Next week, we are going to hold a series of meetings for parents/carers to talk about our new school ethos and in particular, to gather your views about having a school uniform. Our new patron, Educate Together, usually encourage children to wear their own clothes. We need to talk about how we feel about that, how it might work in our community and what parents/carers would prefer in terms of uniform or dress code. We also have a few questions for you about children's behaviour at school and what you think is going well and what we could improve.

We will hold three meetings, at different times next week. We are inviting different year groups to different meetings. But please do choose a time that suits you, even if it isn't your child's class. We'd like to talk to as many people as we can.

The times we have available are:

Wednesday, 22nd May at 9.00 a.m. - 1st - 3rd Class parents/carers

Thursday, 23rd May at 1.30 p.m. - Junior and Senior Infant parents/carers

Friday, 24th May at 9.00 a.m. - 4th - 6th Class parents/carers

The meetings will last about a half an hour. If you cannot make any of these times, please get in touch via Aladdin or Seesaw and we can arrange another time to talk to you.

A big thank you to all of the families who joined us for our Maths sessions before the mid-term. We were delighted to see so many of you there, enjoying spending time with your children and supporting their learning.

Here's a few pieces of feedback we had from parents:

Thanks to all our class teachers, to Claire Yeates and Brid Brophy for putting together all the Maths activities and to Kate McCaughey, who coordinated the sessions.

Our school has achieved an SFI Curious Minds Gold Award for our children's engagement with STEM in the following areas: Science, Technology, Engineering and Maths.

Here is the feedback we received:
Congratulations to Paradise Place Educate Together National School on achieving the SFI Curious Minds Gold award. The log of evidence was set out in a very clear manner with all images illustrating the learners' hands-on learning. It is clear that the learners in the school have been introduced to a wide range of hands-on student-led STEM activities calculated to deepen their understanding of these subjects, and develop their critical thinking skills. The activities related to living things, the care of the wormery, community clean-up events and visits to the Botanic Gardens enable the learners to understand and value their environment. The link up with the space station and the space-related investigations and activities connects them to the wider environment. The school has successfully raised the learners' skill level and new learning on STEM subjects across the whole school community. Well done to all the learners, teachers, and the community of Paradise Place ETNS on a fantastic application. Keep up the great STEM work.

Thanks to Gregor Kerr who put our application together, and to all of the staff who have contributed to the achievement of this award by planning such engaging STEM activities for the children throughout the year. Well done everyone!

Junior Infants have been re-telling the story of Goldilocks and were joined by two parents telling the story in their home languages, Portuguese and Yoruba! Huge thanks to Luis and Kemi for sharing their beautiful languages and time with the children.

We welcomed Fernanda from MotherTongues Ireland to our younger classes this week for our 'Language Explorers' programme. Fernanda was blown away by the children in our school. She does this kind of work in lots of settings and said she had never met children who were so comfortable and proud to share their home languages.

Thank you to Paddy and Luke, professional football players from Bohemians, who visited some of our classes before the mid-term to talk about the club and run some fun sessions for the children.

Well done to the boys and girls in our senior classes who attended our final soccer tournament of the year with other local schools at Blackhall Place this week. Thank you to all the staff who have supported them over the last few months and organised their participation in different matches - particularly Páid Sadlier, James O'Shea, Sean Gallagher and Derek Carney.

Greg's 3rd Class have been working on creating posters for the 'Different Families, Same Love' competition. Their learning is displayed in the Hall - have a look!

April saw the best attendance we've seen for a while - well done everyone. Across the school, attendance was 92.1%. We're still not quite getting to our target of 95%, but it's getting closer.

Let's keep that focus please as we move towards the end of the year. A reminder that children should not miss school for any reason, unless they are very unwell.

Friday, 17th May - 3rd Class Greg to International Literature Festival event

Sunday, 19th May - First Holy Communion for 2nd Class Catholic children

Week of 20th and 27th May - Standardised Testing

Monday, 19th May - 4th Class to International Literature Festival event

Friday, 24th May - 6th Class to Carlingford Adventure Centre

Friday, 31st May - 1st Class (Alannah Drumm) to Dublin Zoo

3rd and 4th June - Bank Holiday - school closed

Thursday, 6th June - Sports Day

Friday, 7th June - Elections - school closed for polling

Tuesday, 11th June - 2nd Class to National Botanic Gardens

Wednesday, 12th June - 5th Class to Phoenix Park; 3rd Greg to National Museum

14th June - End of Year Reports to be issued to parents/carers

25th and 26th June - End of Year Performances

Thursday, 27th June - 6th Class Graduation

Friday, 28th June - school closes at 12 noon for summer holidays

The International Literature Festival Dublin takes place over the next week or so. All weekend, there are events taking place in Merrion Square for children and families.

Click on the picture to find out more:

Email: office@ppetns.ie
Website: www.ppetns.ie
Location: Paradise Place, Phibsborough, Dublin 7, Ireland
Phone: +353 1 8300 841
Twitter: @ppetns