. Tiernan’s again came up trumps for us with the stage and adult chairs, for which we are very grateful. Shows like this are not only about performing but greatly enhance the children’s self-confidence, self-esteem and sense of achievement, not to mention filling the school with laughter and fun.

Nature Investigators

Our school is situated in a location that lends itself to easy access to nature for the children. Recently, the Junior Infants walked to Balally Park and First Class went on a nature scavenger hunt. They observed tree and bird life and, of course, the playground in Balally was an irresistible discovery!

CurriculumAll the classes are finishing off their different levels of the Primary School National Curriculum and, indeed, are moving on to more challenging work that will ease the transition for the children to the next class level. All of the children have read a wide variety of readers that enable them to progress onto higher levels of literacy and an enhanced love and enjoyment of reading. First Class children are reading novels, engaging in ever more sophisticated levels of reading and comprehension as well as deriving great fun from Roddy Doyle’s ‘The Giggler Treatment.’ We have bought in a wonderful store of P.E. (Physical Exercise) and games equipment. P.E. takes places twice a week in every class. Science is an area we have focused on this year too in terms of gathering resources that enhance and enrich the discovery and learning experience for the children. Primary school is a perfect opportunity to combine the curriculum without imposing subject divisions but rather integrating the subjects so that a history lesson can incorporate literacy, art, music, science, geography, cultural studies, problem-solving and endless other lines of inquiry and learning.

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Assessments and Reports

First Class sat their standardised assessments. Órla used the Drumcondra Reading Test and Signa-T Maths Test. She will be giving parents feedback in the school reports.* We would like to emphasise that we conduct assessment for learning and assessments of learning, all of which contribute, not to labelling children but in helping us in assessing how well our planning and teaching is working, and in devising future plans and strategies to improve on learning outcomes for each individual child. All teachers do assessments on an ongoing basis throughout the year in addition to an end-of-year assessment. Reports will be emailed during the third week of June.

*Note about ‘STEN’: each child in First Class will, as a result of the standardised assessments, be given a STEN score in English and Maths. An explanation of these STEN scores will be included with the report. Just to let you know, the use of the word, ‘average,’ in this maths assessment indicates that your child is perfectly capable and has successfully grasped all the concepts that have been taught this year.

Child ProtectionLooking after the children’s safety and well-being is not only a legal requirement but central to our child-centred ethos and of prime importance to the staff and Board of Management. We have a school policy which is on the website and is given to every member of staff, and is in line with the DES Child Protection Procedures. In essence, we are obliged to report any disclosure from a child or adult in relation to infringements of this policy to Túsla, the Child and Family Agency. The latter investigate and follow-up on the report in order to make sure that the child or children in question are not at risk. The Board reviews this policy and the anti-bullying policy annually and sends a completed checklist to the Educate Together head office so that the school is in compliance with our legal obligations.

Other policies: our After-school Activities and Use of Premises Policy as well as our Critical Incidents Policy have been ratified by the Board of Management.

Trips and WorkshopsThis year we have got excellent value for the €45 everyone paid at the beginning of the year: the children enjoyed a wide variety of trips and workshops that were educational, stimulating and thought-provoking. These ranged from a visit from a falconer who brought his owl and peregrine, to musicians, story-teller, scientists, designers and artists. The children went to the National Concert Hall and experienced creative writing in Dun Laoghaire library.

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Senior Infants, this term, are doing an eight-week session with a reader-in-residence at Dundrum library. On 22nd June, First Class and Senior Infants are visiting Sealife Aquarium as part of their work on life in our oceans and seas. They will also be exploring and investigating an environmental trail on Bray seafront. Junior Infants plan on going on a teddy bears’ picnic during the week of the 22nd June too.

On Wednesday, 24th June, Muireann has invited a troupe of circus performers to not only entertain the children but to teach them some circus acts – lion-taming, I am assured, is not one of them!

Next year, First and Second classes will be taking swimming lessons, and we will update you about this in September.

Parents’ Association

Race Night Fundraiser for the School: 12 June 2015, 7pm at Coach House Ballinteer

Bring your family, friends and neighbours.

See you all there!

Sign-up sheets are available at the school for Race Night.

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Playground

The P.A. playground subcommittee, including Muireann and Órla, are doing a great job of planning for a creative and natural play space for the children. During the summer, they would like to have volunteers come to the school and paint markings which they have carefully designed and laid out, based on the needs of next year’s classes, on the ground. Plants and other natural features are being considered so that, as time goes on, we will have herb and flower gardens, an outdoor ‘classroom’ and lots of other interesting ideas. We now have basketball hoops (at different levels for different age groups) which Jim is installing, footballs, hoops and lots of other outdoor equipment for the children. Which leads me to ask – and I know this is a long shot – would anyone have a garden shed they would like to donate as a storage area for our playground equipment? We would need to be able to put a sturdy padlock on it for security. We envisage that it could be placed at the back of the new classrooms.

Website: Donal, Lottie’s Dad, is reconstructing the school website. This is an enormous task and we’re very grateful. Donal hopes to launch the website in September. We’re looking forward to having a professionally designed website that will enable us to keep you up-to-date with everything that happens in the classes and throughout the school.

The P.A. raised €389 from getting involved in the Tesco blue tokens at Nutgrove Shopping Centre. This will pay for the bouncy castle and the ice-cream van at sports day (below).

The National Parents’ Council is holding an Education Conference on 13 June 2015 at the National College of Ireland, Dublin 1 from 10.30am to 4pm. The title of the conference is: ‘Building Brighter Futures - Partnership for Success.’

Speakers include experts in the area of education and parental involvement from Canada and Ireland. The conference is aimed at supporting parents in becoming involved in their children's education.

Guest speakers include:

*       Minister for Education and Skills, Jan O'Sullivan T.D.*       Annie Kidder, Executive Director of People for Education, Toronto,Ontario, Canada - Helping your child succeed at school- what matters most*       Paul Gilligan, Clinical Psychologist and CEO of St Patrick's MentalHealth Services - Parenting and Education

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Our P.A. would like if parents from the school would attend this conference which promises to be very interesting and informative. The P.A. plans on forging closer links with the NPC in the coming year, including organising talks for the school community. Kasia, Sean’s mum, is going to the conference and she is happy for anyone who is also interested to contact her at Kasia.sawicka@ucd.ie

In November of the new school year, our Parents’ Association will hold its AGM and as part of its evolution and to set up greater communication some members of the staff, Muireann, Órla or Marie, will attend the meetings.

Patrycja has organised a sponsored walk for the children. Junior Infants will walk to Balally Park on the 22nd June, and the other classes will do their walk on the seafront in Bray after their visit to the aquarium. Cards and more information will be sent home in schoolbags soon.

Active Week and Sports Day, Friday, 26th June 2015

Active Week takes place during the week starting on Monday, 22nd June. All classes will take part in a variety of games and sports, and being and keeping fit and healthy is the theme of the week (though, as you know, we encourage this year-round).

Sports Day is scheduled for 26th June: we would very much like about twenty-two or so volunteers to man the activity stations and direct groups of children in each sporting activity. This is the children’s day and because of that and also from a safety and supervision point of view, toddlers/siblings can’t attend the sports day. If you would like to volunteer, please have a word with your child’s class teacher. As mentioned above, we’ll have a bouncy castle and ice-cream to add to the excitement of the day (nut-free and gluten-free options will be available). The activities start at 8.30 a.m. and first break is at 9.45 when the children come indoors for a toilet break and snack. We’re out again at 10.15 for another timetabled round of activities, and lunch, at 12 o’clock, will be in the form of a ‘picnic’ on the field. Órla will post the day’s timetable around the school and give it to the volunteers. Going-home times are the same as every day.

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Board of ManagementThe Board of Management’s monthly meeting took place on Monday 18th May. Among the issues discussed were:

Policies: After-school Activities Policy and Critical Incident Policy were approved by the BOM and are now up on the website.

SCHOOL BUILDING: The BOM continues to keep in touch with the DES and is awaiting further news.

A buzzer is being installed on the new entrance and Ellen will also shortly have a security monitor in her office. All visitors are directed to Ellen in ‘Reception.’

Ingrid and Ellen will be doing a 3-day First Aid Course during the summer funded by the Board. The staff will take part in first-aid training also.

The Educate Together AGM was held on Saturday, 24th June. Robert and I, together with Vivienne and Jessica from the Board, attended. Our motion, that we ask Educate Together to work with the DES to ensure that Ballinteer Educate Together and other ET primary schools are automatically entitled to be feeder schools for any new Educate Together secondary school, was accepted so that this is now a part of Educate Together’s national policy. Jan O’Sullivan, the Minister for Education, was guest speaker at the AGM. The Minister spoke warmly and expressed her support for our Educate Together schools. She stayed for a question and answer session, and displayed a great willingness to tackle the key issues and challenges facing our schools.

AttendanceClass starts at 8.15 a.m. I would respectfully like to encourage everyone to arrive in good time because coming into class when the other children have already started can be upsetting for children as well as disruptive to the work already begun. Also, I know that some families would

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like to take a holiday during June but just to let you know that if you do, your child will miss out on some part of the curriculum; and we are obliged, in addition, to encourage complete attendance in so far as is possible for the optimum education of your child.

BooklistsBooklists have been emailed to all classes and will be given out at the new parents’ meeting on 4 th

June. We would very much appreciate if booklists could be paid for by 11th June. Details are on the booklists. Thank you. The cost of books will decrease as the children progress through the school and it is possible to extend the book rental scheme. At the moment, the charge for readers enables us to provide an enormous range of progressively-graded books so that each child reads between two and three books every week. We estimate that the children read an average of 50 to 60 books during a school year. We also ensure that learning is far from being restricted to text books by using a variety of resources including educational apps on our ipads and a variety of equipment and materials that promote discovery learning and problem-solving activities.

Last day of term is Tuesday, 30th June. School closes at 12 noon for all classes.

Have a wonderful summer and we will see you back here on Thursday, 27 th August

at 8.15 a.m.

Note: Junior Infants will start at 9.15 a.m. and finish at 12.15 p.m. for the first four days: that is,

Thursday, 27th August

Friday 28th August

Monday 31st August

and Tuesday 1st September. From then on, it’s 8.15 a.m. to 12.55 p.m. every day

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