Dropping Off and Collecting

To promote safety and prevent any problems, please do not turn near the bend in the road just before the school as it causes traffic flow problems and could lead to an accident. Also, all pedestrians (parents included!) should use the second gate when entering the school. A reminder that children riding their bicycles to school must use a helmet and a hi-vis jacket. We’d also recommend children who are walking wear a hi-vis jacket as well. If anyone needs one, we have some in the school.

Culture Night 2019

Please join us for Culture Night this Friday afternoon and evening from 16.00 to 19.00. This will be an exhibition of all our work last year as part of the Creative Schools initiative. We’re still looking for volunteers, if you’re able to help.

Afterschool Clubs

The afterschool clubs for the first term are as listed below. Sign-up will take place from Wednesday morning on wards at the office. They will start next week.

Drama Classes

In addition to the clubs above, another afterschool activity started this past week, drama with Michelle O’Grady of Réalta School of Drama. There are seven places for children in first to fourth class, and the classes run on Wednesday until the mid-term. Please sign up with Claudia if your child would like to join the class on Wednesday.

Garden

We’ll have a farmer’s market, selling some of the produce from our school garden after school on Wednesday. We have potatoes, some small carrots, beans, apples and herbs. The market will be open at 13.30 until 15.00. All money raised will support our garden.

Tangrams fun with First and Second Class
Junior infants making words with the first three letter sounds they’ve learned so far!
Third Class made apple crisp using the apples from the school garden.

Aladdin Connect

Please see the attached note regarding a new parent portal for Aladdin, our student management system. We’ll email access codes in a week, but if anyone has any questions or concerns please reply to this email. Many thanks to those who have returned the contact information forms with any updates.

17th September 2019

Dear Parent/Guardian, Our school is delighted to announce that we will shortly roll out the Aladdin Schools Connect to parents/guardians of children in our classes. The school uses the Aladdin Schools software service www.aladdin.ie for administrative purposes and Connect will give you secure access to messages from the school and to details of your child’s attendance, test results, reports cards etc via secure login from your internet browser or Aladdin Connect App Aladdin Connect is a fantastic way to enhance a school’s communication with parents. It enables parents to stay connected and informed about their child’s education by: – Ensuring that the school has their most up to date contact information, – Allowing schools to gather permission(s) from parents, – Allowing parents to quickly and efficiently select preferred slots for parent teacher meetings, – Keeping parents apprised of their child’s attendance, – Keeping parents up to date on school and classroom news via noticeboard messages, – Allowing parents to view what items their child had for homework today, – Keeping parents up to date on what library book their child is currently reading and if it is due/overdue to be returned, – Allowing parents view their child’s approved report card, – Giving parents the option to opt in to share contact information with their child’s classmates’ parents via the Parent Privacy option for the class list and – Allowing parents to view their child’s latest standardised test results. Along with strengthening our home/school partnership, we also envisage Aladdin Connect helping the school by: – Helping to improve attendance by allowing parents to keep track of any school days their child may have currently missed, along with late arrival and early leaving information, – Helping to reduce the amount of class/school notes being sent home, – Helping the school/ teachers communicate with parents when the need arises, – Reducing costs by eliminating the need to send school report cards by post and – Reducing costs by reducing the number of text messages that need to be sent.

You can rest reassured that Aladdin Schools uses state-of-the-art security to safeguard information entered by the school and data is stored and processed in strict compliance with Irish and European data protection laws. In the next few days, you will receive an email message containing your registration link. There will be one link per parent which will allow the parent to access information for all their children in the school from one user account. Please do not forward this text/email or share this link as this is a unique registration code for each parent for your child/children in this school. During registration you will choose a password that will be used in conjunction with your email address to securely access the Aladdin Connect going forward. If you choose you may share your own contact details with other parents of children in the same class as your children, but please be reassured that this information will not be shared unless you choose to share it. Once you are registered you will be sent an email with links to download the Aladdin Connect App for your mobile device. The main advantage of using the App is to receive immediate alerts for app messages sent by your school. Downloading the App is highly recommended to enhance both the parent and school’s Connect experience.

By default both parents will have access to view their child’s contact information. If for any reason you do NOT wish to share your own personal contact information within the family circle or if you have any concerns regarding your particular family setup, please contact the school in confidence to discuss or have this facility restricted.

We hope that you enjoy using Aladdin Connect. Your class teacher, Claudia or myself will welcome any feedback or questions you may have.

Yours sincerely, Matt