Newsletter 31st March 2020.

Dear Parents,

As we enter an extended period of closure I would like to thank you sincerely for your patience and understanding at this very difficult time. On behalf of the staff of Scoil Íosa I wish yourselves and your families well and hope that you are all keeping healthy and avoiding infection by this Coronavirus scourge. While this newsletter is primarily to help and direct parents in ways to keep the children engaged with their schoolwork, if we were to prioritise advice and guidance, it would be to continue to reinforce the importance of the instruction to stay at home and practice social distancing. A few uncomfortable weeks will save lives and lead to an end to this lockdown sooner and hopefully a return to normality in the very near future. As I write, the Taoiseach has decreed that the schools will not reopen until April 20th. I personally think that this is a little optimistic and in reality we are looking at a more protracted closure. I’m sure we will be updated appropriately in a couple of weeks.
Meanwhile I would like to bring the following notices to your attention:

School Work.
The teachers will continue to upload work to the Google drive as previously.(Link on the school website www.iosaballyhaunis.com). We are delighted with the engagement with this work from a large body of our pupils. For those families who have not yet logged into the work, please do so as this will provide feedback to the teachers which will inform planning for classes for the next school year. As with any online system, we have experienced a few glitches which we have thankfully solved. One piece of feedback from teachers concerns pupils work on the Khan Academy Maths platform. It appears that a few pupils have not adhered to the work set by the class teachers. The work set is very important as it correlates and is directly linked to the school curriculum. We request that pupils stick to Assignments only, as this keeps the children completing the same work as their classmates. Do not click into courses as this is not teacher directed. Before clicking directly into Khan Academy or Readtheory folders, pupils should go firstly to the class folder to check the teachers instructions for the week. This is regularly updated.

RTE Schoolroom.
RTE television has launched a new service for schools in conjunction with the Department of Education and Skills entitled ‘School on TV’. This is broadcast daily on RTE 2 daily at 11a.m. It is presented by teachers and is relevant for all classes in Primary schools in Ireland. It is well worthwhile for the children to view this daily. It can also be accessed on RTE Player and on rte.ie/learn. There is a follow up programme daily at 4:15 p.m. entitled RTE Homeschool Extra on which children may upload videos of their lockdown or of work they have completed. We can thoroughly recommend this initiative.

Easter Break.
The school was scheduled to break for the annual Easter holiday on this Friday, April 3rd with return to school being scheduled for April 20th. It is our intention that the children should take this break from schoolwork. Therefore the work currently set by the teachers will run to this Friday. Next work update will be for the period immediately following the scheduled break. As I have previously stated, I do not envisage the schools opening as scheduled.

School Transport Applications.
We have been asked to remind parents that the deadline for applications to Bus Eireann for school transport for the 2020-2021 school year is Friday April 24th.This is particularly important for those children moving to secondary school in August.

Communication with Staff.
If you have any further questions/queries/clarification needed from any teacher, please send these by email to the school email iosaballyhaunis@gmail.com and I will forward these. Secondly if parents require attendance letters or similar please forward the request by email with the pupils current address and these will be forwarded by post once completed.

Finally all information will be uploaded to the school website so we ask that you check there regularly. Unfortunately despite numerous requests, a number of parents have either given incorrect phone numbers or have given none at all. In these challenging times our text service is our primary method of keeping in contact with our parents and without the correct contact details we cannot reach out to all of our families. Not providing a correct contact number is both selfish and irresponsible and has deprived a number of children of their right to education. This is something we will address in the strongest terms on return to school.

Regards,
Kenneth Dennedy
On behalf of all staff at Scoil Íosa.