TEACHER NEWS JANUARY 2011

Welcome to our second Teacher Newsletter - and, with a bit of luck, we’ll be slipping in a third before the end of the year. This is a particularly long term, with the Easter hol idays hover ing somewhere in the far distant future but the good news is, it’s not snowing - right now, at any rate!

Thanks to all the schools who’ve contributed to this newsletter with reports on initiatives / classwork. Please keep them coming. We’re a small sector of Irish Ed but, by the regular sharing of ideas, we c a n w o r k t h i s t o o u r advantage. If you’d like to contribute, please contact resources@educatetogether.ie

Happy New Year!

Fionnuala WardPrimary Education Officer

New Planning Module on Resource BankOur Resource Bank has proved to be very successful, with a lot of people (both inside and outside of the sector) accessing it regularly. There are now 6 modules. As well as modules listing resources for all four strands of the Learn Together and a module of recommended books, both fiction and non-fiction, for class and school libraries, a new planning module has been added. This module contains policies / schemes in relation to planning for the Learn Together, kindly contributed by a number of schools. All items on the Resource Bank have an attached forum for feedback and comment. If you’d like to be enrolled or would like to recommend a resource or contribute in any way, please contact resources@educatetogether.ie

In Service2010 was a busy year for delivery of inservice on the Learn Together curriculum. We have a number of facilitators who’ve traveled to schools all over the country to contribute to either planning days or staff meetings. Below are some examples of the feedback we’ve had to date. To arrange inservice for your school, please contact us here at the national office.

‘Excellent inservice – feel a lot more confident re Learn Together Curriculum’ Staff member Ennis ETNS

‘Great to have an opportunity to discuss the LT curriculum with all staff’ Staff member Tralee ETNS

‘Informative and practical’ Staff member Galway ETNS

CondolencesOur deepest condolences go to the staff and school community of Balbriggan ETNS at the tragic death of teacher, Róisín Connolly, over the Christmas period. Róisín died in a traffic accident, on her way back to Dublin from her native Donegal. The loss of someone so young and vibrant, with their whole life ahead of them, is beyond comprehension. Our thoughts are with her family, friends and colleagues.

New Online Course- Designers Wanted!Following the success of ‘An introduction to Educate Together and the Learn Together curriculum’, we’re hoping to run a new online course this summer. Have a quick look at the notice-board in your staff-room – there should be an ad for course designers up there right now! Alternatively, please contact summercourses@educatetogether.ie and we’ll send on details.

Floating an Idea...I’ve been thinking that Educate Together are especially lucky to have some teachers who are exceptionally talented in areas which some of us find difficult e.g. Music, Dance, Art, P.E., Drama etc. As the sector is still relatively small, schools can and do talk to each other and occasionally these teachers share their expertise with other schools on an ad hoc basis. It would be wonderful though if there was some method whereby schools could release teachers who have specific areas of specialisation to work in another ET school for a number of days per year.

Maybe schools could send out feelers to other schools to make arrangements to swap teachers. Perhaps Educate Together could keep a database of teachers with special abilities in its resource area so that schools with a lot of NQTs or schools where teachers feel the need to expand their knowledge could avail of the expertise.

I recognise that there are many restrictions which impede the smooth running of this and that principals in schools where these teachers currently teach might not be so enthusiastic at the prospect of giving up a teacher for a few days. Perhaps it could only work if there was a direct swap so that a teacher who was particularly talented at teaching art swaps with one who has expertise in the area of dance. It seems to me though, that there’s an opportunity to avail of expert teaching if we could adopt a flexible approach. Others will have opinions on whether or not this could be operational but it would be great to see some brainstorming happen. Hilary McLoughlin, Portlaoise ETNS

Easy Newsletters at Newbridge“Can we write a story for the website?”“Will you take a photo of it and put it in the newsletter?”

This is what you hear in NETNS on Fridays. The children know that the newsletter goes out after school on Fridays and everyone wants to be a part of it! Mondays are a different story. On Mondays we hear “My Granny read about me on her computer!” and “It really did go in! I saw it on my computer at home!”

Schoolsites.ie set up our website and newsletter. Every teacher can add posts to the website at any stage. Very simply, the last 10 posts added before 3 pm on Friday afternoon are automatically gathered in a newsletter and sent via e-mail to everyone who has signed up to receive it. There is absolutely no work involved in collating the newsletter and all it takes is for each teacher to add an article each week and there’s a brand new newsletter every Friday! The children love when this job is delegated to them. There are so many skills involved in preparing an article for the newsletter and inclusion on the website, not to mention the powerful message it gives the children about our trust and belief in them and how important their input is to our school community. It is a wonderful self-esteem booster!

The feedback we have received has been amazing. It creates lots of traffic to our website from every part of the globe. Go to www.netns.ie and sign up in the section on the right-hand side of the screen. We’d love to share our news with you! Caitriona Hand

Storytelling & Art Workshops

The Chester Beatty Library is offering wonderful, entirely exclusive and free (!) story-telling and art workshops to e ight Educate Together schools in the greater Dublin area,

Successful schools will be slotted in for a story-telling session in the library by a professional stor y-tel ler (week of March 1st). The stories will be based on an epic poem from Iran and will, I have been informed, involve much slaying of dragons and monsters (those of a delicate disposition be warned). This session will be followed by a visit to the school (week of March 21st) by a professional artist to work with the same group. Schools should apply directly to the library – relevant schools will have received promotional material with this newsletter.

A big thank you to the British Council, (Ireland) for funding the project. 

Yellow Flag at Aston VillageAt Aston Village ETNS in Drogheda we we have 138 pupils from 24 nationalities. At the moment, we have 5 mainstream, 2 Learning Support and 2 Language posts.52 Junior Infants are on file for September, 2011 and we are at the final stages of the planning process to treble the building size and add an SNU. In July, we were contacted about the possibility of being involved in The Yellow Flag Programme. The Yellow Flag programme is a multi-step intercultural education initiative which uses a whole-school approach to promote intercultural awareness and a commitment to diversity. After completing all the steps, the school community will produce a Diversity Code and an Anti-Racism Policy to guide our work together towards an inclusive ethos and at that point, we hope to be awarded the Yellow Flag. Four months and several meetings later, we are on task and on schedule!

Our Diversity Committee is made up of students Heleasha, Davis, Clare and Sharon; teachers Dermot and John; parents Cleopatra and Sharon; BOM member Sharon; Louth County Council’s Social Inclusion Officer Adrian O’ Sullivan; Development Through Sport Programme representative Gareth Conlon: Resource Teacher for Travellers in Louth Anne McQualile and the driving force behind it all, Paula Madden from the Irish Traveller Movement.

The most satisfying aspect so far has been the response to our student and parent/guardian questionnaires to identify the intercultural and diversity issues that exist in our school. These dealt with how the respondent felt about their culture, traditions etc. being recognized and celebrated in the school. We sent two copies of the adult questionnaire to each home - a total of 228 and we had an 80% response rate. Following on from this, we will devise an action plan to address issues highlighted by our intercultural review. We have sent a copy of the questionnaire to National Office and I believe that it could prove helpful in eliciting useful information for your school.

And so now the snow has receded, we will meet again to put our Action Plan into gear! John Kelleher

‘Recyclebeat’ at WaterfordOn Thursday 10th June 2010 a Green Flag was hoisted over the school. It was a very proud moment for all the children, staff and parents. Since the school opened in 2002, environmental awareness and green issues have been at the heart of school life, and this Green Flag was the culmination of many years of hard work from all in the school community.

The children took a creative approach to writing the school’s environmental charter. A group of children from sixth class worked together and wrote a song with a strong environmental message called ‘Recyclebeat’. The song was recorded by the children with the help and support of Patrick Hennessy, an S.N.A. in the school. ‘Recyclebeat’ was then given to all the classes to learn. The song was very popular with the children and soon all the school were singing the song. The song has been uploaded onto the Educate Together Resource Bank website under Resources for Ethics and the Environment. We hope you enjoy listening to the song and that you get the green message.Katie Ryan

Bow Wow Scooty Day at Griffith BarracksThis year Griffith Barracks Multi Denominational School is striving to achieve a fourth green flag and we’ve started a campaign to motivate children and their parents to use alternative modes of transport when travelling to school. On November 24th, we launched BOW (Bike on Wednesday) WOW (Walk on Wednesday) Scooty (Scoot on Wednesday) Day. Ruairí Quinn from the Labour Party and Kathryn Poxon from An Taisce were on hand to provide their support.

The launch of BOW WOW SCOOTY Day involved Sinéad, the principal and Cathal, the Green School Co-ordinator dressed up – very fetchingly it must be said - as dogs, and congratulating anyone who travelled to school via scooter, bike or foot. The children who walked, cycled or scooted to school also received a delicious homemade smoothie from the Green Council. The day was a tremendous success and great fun! The whole school community were involved in the campaign and a huge effort was made by all to promote BOW WOW SCOOTY DAY by making posters and teaching the children the benefits of a cleaner environment and leaving the car at home. Colourful record sheets were made for each class. The sheets are used to record the names of the children who walked, scooted and biked to school. Every Wednesday before our school assembly, the Green Council go around the classes and record the numbers of

children who biked, scooted and walked to school. During Assembly they then give out a prize for the best class at each.

Christian, our caretaker, was also involved in our special day. Not only did his make an extra scooter parking rack to cater for the extra demand on parking spaces in the school, he also made a scooter out of old materials and spray painted it gold! We also sprayed a helmet and r unner go ld and these a re the pr i ze s tha t a re p l aced in p r ide o f p l ace i n va r ious c l a s ses each week .

Smile Project at Griffeen Valley

These wonderful photos are from a project in 4th class, Griffeen Valley. Thanks so much to the students and class teacher, Julie McKeown, for allowing us to use them.

Educate Together’s Scientists of TomorrowEager young scientists from five Educate Together National Schools exhibited their projects last weekend at the RDS Primary Science Fair. Congratulations to Castleknock, Balbriggan, Griffeen Valley, Waterford and North Kildare for taking part. All eight projects display the range of scientific endeavours undertaken by young inquiring minds nationwide.

Sinead and Cathal greet pupils

on Bow Wow Scooty Day