Newsletter to Parents
April 19th 2023.
Dear Parents,
On behalf of everybody at Scoil Íosa, I welcome you back for the final term of the school year. This promises to be a very busy term with testing, sports events, Communion, Confirmation, Active Schools Week and also the upcoming School Wellbeing Week. As such I would like to bring the following to your attention.
Enrolment of New Pupils.
Enrolment of new pupils has been ongoing since January. To allow us to plan for next year, the junior infant enrolment will conclude at the end of this month. All remaining forms should be returned by this time.
Wellness Week
Scoil Íosa will run a wellness week from Monday April 24th to Friday April 28th (next week). The aim of the week will be to focus on wellbeing and mental health among the school community including pupils, teachers and parents with a number of events planned for all. A timetable of events is attached separately. Please note that the weeks event includes a half day closure on Tuesday next 25th April to allow for a staff training afternoon. Children will finish at 12 p.m. to facilitate this and should be collected at this time.
We will also give the children an alternative homework programme for the week (see attached).
Parents are also invited to participate in the events of the week as follows:
Tuesday April 25th: Parents Zumba Class in the School Hall @7:30pm
Wednesday April 26th: Parents Yoga in the School Hall @7:30p.m.
Both events/classes are free of charge to parents.
Standardised Testing.
All pupils from 1st to 6th classes will undertake standardised testing in English and Maths as is usual at the end of the school year. In 2nd, 4th and 6th classes, the results must be forwarded to the Department of Education. Our timetable for this testing is as follows:
- English Testing will take place for 3rd – 6th classes between May 8th and May 19th. All other classes will undertake the English tests from May 15th to May 26th.
- Maths Testing will take place for all classes from 1st – 6th from May 15th to May 26th.
Further information will be given nearer to the testing dates.
Calendar
Monday April 24th – Friday April 28th : School Wellness Week
Tuesday April 25th: School closes at 12p.m. for teacher Inservice training.
Tuesday April 25th: Confirmation Ceremony of Light in St Patrick’s Church @ 7p.m.
Thursday April 27th: Confirmation Retreat at Knock Shrine.
Monday May 1st: May Bank Holiday (School Closed)
Saturday May 6th: First Communion in St Patrick’s Church @ 11 a.m.
Saturday May 20th: Confirmation in St Patrick’s Church @ 12p.m.
Monday June 5th: June Bank Holiday (School Closed)
Friday June 16th: Sixth Class Graduation & School End of Year Mass.
Wednesday June 21st: Final day of term. School closes @12 p.m
Please note that there will be school sports day, Active Schools Week to be added.
School Books 2023/24 & onwards.
Parents may be aware that from the beginning of the new school year all school textbooks will be provided to all children free of charge. This will mean that we will no longer issue book lists to parents at the end of the year. Parents will however be required to purchase pens, pencils, crayons, gluesticks etc and these requirements will be issued to parents. As Art materials and Photocopying costs are not included in the free book scheme we will continue to collect this at the beginning of the school year.
As we are trying to build up a stock of books and the new scheme will mean that there will be no market for secondhand books we are asking parents to consider donating textbooks currently in use to the school. We would be very grateful for assistance in this regard. We will arange a book donation day before the end of the term.
Finally we offer our congratulations to our Muslim pupils on the occasion of Eid Al Fitr. Eid Mubarak.
Regards,
K. Dennedy