Week One Complete

Dear Parents,

I just wanted to ‘touch base’ with you all at the end of your child’s first week of home schooling. I’m sure all households have faced many challenges this week in trying to maintain a sense of normality in what is a very uncertain and challenging time. I know however that the vast majority of you are working through the work packs compiled by our teachers and hopefully as a sense of routine is established, this period of time will become more normalised for our children.

It is vitally important to remember that educating young minds although extremely rewarding can also, as I’m sure some of you have found out, be extremely challenging as well! Please don’t be too hard on either yourself or your child during this time. Whilst you may not be the best teacher ever, I can’t claim to wire a house, plaster a wall, diagnose a sick patient or complete end of year accounts as some of you can! Most of our staff have all undergone years of training to get proficient within their roles and we don’t expect you to be an overnight Miss Honey (Matilda) or Mr.Keating (Dead poets society)!  

The most important thing for you to remember is to focus on the basics of Literacy and Numeracy and not to get distracted by the plethora of websites advertised and feel a sense of guilt that they are not being used. The two sites we do ask you to use are Accelerated Reader and Sumdog Maths. The reason we ask this is because we can remotely monitor how our children are performing in these key skill areas and praise and encourage our children accordingly. Please see guidance notes on Accelerated Reader in my correspondence which will follow in the afternoon.

Also I’m delighted to see so many Parents  are now following us on our Twitter page and would ask others to do so as well (@st_madden).We will continue to post good news items about our school and seek to keep our sense of school community and connectedness maintained.

Hopefully for many of you there has been time to reflect on the value of this time as a family unit and It is extremely important to maintain our mental health in the midst of all that is going on around us so don’t be afraid to switch off from learning if the sun is shining and there is an opportunity for some sunshine and VitaminD!  Stephen Beattie from abcoaching.co.uk has allowed all parents free access to his website with some great games for the garden. Please take a minute to go to the VIP area and scroll through some of his ideas.  

I was also talking to one of our grandmothers who was saying night prayers with her granddaughter using the WhatsApp video app and thought what a wonderful idea to keep grandparents connected as well!  

Finally if you have any concerns about any aspect of your child’s work please contact me at my email address and I’ll get back to you.  

Thank you and Please stay home and take care.

God bless.  

Paud

Email ploughran734@c2kni.net  

PS  Only eight more teaching days until the Easter Holidays !!!