May June Newsletter 2017

School News

Sports Day

We were very lucky to have a lovely sunny day

for our Sports Day, on Friday the 2nd of June.

The children had a super fun and action packed day. We split the classes into different teams for the stations activities which included an obstacle course, races, a football shootout and parachute games. 

Things got very competitive with the tug of war and long jump. Look at the concentration on the children’s faces. Mr. Sin, a Tae-kwon-do instructor, came in to do some lessons with the older children. They had great fun practicing their kicks!

After a hectic day, the junior infants headed out to our lovely garden for some yoga and meditation.

The smoothie station was a big hit. The children were very tired from running around, so it was nice to have a break and a refreshing, healthy drink.

Peace Run

We were delighted to welcome the Peace Run Team to our school back in May. This year the Peace Run is celebrating its 30th anniversary. Galway had been chosen for the European opening ceremony as the most Western point in Europe. The runners from many countries will be represented. The President of Ireland has been invited to welcome the runners. We now have the details confirmed for the team’s schedule while in Ireland and the schools are a large part of this initiative. They try to visit as many schools as possible in every country, so we were really lucky!

You can find out more information at www.peacerun.org

The motto of the Peace Run is “Peace Begins With Me!” – stressing the importance of how each individual can make a positive contribution to creating a happier and more peaceful world.

The Peace Runners visited 2nd and 3rd Classes for a presentation and then our whole school gathered together to touch the Peace Torch and make a wish for world peace.

Darragh’s Drumming

Written By : Luke, Jésus and Darragh

Darragh, from 2nd Class entered a competition on Radio Nova, if he won he would get a professional drum kit, concert tickets and professional drum lessons. Darragh got 1000 votes from people all over the world and Ireland. He won! The song that Darragh played was Highway to Hell by AC/DC. Darragh says that playing was ‘extremely fun’! He knew from the start that he ‘had it in the bag’! His drum teacher, Steve, was very happy that he won.

After School Activities

After School Activities have now finished for the year and we were delighted with such a wide variety of activities on offer to the children. Thank you to all the parents and children who showed a great interest and allowed us to run so many classes. We can’t wait to see what will be on offer next year!

Social Activists

We here at Ballinteer ETNS were not happy to hear about the unfair treatment of the girls soccer team by the FAI. It made us angry and cross, so we put our heads together, and every child in our school wrote a letter to the head of the FAI.

We like to think our collective influence had some impact on the positive outcome!

 

Santry

Written by Bianca and Lorinne (Aongus’ 2nd Class)

Second and Third classes went to Santry on a gigantic bus. Luke, Lorinne, Raveesh, Hayden, Bianca, Emilia, Stella, Callum and Conrad from 2nd Class and all of 3rd Class went. They brought their lunches with them and ate a little bit of it before the races started. The people that did the races went to a different area to put on the athletics uniform. Aongus and Anne chose people to do the sprint races. Then the rest of the team did the relay races. When the race finished everyone cheered. It was a hot and sunny day and we enjoyed ourselves a lot.

Thank you from Ann

Following on from the success of our wonderful cake sale, Ann would like to thank everyone for their support and generosity. Thank you so much to everyone for their contributions and help on the day. We raised an astounding €1070 and all this money goes to a worthy cause and will change the lives of the children attending the summer school in Zomba, Malawi. Below is a video link from the Chifundo organisation, this provides an insight into the lives of some of the children your money will help.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VvBcXwHuI1g

Staff Changes

We would like take this opportunity to congratulate Aisling and Orla, who will both be on maternity leave this coming year. Muireann will take Órla’s place as Deputy Principal until her return. We would also like to welcome Ann, who has recently become a permamnent member of our staff, and we look forward to welcoming as many as four new faces in September!

Assessments and Report

First Class, Second Class and Third Class sat their standardised assessments earlier this month. The classes used the Drumcondra Reading Test and Sigma-T Maths Test. Feedback on these results were given 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.

School Bus

The PTA and school have had many queries about a bus service to the Notre Dame site next year. The school transport division will make a decision on this in July. In the meantime the PTA have looked at a private bus option. It would be possible for parents to source a bus that could do drop off to our new school for €12 per week. The route can be discussed with the bus company. The PTA will pass on this information pending the Department's decision so families can decide if they wish to avail of it.

Fundraising

We are thrilled to have such a supportive and energetic parent body. Their support and help has been invaluable to us throughout the year. We would like to say a huge thank you for the very successful fundrasing (see below!) and their success and good humour in relation to our ongoing campaign to build our school.

To date the PTA have raised an amazing €9,899

· Tesco Bag Pack         €2747

· Cards & Calendars     €1000

· Table Quiz                  €2036

· Family Fun Day          €2476

· Portrait Photos            €1640

New Equipment

Thanks to the hard work and fund raising by the PTA this year we have been able to order over €600 worth of new science equipment for our school! Second Class have already been exploring and experimenting with our fantastic new electronics equipment.

We recently received 15 new ipads, giving us a total of 27 ipads all together. The children have been using the ipads to work on their literacy and numeracy in a fun, interactive way. The children have also been using the ipads to take photos, make videos and document their work. The ipads are an amazing resource and we all really appreciate them! Thank you!

All the children and teachers in Ballinteer ETNS would like to thank the PTA for all their fundraising work on our behalf!

Class News

Junior Infants

Term three has been filled with lots of fun and learning in Junior Infants. We headed outdoors during the fine weather for a Teddy Bear’s Picnic. We went on a class trip to Glenroe Pet Farm where we played in the amazing playground and were brought on a tour of the farm. We got to see all the different animals and birds. We even got to hold a baby bunny rabbit and guinea pig!

We explored transport and travel during Aistear time and really enjoyed doing role play at the travel Agents. We learned about the life cycle of a butterfly, summer time and the Islamic month of Ramadan. Lily told us some information about Ramadan. Fasting during the month of Ramadan is one of the Five Pillars of Islam. The month is spent by Muslims fasting during the daylight hours from dawn to sunset. It helps you to be more thankful and experience how poor people feel. We have had a fantastic time in Junior Infants and can’t wait for another year of fun and learning ahead!

Senior Infants

Senior Infants went to Ballaly park for a picnic. We had great fun playing in the playground! It was a hot sunny day so we sat in the shade to eat our lunches.

We are reading about pirates at the moment and working on our pirate masks using paper maché. We can't wait to paint them!

First Class

This term in First Class has been action packed, with plenty of learning both indoors and outdoors in the sunshine. We have been investigating water in S.E.S.E. and thinking about how water usage impacts on the environment, animals and people. We made posters to help others learn how to save water. Don’t forget to turn off the tap when brushing your teeth!

We learned that it is very important not to waste water and that we are lucky to have clean water to drink. Ann spoke to the children in our class about the village in Malawi that she will volunteer in this summer. We learned that the children in that village need to walk to the well to get water and then carry the water back.

We have also had lots of fun with beach and pirate themed activities. We were creative in art when making our pirate treasure maps, beach and mermaid pictures. We think they look super!

In science we studied the life cycle of a butterfly and watched videos to see how the butterfly emerges from the chrysalis. We made little books to illustrate what happens.

Second Class

Our Tesco Visit by Luiza, Meenakshi and Noah

We marched to Tesco in Dundrum. We spotted a garden with many flowers created for bees to help them pollinate. We went on the stairs, there were lots of people. Our parents gave us 2 euro to buy 4 things in Tesco. We divided the 2 euro in to quarters and we were able to buy one treat, one healthy snack and 2 items.

The Giggler Treatment by Maya, Adrien and Anees

In 2nd class our class novel is The Giggler Treatment by Roddy Doyle. There are 5 main characters but two we don’t know just yet. Mr. Mack, the seagull and the Gigglers are in the first part of the story. We’re in the middle of the story now and we still don’t know two characters. Roddy Doyle is a very funny writer. The Gigglers have been here since the beginning of time. It is a very enthusiastic book.

Upcoming Class Trip by Layla, Emilia and Hayden

We went to Kilruddery. We did Tag Rugby and Team-Building games. We went at 8.30am in the morning. We did an obstacle course ‘Hell and Back’ and we needed team-work to finish it. We needed spare clothes and runners because we got very dirty.

Capacity by Jane, Rhys and Michael

A few weeks ago we worked on capacity in our maths lessons. The first thing our teacher did is connect the end of the hose to a sink beside Laura’s desk. Then we were divided in to different groups and the different groups took objects with different capacities. Aongus filled a bin with water from the hose and then we filled our capacity objects. Then we experimented and observed what happened when we changed the capacity of each object. Then we explained what we discovered to the class and Aongus. After we explained our findings about capacity to the class, Aongus put us in to groups of 4 instead of 2. Then we had double the amount of capacity items to work with. We’ve had loads of fun learning about capacity!

Passion Projects by Rudra and Nicolas

In 2nd class we got to do Passion Projects. A passion project is on any topic you like and we did them alone. The projects took 2-4 weeks. We did a lot of research and found lots of pictures. Rudra and Nicolas chose to write about Dinosaurs and The Bermuda Triangle. Rudra learned that the Pterodactyl is a flying dinosaur. Nicolas learned that the deepest part of the Bermuda Triangle is The Bahamas and the three areas that make up the Bermuda Triangle are Florida, Bermuda and Puerto Rico. We really enjoyed making our projects.

The Long Jump by James and Raveesh

We did the long jump during sports day. We learned the new techniques of doing it. Some people jumped unbelievably far. There were two small groups. We used thick layers of sand to land on. People even jumped (estimated) 5.2 metres. Some people landed successfully, some in error (fails). Some landed on their side, some people landed on their feet. We saw some people (estimated) jump 35 feet long. The long jump was fun.

Third Class

Well it is hard to believe that our year in Third Class has almost come to an end. Time certainly does fly when you’re having fun! We have had many exciting adventures and experiences this year but of course with the summer holidays looming we are looking forward to many more ahead.

One such fantastic experience was attending the annual athletics competition for Primary schools which was held in Santry. The whole class thoroughly enjoyed the trip there whether they were taking part in the races or cheering on our talented athletes. We had quite the squad of supporters as you can see in the photos and we all look forward to next year and the possibilities which await us!

We have certainly had a year full of sports from swimming to Tag Rugby. Continuing on with this action-packed programme we were lucky enough to have Gaelic Football with Dónal in our last term. We certainly learned and honed the techniques needed to play the game and it also helped with our preparation for Sports Day. You can see from the photos that as always Sports Day was a blast!

In class however we have been learning about all sorts of interesting things. We are currently coming to the end of our theme on Africa where we have created projects on Kenya, learnt about some of the Ancient societies of Africa and are currently creating our very own National Parks where the ‘Big 5’ animals can be seen on safari! We are also reading and enjoying Michael Morpurgo’s ‘The Butterfly Lion’.

Notes to Parents

Booklists :

Booklists have been emailed to all classes and we have received most of the money. We will now begin ordering books for those who have paid. If you have not already, please send in your payment as soon as possible to ensure your children’s books are ordered. If you have any difficulty with this payment, please contact Ellen.

After School Supervision:

The PTA and school have received many queries from parents regarding a supervised space between 12.55 and 1.55 for the next school year. Unfortunately, this cannot be considered at this time. We would advise you to ensure that you have arrangements in place for this hour for next September.

School Reopening:

School will begin at 8.15 on Monday 4th September in our new school building. Our new Junior Infants will have a shorter day for the first week. They will begin at 9.30 and finish at 12.

September Arrangements:

The entrance to Notre Dame Junior School is located on the Churchtown Road, and there will be a drop off system in place. We anticipate some minor teething problems in relation to traffic management and drop off, so we appreciate your patience in this matter. Information on classroom allocation, teacher allocation and any other necessary details about our move will be provided in August.

Highlights of the year

The Mill Theatre

Sports Day

UCD Trip

Artist in Residence

Kelvin the Magician

Playworks

Lá Féile Paidraig

Tag Rugby

Dogs Trust VisitSantry

As our year draws to a close it is time to reflect on all of the things we have completed, learned and experienced. We would like to take this opportunity to thank you all for the support and help you have given the school, teachers and, most importantly, the children throughout the year. Have a wonderful summer and see you all in September!

We hope you all have a happy Summer break!

The school will close for the Summer at 12am on break on Friday, 30th June.

We will reopen at 8.15am on September 4th.

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