Keep up the Good Work! 08/02/21

Dear Parents,

I hope this email finds you and your families well. I wanted to take this opportunity to recognise the great work of all our school community in making our remote learning programme such a success. The response of the vast majority of our pupils has been magnificent. Over the last four weeks, pupils have consistently produced work of a very high standard. This is a testament to their love of learning and the great support they are receiving from their parents/guardians and to the encouragement of their teachers and SNAs. Now that the vaccination programme is being rolled out and that case numbers are beginning to improve, I would encourage everyone to keep up the great effort and hopefully we’ll be back in school shortly.

Our Zoom classes have been really well received and most of our pupils have taken part in class meetings. Pupils have enjoyed seeing and talking to their teachers and friends. From what I hear, the Zooms are great fun and the highlight of the school week. Our school feels that these meetings are very much an opportunity for social connection and a chance to touch base with their class. In order to continue to improve these meetings, I would ask you and your child to take note of the following:

• Waiting Room: We are asking pupils to enter the Zoom waiting room 2 or 3 minutes before the assigned meeting time. This will give the class teacher an opportunity to let pupils into the meeting on time and that there will be no meeting time lost at the beginning.
• Names: As a security measure, it is very important that your child’s/family’s name is visible to the class teacher. This can be done by hovering your cursor over the three dots on the top right hand corner of your picture and by clicking on “change name”.
• Assigned Time: In order to give everyone a chance to participate fully in the meetings, we have limited the size of each group for each meeting. Therefore, I would ask pupils to be on time and to only attend the meeting that they have been assigned.
• Etiquette: I have attached an Etiquette Information Card to this email to remind everyone of what we all need to do in order to have a successful meeting.

Teachers will continue to post assignments for each day through Seesaw. By now, I think that everyone is very familiar with how this platform works. I would encourage pupils to post work daily and to give each activity their best effort. Teachers have decided to change the type of activities given to pupils on Fridays, so hopefully you’ll enjoy this change. I’d like to thank our teachers for their incredible work over the last number of weeks. They have adapted wonderfully to this difficult situation and I know that you and your children appreciate their efforts.

Finally, I would like to say well done to everyone and to encourage all our pupils to keep up the great work. Thanks to all our parents for your co-operation and support.

Looking forward to seeing you all soon.

Stay Safe

Regards

Ambrose McGinnity

Principal