I hope you are all safe and well and managing to get through another week of this difficult situation which isn’t easy.
As you will be aware by now, the Taoiseach announced on Friday that schools will remain closed until September as a result of Covid-19. Although the decision has been made in the interest of safety, it is upsetting and unfortunate that the children will be unable to return to school this academic year.
It is an extremely challenging time for the children as they have had to cope with trying to do school work at home as well as missing their friends and teachers. This decision also places considerable extra pressure on parents and guardians who have already done an extraordinary job in juggling so many things and adapting to various changes to home life.
My thoughts go out to children in all classes but one of the classes which this affects in another way is 6th Class. This was their final year in primary school with special events and a graduation to look forward to in June and for them I’m sure it is devastating. No matter when or how it may happen, we will make sure that their graduation is marked one way or another!
We, the school staff, are also devastated that we cannot go back to school and see the children for the summer term and it really is a sad end to the traditional school year and one no one will ever forget.
As the news only came to us on Friday, there are many issues for us to consider over the next few days and we are awaiting guidance and advice from the Department of Education and government before examining them further.
With regard to last week and on a slightly more positive note, lots of your children have signed up to Google Classroom and have uploaded work for teachers to give feedback on, which is fantastic. I have observed a lot of the comments and interactions of the children in classes across the school and it is great to see them engaging with each other again, albeit online.
I know lots of children have also sent in work to their teachers via the school email address and they were delighted to see how you have been getting on!
As next week is official school holidays for the children in TETNS, the teachers will not be asking the children to complete any official school work however, they have organised fun activities for children to do, if they would like to, and these can be found below. From 11th May, we will revert to uploading more substantial optional school work to the website and the teachers will continue to monitor and give feedback on Google Classroom.
In the meantime, we hope the children can try and enjoy their mid term break as much as they can in these circumstances and we would be thrilled to see pictures of anything you have been up to by sending us a picture at tetnsphotos@gmail.com.
Warm regards, take care and I will speak to you soon,
Tim[/vc_column_text][/vc_column][/vc_row][vc_row][vc_column][vc_separator color=”orange” border_width=”5″][/vc_column][/vc_row][vc_row][vc_column][vc_column_text]Click the links below to access some fun ideas from our staff that you could try over mid-term. Feel free to try ideas from other classes too!
6th Class[/vc_column_text][/vc_column][/vc_row][vc_row][vc_column][vc_column_text]The Ark has put together some great at-home activities in all areas of the arts, including a live streaming performance (new performances are uploaded every Thursday). Try taking an at-home “school tour” to see one of their shows!
https://ark.ie/news/post/the-
Many of the activities on The Artful Parent are brilliant and very easy to try. Their melting ice experiment is a great place to start, and works with most:
https://artfulparent.com/