Author: Brian McDermott

-  General School Information

Students of the Week Friday February 23rd

At our weekly assembly today we learned of children who are working very hard inside of and outside of their classrooms.

Teachers told us they have children who help often and remind them if they ever forget. We heard from teachers about children who take great responsibility for their work and behaviour and who have worked well with others completing projects. It is always such a difficult decision to come to because our children are very attentive and eager to please.

We heard of children who have made huge efforts in improving how they work as a team member in the classroom. At times our children can get overexcited when doing things and we heard from teachers about this and how they can bring themselves back from their excitement and return to their work. We heard about children who have had some difficulties with a subject but who have stuck at it and had brilliant results through sheer hard work and determination.

As always it was lovely to hear of random acts of kindness and students showing great maturity, looking after and caring for the younger students in our school. Finally, we learned of those who have made a fantastic effort preparing for their Féile Dramaíochta competition on Tuesday next.This is always great to hear and we appreciate the hard work of so many students over the past number of weeks.

Maith sibh go léir. Táimid fíor bhródúil asaibh.

Dates for your Diary

Next week as always promises to be a very busy week.

On Tuesday next 27th February Rang a hAon, Dó, Trí, Ceathair, Cúig agus a Sé take part in the Féile Dramaíochta Cill Mobhí. We wish the students well and again thank them for all their hard work in preparation.

World Book Day: This coming Thursday March 1st we will all celebrate World Book Day here in school. All students are encouraged to come to school dressed as a character of their choice from their favourite book. They may also bring their favourite book to school for reading time!

Finally on Friday next March 2nd our school will close at 12.30 pm in line with the Department of Education procedures for staff Child Protection Training.

Bianigí taitneamh as an deireadh seachtaine!

-  Active School's Award

Mayo Spikeball Finals 2018

Congratulations to our Girls ‘White’ Team, our Boys Team and our Mixed team who on Monday progressed to the Connaught Primary Spikeball finals following Monday’s Mayo deciders here in Charlestown.

Well done also also to our Girls (Green 2 ) team who also played so well in their respective group. We were delighted with the progress the children have made in such a short space of time. It was heartening to witness the improvement in confidence and skill level as the day progressed.

As mentioned both our Girls, Boys and Mixed teams have now qualified for the Connaught Finals which will take place in Loughrea, Co.Galway (Date to be confirmed). There are still lots of areas for further improvement and we look forward to working hard over the next month to prepare for this date.

Finally, a special word of thanks to Geraldine Finn for coaching the teams. Geraldine’s knowledge and expertise is invaluable alongside her interest in the game. We really appreciate this support.

Thank you also to Mr.Rushe for all his help in preparing the teams and to the Transition Year girls from St.Joseph’s Community College who gave the students such a great base through their coaching programme throughout the autumn.

-  General School Information

Safer Internet Day 2018

On Tuesday of this week we had Safer Internet Day. Safer Internet Day is an EU initiative. It is promoted in Ireland by the Webwise Internet Safety Initiative (Professional Development Service for Teachers(PDST)).

It aims to educate and raise awareness about protecting children online, so that they can responsibly enjoy the benefits of the Internet, without compromising their safety and privacy.
Throughout this week our pupils at St.Attracta’s will be engaging in a number of Internet Safety Lessons. This follows the excellent presentations we all recently received at our whole school Internet Safety Day on Tuesday January 16th for pupils (2nd-6th), staff and parents.

We highly recommend you take some time to explore the informative family resources that can be found here.

http://www.saferinternetday.ie/parents/

www.webwise.ie/parents

-  General School Information

Enrolment Day 2018

We are very much looking forward to welcoming our new Junior Infant Class for 2018/19 to our school tomorrow at 2pm!

Reminder:
With this in mind and to help the organisation of this afternoon we ask that Ms. Duffy’s Junior Infants, Mrs. Reilly’s Senior Infants, Ms. Ruane’s Spraoi and Mrs. McDonagh’s Sonas Class finish at 1.45pm. from our usual collection points. We apologise in advance for any inconvenience this may cause. Thank you as always for your support.

-  Active School's Award

Local Spikeball Blitz

Well done to all the students who this morning participated in the annual local Spikeball blitz. It was a fun morning where we had the opportunity to play with and against our friends from all the local schools.

As always we were very proud of our students, particularly the manner they represented the school trying their very best!

A very special word of thanks to the Transition Year students from St.Joseph’s Community College for all their help and enthusiasm in promoting the game, organising the local blitz and helping our students and to Ms.Leyden in particular for co-ordinating the programme throughout this school year.

We really appreciated this interest and support.

Next up for the boys and girls is the Mayo Finals on Monday next. We wish our teams every success!

-  General School Information

Ethel, Kate and Sophie Qualify for the National Bebras Finals!

We received fantastic news this week that three of our students from 4th Class have qualified for the National Finals of the Bebras Challenge, which will be held in Maynooth University on April 21st. Only 118 children in total have reached this final Stage from a massive 5,700 participants.

This is an outstanding achievement for Kate Buckley, Sophie Frizzell and Ethel Duffy and we are so proud of them in our school.

Bebras involves using computational and abstract thinking to solve interactive tasks online. The task was to solve 15 exciting yet difficult problems in 45 minutes. It is run in over 40 countries in the world. There were four different categories linked with age groups. Castors (8-10 Years), Benjamin (10-12 years), Cadet (12-14 years) and Junior (14-16 years). https://bebras.techweek.ie/

Well done to every single student from 4th to 6th class who took took part and who showed amazing levels of patience, concentration and ability in solving the tasks.
We wish Kate, Ethel and Sophie every success in the upcoming National Finals!!

-  General School Information

Mr.Clarke’s Third and Fourth Class Compete in Futsal Blitz

On Wednesday of this week, January 17th, our 3rd and 4th class boys and our 4th class girls participated in the eagerly awaited Futsal competition in the CBD complex in Charlestown.

The annual competition, organised by the FAI, involved children from 4th classes in the surrounding areas playing against each other to aim to progress to the county finals. The Girls team were to play against Straide N.S., Cloonlyon N.S. and Tooreen N.S. and the Boys team would also be pitting their wits against these schools.

Our girls’ team performed very well and were very unlucky not to progress. Having lost our first game, our girls team went on to dominate and play very well in the next two games. Every girl on the team played their part and some of the passing, goals and teamwork were a joy to behold at times. Each girl worked hard and the progression from the first game to the last game was very evident.

Our boys’ team also performed very well, considering some of the boys were only in third class. Some of the skills on show were enjoyed by many of the spectators and the boys put in a huge effort for each other and were very unlucky not to see more of their efforts rewarded. They were really looking forward to this day and can be extremely proud of their efforts.

Many thanks to Paul Byrne from the FAI for organising this wonderful competition and wish the winning teams all the best in the upcoming finals. This event is about children participating, competing and most of all enjoying their day out. Also, a big thank you to all parents who helped in any way, including lifts to the complex and preparing their children for the competition and to the CBD Complex for the use of their facility.

Finally, well done to all our children who participated as they did themselves and their school very proud with their wonderful attitude, skills and determination shown.

-  General School Information

Primary Science Fair: Ádh mór ar phaistí Rang a Sé

Best wishes to Mr.Rushe’s Sixth Class tomorrow when they present their fantastic project ‘Fingerprints & Footprints… Can we identify our classmates?’ at the Primary Science Fair in Mary Immaculate College of Education in Limerick.

Our students have worked so hard preparing for this day. We are all so proud of their efforts and are certain they will enjoy their day.

A huge thank you to Ms.McDonagh and Mr.Rushe for all their interest and hard work with this project, we very much appreciate this.

Bainigí taitneamh as!

-  General School Information

Fifth Class Visit Fighting Words

On the 21st of November, we the children of 5th class were delighted to take part in a writing workshop called “Fighting Words” in The Museum of Country Life, Castlebar. We were very excited about this workshop and were looking forward to using our creative senses. We met with the leaders who were very nice, but to enter the room, we were given our first creative task which was to come up with a password before we could be let in. This was quite fun as it could be as silly as we wanted.

To begin the session, the leaders asked us to name and discuss words and phrases to do with creative writing. Once we mentioned the key parts, together as a class we brainstormed what kind of characters we wanted, names for them, their personality, the setting and plot etc. that we would like to have in our story. We took a vote on each aspect and the key parts of the story were set. As a class we complied the start of the story together. As we did that, Joseph McCafferty was listening and used his creative talents to create a cartoon of our characters. Each child was then given individual sheets of paper to write their own middle and end to the story. It was a very enjoyable day.

When we returned to school, and in the following weeks, we continued on with the first draft of our stories as we waited for the final draft with the cartoons to arrive. We were delighted to receive our beautiful individual books of our story which had plenty of blank pages and spaces for pictures for us to fill in. It even had our own photograph which they had taken on the day, a space to write about the author and for the critics view. We got to work on re writing the final draft of our individual endings and drew pictures to match. We brought them home to read to our families and they gave us their verdict and wrote it in the critics section at the back of the book.

Ms. Henry organised that we could read our stories to the infant classes just before the Christmas holidays and we were very excited about this. The children in infants particularly enjoyed the stories as they were about getting to meet Santa Claus. They were extra exciting because Santa was coming in a few days. It was a fantastic experience from start to finish and we hope we will get the chance to do it again.