The school remained close until 1st March when we reopened for Junior Infants to 2nd Class. All parents had to sign a declaration to say their children were well and able to return to school. They also got documentation regarding Covid absences, protocol for returning and Covid etiquette.
3rd – 6th classes continued to work remotely with their teachers. Today they returned to school. Students from DCU also came to the school today to work with the children till Easter. They had been working from home for college and recently have been working remotely alongside the class teachers with the classes whom they will now be with. Shared teaching will take place for the next two weeks. It will be good for the teachers to have an extra hand in the classroom. This will allow them to work individually and in groups with weaker children who need to catch up.
We have taken all the required precautions for returning to school and we remain vigilant.
We observed an Internet Safety Day on 9th led by Susan Crammond. Also various workshops in other curricular areas were provided for the classes online. This was to try and keep the work as varied as possible. Southside Sports provided PE classes.
Most parents and children settled into their new way of working and teachers were more experienced at providing online support in the way of daily videos and social zoom calls, along with Dojo and Seasaw.
Weaker children who needed daily contact were contacted both by either the teacher, SNA or Special Needs team to help bring them along. 6 Staff members took 6 individual children after school hours for Supplementary Teaching hours. This gave them even more one to one teaching which they needed. I feel our children with Special Needs were well looked after.
We are sending Assemblies around the classrooms and Rev Sean Hanily has become a regular visitor to the school. He visited the four youngest classes to say hello and will visit the older classes this week. He also helped us with Lenten classes by sending us booklets and information. Sean has been coming up to the school once a week in the morning to see parishioners and introduce himself. Obviously all this is carried out wearing masks and with social distancing.
Spanish and Music are stopped for now and we hope to continue with them in the Summer term. GAA, PE and Extra Curricular Activities have also been curtailed, according to Government guidelines, for the time being.
Seachtain na Gaeilge is this week and we are doing our best within the classes to carry this out. The staff have received work to help them with this involving, quizzes, colouring, word searches and games. A short Assembly as Gaeilge was also sent around.
We will be dressing yellow for Daffodil Day on the last day of term to help Cancer research. This is just for a bit of fun. Fun is needed in any way we can manufacture it at the moment.
The staff and children are delighted to be back however I remain anxious and look forward to the vaccine when it finally arrives!