Good morning and welcome back to Term 3 of the oddest school year ever!
I sincerely hope that you are all well - that you are healthy in mind and body, and that you feel loved and cared for in your life.
Survey results
I thank you so much for completing our survey over the last two weeks. We had 172 responses, representing 60% of our families, which is a wonderful response. We look forward to looking at trends and comments on the survey this week and then making decisions about changes we can make over the coming weeks. As I wrote before, any changes will be made slowly so as to give everyone the chance to get used to one change before figuring out the next one.
A first glance at the survey results shows us that 85% of children are coping reasonably well with working at home and 88% of children are engaging in the activities suggested by their teacher with a further 9% engaging in activities not suggested by the school. This shows a community coping remarkably well during a difficult time. I am so pleased to see this. I can't imagine there are too many who found the transition to this way of living easy but these results show that there is a high level of resilience and growth mindset and can-do attitude in our community. There is nothing more we can ask of ourselves than that. So give yourselves - parents and children - a big round of applause for coping so far!
This week
Suggested activities for this week went live on the class websites on Friday. Please note that there is a new Home Learning page on each class website for April.
If your child has not already submitted work or sent a message to their class teacher, please try to send something in this week. Even a note to say "Hi! I'm fine!" would be great. We worry about our children and we are eager to know that they are ok. If they're not ok, we want to know too so that we can help if its possible for us to help.
Rest of term
We know that we are all to be at home for the next 2.5 weeks, up to 5th May. We don't know what's happening after that. We don't know when we'll be back to school and we don't know whether there will be a staggered return or smaller groups at any one time. Please trust that we are working to prepare for each eventuality and we hope that, whenever the next stage is announced, our school will be ready to meet the new requirements.
For now, the most important task for parents in terms of supporting children is to protect their mental health. As I have written before, it is better to get a lower amount of easier school work done and to feel confident and happy about it than to push forward with a lot of hard work and feel stressed or have dented confidence because of it. When we get back to school, our teachers can work on that difficult content but only if the children are happy and not stressed or traumatised.
Wishing you and your children a happy week this week. I will be in touch again before the end of the week.
All the best,
Caitriona.
I sincerely hope that you are all well - that you are healthy in mind and body, and that you feel loved and cared for in your life.
Survey results
I thank you so much for completing our survey over the last two weeks. We had 172 responses, representing 60% of our families, which is a wonderful response. We look forward to looking at trends and comments on the survey this week and then making decisions about changes we can make over the coming weeks. As I wrote before, any changes will be made slowly so as to give everyone the chance to get used to one change before figuring out the next one.
A first glance at the survey results shows us that 85% of children are coping reasonably well with working at home and 88% of children are engaging in the activities suggested by their teacher with a further 9% engaging in activities not suggested by the school. This shows a community coping remarkably well during a difficult time. I am so pleased to see this. I can't imagine there are too many who found the transition to this way of living easy but these results show that there is a high level of resilience and growth mindset and can-do attitude in our community. There is nothing more we can ask of ourselves than that. So give yourselves - parents and children - a big round of applause for coping so far!
This week
Suggested activities for this week went live on the class websites on Friday. Please note that there is a new Home Learning page on each class website for April.
If your child has not already submitted work or sent a message to their class teacher, please try to send something in this week. Even a note to say "Hi! I'm fine!" would be great. We worry about our children and we are eager to know that they are ok. If they're not ok, we want to know too so that we can help if its possible for us to help.
Rest of term
We know that we are all to be at home for the next 2.5 weeks, up to 5th May. We don't know what's happening after that. We don't know when we'll be back to school and we don't know whether there will be a staggered return or smaller groups at any one time. Please trust that we are working to prepare for each eventuality and we hope that, whenever the next stage is announced, our school will be ready to meet the new requirements.
For now, the most important task for parents in terms of supporting children is to protect their mental health. As I have written before, it is better to get a lower amount of easier school work done and to feel confident and happy about it than to push forward with a lot of hard work and feel stressed or have dented confidence because of it. When we get back to school, our teachers can work on that difficult content but only if the children are happy and not stressed or traumatised.
Wishing you and your children a happy week this week. I will be in touch again before the end of the week.
All the best,
Caitriona.
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