Seachtain na Gaeilge is a national celebration of Irish language and culture. St Mary’s NS celebrated Seachtain na Gaeilge 2024 from Monday 11th to Friday 15th March. A committee of dedicated and enthusiastic staff organised an exciting lineup of events this year.
Bhí imeachtaí taitneamhacha ar siúl gach lá – ‘Seanfhocal an Lae’, comórtas ealaíne, Tráth na gCeist, cluichí sa chlós, Blitz As Gaeilge ar an Páirc 3G Kingspan Bhréifne, rince gaelach, cluichí biongo, ceolchoirm thriadisiúnta, toraíocht Gaeilge sna cónraí, Lá Glas agus an paráid.
Throughout the week, children were trying their best to use their cúpla focal. Tugadh amach neart duaiseanna i rith na seachtaine ar ndóigh. Bhí atmaisféar croíúil, spraíuíl le brath thart timpeall na scoile. Is cosúil gur bhain gach duine taitneamh as!
Ceiliúradh iontach a bhí ann. Maith sibh gach duine a ghlac páirt.
On Wednesday 21st June, it was time for our 6th Class of 2023 to say goodbye to St. Mary’s as they graduated from 6th Class and primary school. The DEN, 4th and 5th classes gathered in the hall to mark the occasion. Ms Jordan reminisced about events throughout this groups’ years in St. Mary’s from near escapes in Junior Infants to our 6th Class school tour only a week before. She echoed how everyone in St. Mary’s is proud of their achievements and progress during their time here.
The Class of 2023 were then called out individually and presented with certificates and framed graduation mementos. Afterwards, they sang their graduation songs of ‘Believer’ and ‘Whatever it Takes’, before throwing their mortar hats to the ceilings in celebration.
They gathered their belongings and made their way through a whole school guard of honour, exiting the gates as St. Mary’s pupils for the last time.
We wish every single member of the 6th Class of 2023 the very best in their futures and invite them back at any time to let us know how they are doing.
Well done to our 5 students who had a perfect attendance for the 2022/2023 school year. It’s a great achievement and these five students were awarded special certificates for their achievement.
Well done again and what great role models you are for all our students.
On Thursday 23rd February 2023, three boys teams and three girls teams travelled to The ALSAA Sports Complex in Dublin to play in The Primary School’s Volleyball Blitz.
Each team played 3 – 4 games in their group stages. Teams ranked well in their groups but unfortunately lost out on the coveted top spot.
Well done teams on a really enjoyable day out! We were very proud of the sportsmanship shown by everyone. A special thanks to coaches Jude Collins, Ciara Brady, Sandra Donoghue, Lauren Galligan and Karen Brennan. We also extend appreciation to “Volleyball Ireland” for their support and organisation of a really enjoyable event.
We wish our neighbouring school – St. Kilian’s, Mullagh, Girl’s team every best wish as they progress to the National finals in Limerick, Thursday, March 2nd ‘23.
Our school has recently purchased sets of Lego Education Spike kits for the children. These sets can be used to teach simple coding lessons or to solve complex real-world problems in engineering, design and computer science.
Fifth class had the opportunity to try out these kits and work together in groups to create some wonderful Lego designs. Everyone had great fun!
Friday 25th March 2022 was a very memorable day for students, staff and parents of St. Mary’s NS as television cameras, shovels and trees descended on our school. As it was Greenbelt Ltd.’s 40th birthday, and National Tree Day, the local business had pledged to donate 50 native Irish trees to our school and to help students from every class level take part in the planting of said trees around the school grounds. The trees ranged from Crabapple to Birch to Alder and to our own Yew tree – which our own town Achadh an Iúir (Field of the Yew) is named after – to a host of beautiful trees, which will now adourn our grounds for generations to come.
However, the day became even more exciting on Wednesday when we learned that Greenbelt staff would not be our only visitors on National Tree Day. Deric Hartigan from Virgin Media and Ireland AM, along with his cameraman Gareth, would be joining us too from 7.30am. 6th class were the early birds and were bright and early to school to greet Deric as he landed, along with Maurice and his team from Greenbelt. Have a look at us below in 2 of Deric’s 4 broadcasts from the school.
With our School Trad Music Group playing, and 6th class showing off our fantastic spirit, manners and work-ethic, I’m sure Ireland AM and all those watching around the country were envious of our amazing school.
After Virgin Media departed at 9.30am, 6th class and the Greenbelt team had some well deserved breakfast, before it was time for all our other classes to get their hands dirty and get planting. We were blessed with beautiful weather and every child had a day to remember with lots of fun.
Have a look at our pictures below from a wonderful day.
Dear Parent/Guardian,
Happy new year. I hope you and your family had a lovely Christmas break and we look forward to welcoming our pupils back tomorrow.
Please find HSE information below that was sent to schools today to be shared with parents & staff.
Infection prevention and Control Measures:
1) Before attending school:
Symptoms – Please be aware that pupils/staff do not attend school if they have any symptoms of Covid-19 infection.
Symptom profiles are available here [https://www2.hse.ie/conditions/covid19/symptoms/overview/]. Parents are advised to take a precautionary approach, particularly for children less able to articulate their symptoms, that if a child appears unwell, observe them at home and contact their GP as appropriate.
Close contacts – If staff/pupils have been told by the HSE services that they are a close contact of a case of Covid-19, they need to adhere to the advice on the HSE website in relation to restricted movements and testing. Children under 13 years who are household close contacts must restrict their movements for 14 days and they are offered PCR testing at day 0 and day 10. On receipt of a day 10 not-detected PCR test result, they may exit restricted movements.
It is important that anyone who has been identified as a close contact, is very aware of COVID-19 symptoms, and isolate and undergo testing should they develop any symptoms.
2) Re-enforcing general public health messages
In addition to ensuring that staff and children do not attend school if they have any symptoms of Covid-19 infection, please note the importance of abiding by the national public health measures currently in place at all times e.g. vaccination (including boosters), social distancing, use of face masks, hand hygiene, ventilation and minimising social contacts.
With Covid 19 infection levels at the highest since the beginning of this pandemic, we are now, more than ever, relying on each other to act cautiously & responsibly to protect our pupils and staff and keep classes open.
Thanks for your continued support and patience.
Le gach dea ghuí,
Jacinta Jordan
As today was supposed to be our last day in school this school year, we’ve put together a short video to celebrate the great work, resilience and enthusiastic nature of our students and also everyone in our school community. This year has certainly been strange, demanding and quite difficult but we have come together (from a distance!) and overcome so many of the challenges the pandemic set us. Well done, everyone and we can’t wait to see everyone again soon.
Please do not share the below video via social media. It will always be available on this page.
All our teachers are trying their bets to provide pupils and parents/guardians with a range of learning tools each week in our class blogs. This may be in the form of PowerPoint presentations, online learning, set work from schoolbooks/e-books and worksheets/booklets. We try to avoid the need for pupils/parents/guardians to print resources as much as possible. However, this is not always possible or some pupils prefer to have a physical copy of a resource in front of them rather than use a document on a computer/tablet screen. We also understand that parents/guardians sometimes prefer to reduce screen-time and therefore would prefer to print.
All our resources in blogs can be printed but we are going to just give a guide here on how to print various files. Most of the files teachers post on the blogs are saved on our Staff Google Drive and so may be different to what parents are used to when it comes to online printing. Various files, whether pictures (.jpg, .png), PDF files, Google Docs, Google Slides etc. are all slightly different when it comes to printing. So following the below guide, based on the file type, will help you to print any file teachers post. (Please not these instructions are based on PCs/laptops and may vary on tablet devices.)
PDF Files
PDF files are one of the most common that parents/guardians wish to print. They appear as below with a page guide and zoom toggle at the bottom and a grey arrow to the top right of the file.
To print a PDF from the blog, we need to click that grey arrow in the top right corner. A new tab will open with the full PDF file displayed as below. From here, click the print icon to the top right of the screen in order to print.
Picture Files
Picture files are also very common on our blogs. Many teachers screenshot pages from e-books or use pictures from online. Teachers upload pictures in too different ways and so there are two different ways to print the picture.
- If teachers share the picture from our Google Drive, when you click on the picture a new tab will open showing a bigger version on the picture. Now, all you need to do is click on print icon to top left of new tab (as below)
2. If teachers put the picture in the blog directly from their computer, clicking on the image will do nothing. Instead, right click the image and then select ‘Save image as’ in the drop-down menu. After saving the image, you can open the image in your photo-viewer (varies depending on Windows) and print directly from there.
Google Docs
Google Docs look just like Microsoft Word files. In order to print these we again click on the grey arrow at the top right corner of the file in blog pages.
A new tab will open and it will look similar to other Word Processing applications like Microsoft Word. Click on the File menu at the top left of the page.
In this drop down menu, go to the very bottom of the menu and select ‘Print’. Alternatively, when the new tab appears, press CTRL and the letter P at the same time.
We hope the above helps. But if you are still unsure regarding any files on the blogs, contact your child’s teacher via the email address in each class blog.
