We are very excited to be involved with the Junior Entrepreneurs Programme, and this year we have chosen to be Social Entrepreneurs!

As always, we rely on the support of students, family, friends and community members to help us on our journey. In addition, this year, we feel that we can help to provide very valuable and informative input into our local community. Our chosen project this year is “Don’t Judge”.
In this day, and age, we are constantly being reminded of the difficulties of people who are encountering challenges in their everyday lives. As part of our mission to be an inclusive school, we wish to address issues which are affecting many members of our community. The children have decided that they would like to tackle hard-pressing issues of exclusion, pre-judgement, social inclusion and acceptance. The crux of tackling these issues is education and understanding.
We have found that our children have embraced and accepted the needs of everyone in their school community, through informative sessions, and they want the same outcome from their family and friends.

As a result, we will be holding a presentation morning on May 19th which will showcase guest speakers discussing difficulties they have faced in their daily lives. We hope that this will be a ground-breaking initiative in the JEP journey, as well as being ground-breaking for our visitors.

Helen Rochford Brennan – Chair of the Irish Dementia and Alzheimers Group and Freya O’Hora All about Autism will be our keynote speakers on Friday morning. We very much look forward to welcoming both our speakers to our school.

The morning itself will comprise of teas/coffees & scones for all visitors. It will allow our guests a social opportunity to meet with other families. Presentations by the children will be interspersed throughout speaker presentations.

The children have designed, and ordered wristbands to highlight awareness of their message, to be sold on the day. These will also be sold throughout the school and community over the following week. The cost of the morning is €5.00. This will cover tea/coffee & scone and presentations. All proceeds will go towards our senior school tours.

We hope that you can make time to attend on Friday morning…our success is dependent upon it!

See you all there!!

Wonderful news has come through to us this evening. Ms.Sloyan’s Rang a hAon have been selected as winners in their respective section at the All Ireland Féile Scoildramaíochta Finals.

This is a fantastic achievement for Ms.Sloyan, her wonderful students and a great honour for our school.

There will be fantastic celebrations in school tomorrow!!

Comhghairdeachas mhór to Second Class who tonight made their First Confession. It was a lovely ceremony. A very special word of thanks to Fr’s Doherty and Johnston also to Mrs McCafferty and her son Joseph for all their hard work in the background. Finally thank you to Mr.Rushe who prepared the children so well. His Second Class certainly did him proud.

Well done to all the girls and boys who received their First Confession. Next up for Second Class is First Holy Communion which they will receive on Saturday May 27th. They certainly have lots to look forward to! Maith sibh!

Wonderful news came to us this week that we have been awarded our seventh Green Flag for Global Citizenship Litter and Waste.

We are very proud of our Green School’s Committee and indeed all our students for their hard work with the Green School’s project. A very special word of thanks to Ms.Delaney who again has been to the forefront leading this project. We sincerely appreciate her hard word, enthusiasm and continued interest. We look forward to celebrating and raising our sixth Green Flag at a ceremony as the school year draws to a close. Representatives of our Committee will join Ms.Delaney to receive our latest Green Flag from An Taisce on May 11th.

Further information will follow regarding our school celebrations.

Gaeilgóir Na Seachtaine

I rith mí Márta agus Áinbeain ar scoil chuir muid béim ar labhairt ghaeilge. De réir sin, bhí Gaeilgóir Na Seachtaine againne in aghaidh Dalta Na Seachtaine! Mar is gnáth, níor lig siad síos muid.

Bhí neart gaeilge líofa le chloisteál timpeall na háite, agus ba chóir go mbéadh. Fuair na páistí an-mholadh ón móltóir féile drámaíocht an seachtain seo chaite i nGaillimh, mar tá gaeilge álainn acu. Mar a deirtear, tír gan teanga, tír gan anam. Má tá gaeilge agat, labhair í.

In school over the last month we placed great emphasis on speaking Irish as part of our Seachtain na Gaeilge celebrations. As a result we had Gaeilgóir na Seachtaine in place of Student of the Week. As always our students didn’t disappoint or let us down.

We heard lots of beautiful Irish throughout the school and why wouldnt we! The children standards have received great praise of late particularly from the judges at the Féile Dramaíochta. Maith sibh!

If you have gaeilge, use it!

Easter Draw

At our final assembly of the term earlier our Parents Association hosted the Easter Raffle. There was great excitement as the winning tickets were picked from the box. Comhghairdeachas mór do na buaiteoirí go léir.

A sincere thank you to all who supported the draw. Your support as always is/was very much appreciated. Míle buíochas also to our Parents Association who helped with and organised this fundraiser. All funds raised this year are going to our ‘School Yard Project’.

Next up is our Easter Bake Sale on Easter Sunday. We greatly appreciate all who are baking and helping out on the morning. Should you still wish to do so, please do not hesitate to contact any member of our Parents Association!

Finally, we hope you all have a lovely Easter break! Beannachtaí na Cásca oraibh go léir.

We had a lovely sunny day for our assembly this afternoon and presentation of students of the week.

What a busy week this was, from chicks in Rang a hAon to the Spar 5 a side soccer competition to our Green Schools Evaluation to our Junior Entrepreneur Dragon’s Den to a visit from an engineer, swimming for all classes from 1st -6th to finally a very interesting and enjoyable presentation from Victoria Efeni speaking to students from 4th-6th as part of our Global Citizenship project! This was all on top of the very busy work of teaching and learning in all classes.

Our teachers this week praised students for their not alone their hard work but also teamwork that was visible with the many projects that are ongoing throughout the school. Teachers expressed their delight at the maturity and level of common sense on display this week. Also it is always a pleasure to hear of children achieving with a task that they may have found previously difficult. It shows that their hard work will pay off if they persevere.

Children learn by example and the praise we heard today was a shining example for all of our students. Congratulations to those awarded Student of the Week and keep up the great work.

Next week again promises to be a busy week, we have our final week’s swimming on Wednesday and also a visit from the Road Safety Authority focusing on how best to be safe when walking, cycling and also as passenger in a vehicle.

Bainigí taitneamh as an deireadh seachtaine!

While our Girls and Boys team’s participated in the Spar 5’s those who remained back at base had a lovely visit from Anne Wiseman from the Technology Department of GMIT Castlebar.

Anne gave a very interesting talk to 4th, 5th and 6th class on the role of an engineer and the different types of engineers out there. She first introduced herself as a structural engineer and told us about her role as an engineer and her work in GMIT. She then followed with a very interesting animated video about where we encounter the work of an engineer in our daily lives from the moment we wake up to going to bed at night. It was amazing all the little things we take for granted and how different our lives would be if they had not been engineered.

Someone had to engineer the home we live in, how we get running water, the toothpaste we use to keep our teeth healthy and clean, the machines to make the books that we learn from and the wonderful technology our school is lucky to be able to use such as the IWB, laptops, cameras and the various software we use to the engineering in making a simple cup of tea! In this video it also explained briefly about the different types of engineers such as mechanical, civil, chemical, structural, electrical, aeronautical and computer engineers to name but a few. Anne used the example of an aeroplane and how many different engineers work on such a project to get it to the product we see and travel on.

At the end, Anne asked us if we had any questions about an engineer and there was a great response. Some questions were related to where inventions would lead to in the future.
Would robots be used in all aspects of life? Will we have driverless cars? Will fusion energy become the way of the future? The talk sparked huge interest and debate and I have no doubt there are many future engineers in our school!!

We had a wonderful assembly this afternoon learning of our latest students of the week. What a busy week this was!

Our teachers praised our students for their hard work with the many projects that are ongoing throughout the school. We had so many great examples of the children working positively together at a very busy time of the school year. Our younger students all really enjoyed the experience of participating in the Féile Scoldramaíochta, while their was great teamwork in evidence with Engineers Week, Green School Programme,Junior Entrepreneur project and with the girls who played their hearts out in their Cumann na mBunscol Mini 7’s Quarter Final.

Another feature of this afternoon’s assembly was hearing of children achieving with a task that they found difficult. It shows that their hard work will pay off, if they persevere. Children learn by example and the praise we heard today was a great example for all of our students. We concluded by learning of lovely acts of kindness in class and in yard, these students are showing great leadership and setting a wonderful example for their peers. Maith sibh!

Another busy week awaits. We have Seachtain na nGaeilge, Week 3 of Swimming and St.Patrick’s Day Parade on Friday. Lots to look forward to!

Bainigí taitneamh as an deireadh seachtaine!

Well done to all our students who presented wonderful Engineering Week projects at assembly earlier.

We had examples from a wide variety of categories from lego to transport through the ages through to the modern wonders of the world. We were both amazed and delighted with the children’s efforts, really fantastic end results.

Well done, we’re sure we will have many talented engineers here in St.Attracta’s in the future.

Maith sibh go leir!