October Newsletter

October Newsletter 2020

Dear Parents/Guardians,

I hope you and your family continue to keep safe and well at this time. Thank you for your co-operation and support over the last two months ensuring the health and safety of all in Scoil Mhuire. The school will continue to uphold all health and safety protocols and ask for your continued support with this.

Covid-19 Response Plan:

Our school inspector Mrs Eileen O’ Sullivan has been in touch with the school recently and has strongly affirmed our covid-19 response plan and risk assessment which were made available to all parents end of August on the school website. I would like to thank the teachers for their continued hard work ensuring the health and safety of all pupils in their class in these difficult, unprecedented times. I would ask all parents to reinforce the good hand hygiene procedures and cough sneeze etiquette with their children each eve. This reinforces all the good procedures teachers maintain each day with the class. We remind parents that pupils must not attend school if they are ill. Any parents whose daughter presents with Covid-19 symptoms such as cough, sore throat, fever, shortness of breath, loss of sense of taste/smell, should not attend school and consult their GP for advice. Please keep the school updated at all times. I would like all pupils to take home their books at mid-term to wipe down and sanitise.

Parent-Teacher Meetings:

Teachers will be facilitating parent teacher meetings on Zoom this year as it is not possible to have parents into the school building due to Covid-19 restrictions. The meetings will be held the week commencing November 23^rd. All teachers will send parents a meeting date and time along with a zoom invitation after mid-term break.

School Finishing Times:

In order to avoid large groups congregating in the evening time Scoil Mhuire has decided to stagger its finishing time for 1^st-6^th class. We have been testing this out over the last few weeks and it has been working well. From now on 1^st&2^nd class will be on their lines at the front of the school at 2:50p.m.. 3^rd&4^th class will be on their lines at 2:55p.m. and 5^th&6^th will be on their lines at 3:00p.m. I would encourage 4^th,5^th and 6^th class pupils to use the pedestrian walkway in the evening as much as possible. I would ask parents to depart as soon as they have collected their child to avoid any congregation.

Maths Week:

Scoil Mhuire thoroughly enjoyed maths week 2020 where the pupils engaged in lots of fun maths activities with their teachers. Pupils enjoyed exploring different maths problems, entering the maths eyes competition, daily maths intercom quiz and engaging with maths activities on the mangaghigh website. We hope you had some fun with maths at home too.

Coding:

I would like to thank the Parent’s Association for funding our recent purchase of Beebots and Lego Wedo 2.0 for coding. The teachers received CPD in using Beebots and Lego Wedo last January and we hope to use these to develop problem solving skills with the pupils as they engage in coding activities. The Beebots have already made firm friends at the junior end and the senior end are now looking forward to working with the Lego Wedo 2.0 set.

Dress Up Day:

All children are allowed to dress up for Hallowe’en this Friday and enjoy some in school Hallowe’en celebrations. Children can come to school dressed up and bring a nut free treat with them to have at their lunch time.

I wish you all a safe and happy Hallowe’en.

Is mise le meas,

Ms. O’ Kelly