It’s hard to believe that only a month ago we were welcoming almost 70 new children to our school, with over 50 Junior Infants and their families joining us for our 9th year as a school. We were delighted to see so many new faces joining us and we hope you have many happy years in our school. September has been an incredibly busy month and we have lots of news to share with you already. Last night, we had our annual Parents’ Committee AGM and we said a sad farewell to Rhonda and the rest of the committee after three super years. When one works closely with a group of people, it is hard not to become close and I can honestly say, I have made some wonderful friends. I am looking forward to working with our new committee and congratulations to Kathy and the rest of our new committee on their appointments. For those of you who are new to the school, please note that all our newsletters are sent electronically and they are probably the most important thing we send every month. Each month, the newsletter will update you with the different things that are going on in the school with reminders about events and all sorts of other things. If you want to share anything in our newsletter, please feel free to email it to Siobhán or me, and we’ll be happy to publish it. I hope you have a fantastic year with us and we’d love to see as much of you as possible. Until then, keep happy, safe and learning.
If you have changed your phone number or address or any other details, please contact Siobhán in the office so we can update records.
As you’ve probably already noticed, the footpath has been completed between the Athy Road Roundabout and the school. This has taken the Board of Management over 4 years to negotiate and they are still working very hard to solve the issues of traffic on the Athy Road. Your help in contacting the council would be most welcome on this. In the meantime, we are hoping to start a “Walking Bus” this year and will need parents and guardians to help us out. A meeting will be established soon to begin the process. The footpath also contains a cycle lane and our school has space for a number of bicycles.
This year, Carlow Educate Together NS has opened with 289 pupils. We have two sets of Junior Infant classes now and we are completely full in all classes from 1st class upwards.
We’re delighted to welcome a number of new staff to our school. Mark and Cliona joined us from Kildare ETNS and Gorey ETNS respectively and have settled in really well. We also welcomed back Tricia and Susanne. We are also sharing some teachers with other local schools and we’re delighted to have Yvonne and Leah with us. We will also be welcoming a new teacher next month. We also want to welcome Solomon Roller to the staff in the role of caretaker.
Caseloads have now been completed and Learning Support and Resource Hours should begin shortly.
If you live more than 2.3km from the school, you are entitled to bus transport to the school. We have a number of buses servicing the school, which are organised and run by Bus Éireann. If you are interested in using the bus, please contact the School Transport Office of Bus Éireann in Waterford.
As you have noticed, the council did not provide the Department of Education enough space to provide many parking spaces in the school. As a school, we are not able to police traffic on the site so we can only encourage people to use the site in a mannerly way. While most people use our site respectfully, we have already noticed that the same few parents consistently block areas of the site, including the front gate and on zebra crossings. Not only is this terribly dangerous, it causes further delays. If everyone is using the site well, it can be cleared in 5 minutes after 2:30pm, despite the number of cars. We ask people never to sound their horns or act in an aggressive manner.
Our Parents’ Room is now located on the ground floor in Room G03 beside Play Together. Parents and guardians are welcome to use the room. Please speak to the office for more details.
The Lost and Found area is now in our Parents’ Room. All items will be donated to charity at the end of each month.
We have a number of after school clubs running in the school everyday including Eleanor’s wonderful Play Together club. We also run a homework club from Monday to Thursday. We have a number of sports clubs and music clubs too. Please check the school web site for more information.
Please note that if you are collecting your child during school hours to do so during office hours. The office is open from 8:30am to 10:30am, 10:50am to 12:20pm and 12:45pm to 3pm. After 3pm, please ring the doorbell and a member of Play Together will answer the door. Due to security, at no time should a parent come into the school yard to collect their child. All children must be collected from the office.
Please note one small change to the school calendar this year. The 3rd February 2017 will be a half day due to staff training. It is likely there will be one or two other staff training days throughout the year due to changes in the curriculum and we will let you know of these with as much notice as possible.
Please register your interest if you’d like Carlow to have a second level Educate Together school. https://secure.jotformpro.com/form/52224353965962 The group also have a Facebook Page, which we’d recommend you to join.
Don’t forget to check out our Maths Blog for Parents. We have loads of ideas and thoughts on maths in primary school. Check it out here: http://cetnsmaths.blogspot.ie/
The school has received a number of new laptops and computers during the summer. Thanks to Carlow IT for the donation of 20 computers.
As part of our Beliefs Systems strand in the Learn Together Programme, children will be given the opportunity to learn about different faiths. We have 3 speakers lined up so far this year to speak to the children: an Imam, a rector and a priest. Children will also have the opportunity to visit a Catholic Church and a Church of Ireland chapel.
Children from 3rd to 6th class will be using Google Classroom to record their homework this year. A month in, it is proving very successful.
We’re always thrilled to have parents and families volunteering in the school. We had over 100 parents in school last year and we’d love to see more of you.
We have two pupils in our school with nut allergies. It is vital that no nuts ever come into our school. We cannot police every lunchbox so we are relying on you to cooperate with our nut ban.
We’re delighted to be launching Reading Recovery and Literacy Lift Off in our younger classes and the 160-book challenge in other classes.
Starting Saturday 17th Sept, 10am 4-7yrs. 11am 8-12yrs. Bookings with Vanessa on: 0877857546 or visit www.carlowmandalayoga.ie
Near the end of last year, a group of parents launched a survey about homework. The key question asked parents whether they believed that our school should stop giving homework. The results were very interesting with an almost split down the middle for yes and no. Over the next two to three years, the school is going to undergo an examination of the role of homework and what kinds of homework are beneficial to primary-aged children. We hope that parents will engage in this interesting area of discussion.
We host many events during the school year and we love to see parents and families at them. The following events have been confirmed.
This year the school will be focusing on 6 key areas. In terms of the curriculum and learning, Mathematics, Science and ICT will be the main focus. We will also be looking at sport in our school, Health and Well-being frameworks and the school garden. Any help in these areas would be appreciated.
Last year, we were successful n fundraising for our school stage and our aim this year is very different. We are hoping to fundraise to open an Occupational Therapy Room in our school that would be self-sustaining. The idea would be that children in our school would benefit from this service without having to lose any time at school and that the community could also use the facility. This would allow us to raise funds to sustain the cost of our Special Classes. We have already had some donations from Jack Doran’s family in memory of their daughter and all this money has been set aside for this purpose.
There has been a lot of discussion about class size in the media and now that our school is becoming larger, parents might be curious as to how class sizes are calculated. Governments would have people believe that class sizes are anything from an average of 14:1 to 28:1 but, sadly, the reality is very different.
The number of mainstream class teachers in a school is calculated by dividing the number of children by whatever ratio the government announce each year. This year, it is 28, last year it was 29 and the year before it was 30. This doesn’t mean that this is the maximum number per classroom, it means the average in the school as a whole. This is why it is not unusual to find schools in Ireland with class sizes of 40 and above. The vast majority of schools have classes with 30+ children.
A straw poll in our staffroom revealed that most of our staff with children in other schools have class sizes of over 35. In our school, our biggest class size currently is 32. We are in a fortunate position this year that we can say that all classes with 28 or more in them are full as we have our full compliment of teachers. In order to have the number of teachers we have now, we needed to have 286 pupils in total. We have 289. Should we have had less than that, we would not have been able to keep one of our new teachers and this would have had an impact on class size.
I hope this explains the rather complicated nature of class size. Research does show that the ideal class size is 18 and anything more than 20 is reasonably insignificant but we’re a long way from there in Ireland at least!
Our Home School Lisison Teacher and School Completion Project Worker have a busy year planned. Here’s what’s going to be happening from month to month.
September
October
November
January
February
March
May
You can find us on various social media platforms:
YouTube – Search for Carlow Educate Together
Facebook – http://facebook/com/carlowetns
Twitter – http://twitter.com/carlowetns
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