Dear parents of our new children starting with us in September,
The Government has announced that schools will be open in September, but there is still a lot of uncertainty about social distancing and how that can be managed in a school situation. Be assured that Esker Educate Together will follow all departmental and health guidelines to the letter to ensure the safety and well-being of all your children. At this time if the year, normally, we host a parents evening during which we go through all aspects of school life and introduce ourselves to you, our new parents. This of course sadly cannot happen this year. We are working at the moment on a welcome booklet which we will forward on to you in the coming weeks and will include booklists for your child’s class in September. I will keep in touch with you and keep you up to date with the latest thinking and advice from the Department about the opening of the school in September. What all this means is that we in Esker Educate Together National School will have to work even harder in September to make sure that you and your children feel part of our lovely school and settle in well. I am really looking forward to meeting with you all and your children and to welcome you properly to our school, Warmest regards, Colette Colette Kavanagh Principal colette@eskeretns.ie
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Dear parents of our new Junior Infants 2020/2021,
What an unfortunate time for your children to be starting school! The Government has announced that schools will be open in September, but there is still a lot of uncertainty about social distancing and how that can be managed in a school situation. Be assured that Esker Educate Together will follow all departmental and health guidelines to the letter to ensure the safety and well-being of all your children. At this time if the year, normally, we host a parents evening during which we go through all aspects of school life and introduce ourselves to you, our new parents. This of course cannot happen. We also usually invite the new Junior Infants in to the school in late June to meet with their teachers, to see their classroom and to meet their new class mates. Once again sadly, this cannot happen this year. We are working at the moment on a welcome booklet and a slide presentation by the junior infant teachers which we will forward on to you in the coming weeks. This will include suggestions as to how to prepare your child for school. In the meantime, keep talking to your children about coming to ‘big’ school. Reassure them if they are anxious. Prioritise story time, practise nursery rhymes and counting in your home over the next couple of months to ease the child’s transition to school. I will keep in touch with you and keep you up to date with the latest thinking and advice from the Department about the opening of the school in September. What all this means is that we in Esker Educate Together National School will have to work even harder in September to make sure that you and your children feel part of our lovely school and settle in well. I am really looking forward to meeting with you all and your children and to welcome you properly to our school, Warmest regards, Colette colette@eskeretns.ie Internet Safety Top Tips for Parents
We are all stuck at home during the coronavirus disease (COVID-19) outbreak, and it’s likely your children are spending a lot more time online. School, chats with friends and grandparents- so much has shifted online. Being connected helps children reduce the impact of this new (temporary) normal and encourages them to continue with their lives. It presents a new set of challenges for parents. How can you maximize all that the internet has to offer, while minimizing the potential harm? As a parent you need to be on top of what your child is doing on-line and on their smart phones. It is very easy for things to go wrong very quickly. We all want to protect our children from coming across unsuitable adult material either by accident or by design. It’s also very easy for your child to become involved in on-line bullying- either as the victim or as the bully. Group chats can lead to very difficult and hurtful messages being shared. We need to be sure that our children are not involved in posting anything hurtful to another child. Webwise offer free information, advice and resources to help parents, teachers and students address internet safety issues. I strongly recommend giving over some time to this www.webwise.ie Here are some tips taking from the site
May 1st Newsletter
Happy Mayday everyone. We are all hoping for good weather. Hello again and hope you are all continuing to do well during this lockdown. We have to wait until later today to hear what the Taoiseach and the Chief Medical Officer are advising about easing restrictions, but all the indications are that there won’t be any re-opening of schools in the next couple of week at any rate. This means that we all have to struggle on, doing our best and trying to make the most of it. Bank Holiday Monday Monday 4th May is a bank holiday. We are all taking the day off-teachers, SNAs, pupils and PARENTS. A well-deserved break. Enjoy the long weekend. New Home learning Hub on Website We have updated our website ‘eskeretns.ie’ with a special information section Esker Home Learning Hub (thank you Katie). We have designed this page to be your one stop shop for all your Home Learning questions while our school building is closed due to COVID-19. We hope it will help answer any of your questions but if not, please email me at colette@eskeretns.ie or linda@eskeretns.ie (Home School Liaison Teacher)and we will try our best to help. Contact sophie@eskeretns.ie if you have difficulty signing in or logging on. She will help you with technical issues. Home learning Parent Survey Gemma sent a really important survey out to today - Home Learning Parent Survey. There is lots of information that we want to get from you to let us know how your children are engaging or if there are reasons why they are not engaging. It is really important for us to get this information. Teachers are working really hard to get work out to your children and encouraging them to engage. The longer this lock down continues the more important it becomes that your children do get involved in their learning. We will do everything we can to support this. Your answers to the survey will help us to get this right. Assemblies We intend to run live assemblies once a fortnight. Our next assembly’s theme is about gratitude-being thankful. We hope to see your children there on the 8th May at 2.30 pm. Note the change of time. We will send you out a link to the assembly at 2.15 pm on the assembly days. Lunch Packs from Carambola The second monthly packs should have been delivered to those families who signed up. The next delivery should arrive at the end of May. If you didn’t sign up originally but wish to do so now, please let me know and we will add your child/ren to the list. We have over 180 signed up and I believe that the families are very pleased with the service. It also supports the lunch company Carambola which we are anxious to do as they have been extremely supportive of us over the last number of years. Please read the next page which gives you suggestions as to how you might keep your children safe online during this very unusual time in our lives- See you next Friday at Assembly!! Dear Parents,
Welcome back to Term 3 of the most unusual school year in my long career in education. I hope that you, your immediate and extended families are well. There is a lot of speculation in the media about children returning to school, perhaps for one day a week. This is really nothing more than idle talk. We will be in full lock-down situation at least until May 5th and at that time the Minister will make further announcements. Nobody, not even the Minister, knows at this stage what the next phase will be like. He, along with all schools, will take the advice of the Chief Medical Officer. So speculation doesn’t really help us at all. We can only hope. Today is our first day ‘back’ at school and we all need to try to get back to some sort of routine with the children. You will have received a schedule of work for your children and we hope that you and your children are up and running on the platforms and have begun to re-engage with school work. The message today as always is to focus on the positives and do what you can. You and your children will soon get the hang of Seesaw. The more you and they engage the easier it will become but don’t expect to be expert immediately. Don’t panic! The younger the child, the shorter the amount of time you can expect on ‘academic work’. We would recommend about one full hour for younger children and two full hours for older children over the course of the day of 'academic ' tasks. That would be fabulous if you can manage it. Remember children are always learning. Playing a board game, jigsaws, brainteasers etc. will challenge them in a fun way and will feel like a break for the children. Keeping fit, reading books, listening to audio books are all great ways to encourage further engagement and to promote a healthy body and mind. Lots of apps from Linda on the home page in Aladdin should also help to entertain the children while they are learning. Definitely give yourself a break from 11am to 12 noon while the children watch the RTE hub. This is suitable for children from 1st class up to 6th. Children in 5th and 6th on Edmodo should be able to engage with the assigned work, without too much support from home. I am delighted to have received lots of emails from you thanking us for our efforts to support our families during this very unusual time. I have also received some emails from parents who are worried about the level of support that they can give their children with their online learning. Please do not think that the other parents are all managing to do a great job with this. Everyone is struggling. This situation has been thrust upon us all and we have to do what best for us and for our families. You know your family best. You know your children best. You know what resources are available to you in your house, what physical resources, computers, I phones or I pads, text books etc. You know what space you have in your house for children to learn. You know what other work or health related stresses might be on your family. But most of all you and only you know how to strike the right balance between your own emotional and mental reserves and what is possible or desirable for your family. Please do not stress yourself with the online learning work that we are sending out. Remember that when all this is over, we will work really hard with your children to make sure that they recover in their learning. So, be gentle with your children and yourselves and do what you can and what makes sense in your family. Health and well-being are more important than ever during this Covid -19 emergency. We will be having our assembly on Friday at 1 pm. It may be live or it may be recorded. We are looking at both options at the moment. I will be in touch again soon about this. Contact your child’s class teachers with any concerns about log-ins, lack of text books or online work. They will be available to answer you between 10am and 12 noon each school morning. If you have other concerns, about your family or your children’s well-being, or lack of food in your home , please contact myself, Gemma or Linda (Home School Liaison Teacher) in the strictest of confidence and we will do our best to help you out. colette@eskeretns.ie , gemma@eskeretns.ie, linda@eskeretns.ie Warmest regards to you all Colette k here to edit. Thank you so much for taking part in our second virtual assembly, which also happened to be our first live assembly !
We were so grateful that so many of you could join in and we hope you really enjoyed it. Please click the link below to head over to our Learn Together Assemblies page on the website to take another look. Dear Parents,
Welcome back to Term 3 of the most unusual school year in my long career in education. I hope that you, your immediate and extended families are well. There is a lot of speculation in the media about children returning to school, perhaps for one day a week. This is really nothing more than idle talk. We will be in full lock-down situation at least until May 5th and at that time the Minister will make further announcements. Nobody, not even the Minister, knows at this stage what the next phase will be like. He, along with all schools, will take the advice of the Chief Medical Officer. So speculation doesn’t really help us at all. We can only hope. Today is our first day ‘back’ at school and we all need to try to get back to some sort of routine with the children. You will have received a schedule of work for your children and we hope that you and your children are up and running on the platforms and have begun to re-engage with school work. The message today as always is to focus on the positives and do what you can. You and your children will soon get the hang of Seesaw. The more you and they engage the easier it will become but don’t expect to be expert immediately. Don’t panic! The younger the child, the shorter the amount of time you can expect on ‘academic work’. We would recommend about one full hour for younger children and two full hours for older children over the course of the day of 'academic ' tasks. That would be fabulous if you can manage it. Remember children are always learning. Playing a board game, jigsaws, brainteasers etc. will challenge them in a fun way and will feel like a break for the children. Keeping fit, reading books, listening to audio books are all great ways to encourage further engagement and to promote a healthy body and mind. Lots of apps from Linda on the home page in Aladdin should also help to entertain the children while they are learning. Definitely give yourself a break from 11am to 12 noon while the children watch the RTE hub. This is suitable for children from 1st class up to 6th. Children in 5th and 6th on Edmodo should be able to engage with the assigned work, without too much support from home. I am delighted to have received lots of emails from you thanking us for our efforts to support our families during this very unusual time. I have also received some emails from parents who are worried about the level of support that they can give their children with their online learning. Please do not think that the other parents are all managing to do a great job with this. Everyone is struggling. This situation has been thrust upon us all and we have to do what best for us and for our families. You know your family best. You know your children best. You know what resources are available to you in your house, what physical resources, computers, I phones or I pads, text books etc. You know what space you have in your house for children to learn. You know what other work or health related stresses might be on your family. But most of all you and only you know how to strike the right balance between your own emotional and mental reserves and what is possible or desirable for your family. Please do not stress yourself with the online learning work that we are sending out. Remember that when all this is over, we will work really hard with your children to make sure that they recover in their learning. So, be gentle with your children and yourselves and do what you can and what makes sense in your family. Health and well-being are more important than ever during this Covid -19 emergency. We will be having our assembly on Friday at 1 pm. It may be live or it may be recorded. We are looking at both options at the moment. I will be in touch again soon about this. Contact your child’s class teachers with any concerns about log-ins, lack of text books or online work. They will be available to answer you between 10am and 12 noon each school morning. If you have other concerns, about your family or your children’s well-being, or lack of food in your home , please contact myself, Gemma or Linda (Home School Liaison Teacher) in the strictest of confidence and we will do our best to help you out. colette@eskeretns.ie , gemma@eskeretns.ie, linda@eskeretns.ie Warmest regards to you all Colette Dear Parents and Guardians,
Thank you for completing the online permission form for your child to use Seesaw. We are setting up this virtual learning space in preparation for the possibility that schools may not re-open after the Easter break on Monday 19th April 2020. If schools remain closed we intend to use Seesaw for all classes from Junior Infants – 4th class (5th and 6th class already use Edmodo). This will allow the teacher and children to communicate in a more interactive way. You will receive an email with details of how to set your child or children up on Seesaw. This will include a unique code for each child. You can learn more about how to use Seesaw in the Online Learning section of our website. We are aware that there are may be some barriers to using online resources. This is why we will also recommend offline activities such as:
We also understand that every child has a different learning style and every household has been presented with their own challenges during this Covid-19 pandemic. The work that teachers are setting is there to support your child’s learning at home. Some children thrive on a structured day, while others may not. The most important thing right now is that families are taking care of each other during this time and that children are happy and safe. You are the primary educator for your child, you choose what is best for them at this time. We will support you in any way possible. We know that you are all doing your best to support your child at home. We are trying to support you in supporting their learning. From Monday 19th April the class teacher will be available online from 10am – 12pm during weekdays to answer questions by e-mail. Also, you can e-mail Colette or Gemma with any questions or concerns you may have. We will do our best to help you. We hope that all families are keeping well during this difficult time and we encourage the children to take time to read, draw, play, exercise and relax during their official school holiday time Kindest regards, Colette *Please contact Colette (Colette@eskeretns.ie) or Gemma (Gemma@eskeretns.ie) if you have any questions. Peter McGuire - writes an extensive list of resources.
Remember you can find lots of activities on our SET and Home School blog pages. Don't forget to log into Aladdin for more class specific information. Our enrolment information can be found on this website under About Us- Enrolment
In the current climate of school closures , we have amended our enrolment policy to allow parents to apply for enrolment online. Below you will find a link which will allow you to apply to the LCES for your child for school year 2020 /2021. https://www.aladdin.ie/i/4592668910813184 Please read our enrolment policy carefully Enrolment |
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