Newsletter 29.06.2022 - Canal Way Educate Together National School, Dublin 8

Message From Dermot

We have come to another end of year, as we celebrate our final core value ‘Pride’. Pride couldn’t be a more suitable core value for Canal Way this month. We join together in nation wide Pride celebrations, while also reflecting on our school year with great pride. This year we –

Took delivery of our new building and opened 6 new classrooms.
Reclaimed our school spaces.
Completed a full year in school, while managing the fall out from the pandemic.
Re-established our school culture and activities following lockdown.
Secured funding for site resurfacing and refurbishments to increase our learning support areas.

I would like thank the children and families for their support, hard work and patience throughout the year. Thank you to the Board of Management for supporting me and also a big thanks to the Parent’s Association Committee. I would like to thank our staff management team for supporting our school.

The final thank you from me, and I am sure from all of our community, goes to our staff. Our staff have worked extremely hard this year, and their dedication and energy was inspiring. Thank you for making the year so enjoyable for the children, and for delivering high quality teaching and learning in a fun and happy atmosphere. Go raibh míle maith agaibh.

Last Day of Term & Back To School !

School finishes on Thursday at 12:00 for all classes.

First day back is Sept 1 – usual school day for all classes apart from Junior Infants (who will receive a separate communication about times for this week).

If your family is not returning to the school in September please let us know as soon as possible as we need this information for class planning. Calendar can be found on our homepage.

Materials Money and Booklists for September.

Information was sent out this week. Booklists can be found HERE (scroll down) Materials Money can be paid any time between now and the end of September and can be paid in instalments via Aladdin Connect.

School Reports

Your end of year school report can be found on Aladdin Connect.

All of your reports can be found there.

Information on STEN results standardised testing can be found in THIS LINK.

Lost and Found

We will display items of Lost & Found tomorrow morning & afternoon.

Books – school novels and readers

Please check at home and send in any books that belong to the school – Novels and reading books. We need to prepare them for next year’s classes.

Scooters and a Bike

We have some scooters and a bike that have been abandoned over the last term. please see pics and claim them before Thursday. They will be donated to charity after that.

Aladdin Connect

We are aware that some families do not engage with Aladdin connect and miss important announcements – please engage with the app, and keep your eye on the notice-board. Contact the office if you need assistance. Thanks.

Summer Baking Camp

Milis Delish, friends of CWETNS, are running another baking camp on the following dates in July:

→ Monday 4TH – Wednesday 6th

→ Monday 11TH – Wednesday 13th

→ Monday 18TH – Wednesday 20th

10am-1pm

For more information and to book your place ring/text Mary on 0862215824

Infant (sibling) Hour & Extracurricular Activities

We are working on finalising the details for Infant Hour which will be relaunched in September. We will be in touch with the detail for this, and ask for your patience and time to allow is to get back into school in September and get the spaces ready to facilitate this. We will work for this to happen as early in September as possible.

The parents Association are working on a new programme of Extracurricular Activities and we will be in touch in the new school year. We will see the return of Capoeira, Dance, and much more.

Summer Building Works

CWETNS will be a busy place this summer as always, and will be doing upgrade works over July and August. The works are as follows:

– Site Resurfacing – yard and garden spaces will be resurfaced under the emergency works scheme.

– New Learning Support Space, that will see the stage area converted into a learning support space. Thankyou to the Board of Management for financing this.

– New Cleaning storage areas and work rooms for cleaning staff, and staff toilet reconfigurations – again thanks to the BoM for finances.

Staffing

We shall inform you of next year’s teacher, during the summer, after recruitment and class allocation is completed & finalised.

Next year, our Canal Way Staff will grow.

16 x classroom teachers

5 x Special Education Teachers to teach children with additional needs, & English as an additional language.

4 x Special Needs Assistants.

We say farewell to Niamh who is returning to education next year, and we wish Clíona all the best as she heads of for a career break. We look forward to welcoming Hazel and Jessica back to the staff next year.

National Council for Special Education

There is a lot of coverage in the media where schools are being instructed to open classes for children with autism. At CWETNS, we have always and continue to strive to open a class for children with autism, and the NCSE are up to date with this. It is complex trying to resolve the lack of accommodation in the school to facilitate a specialised class, and the NCSE are fully aware of this following several visits to the school in the last year. The NCSE are keen to find a solution. We expect that it will take some years for this to be resolved for CWETNS, and in the same breath we note that there is a chance that this may not happen at all.

Graduation 2022

6th class graduated yesterday and the ceremony was a wonderful event. Junior infants 2014 were our first class to enroll on Basin Lane, and we shall miss the class dearly.

The class made a film – CWETNS (Un)Civil War. This can be found on our gallery page and the whole school enjoyed the screening of this on Monday.

Congratulations 6th.

Grease ‘as Gaeilge’

5th class performed a stage production of Grease today. The whole school, and 5th class parents were blown away today by the acting performances, costumes, dances routines and wonderful stage props and stage hands. We shall have the video online soon.