Principal’s Midterm Newsletter - February 12th 2021

Welcome to the St. Farnan’s Midterm Newsletter.

Our online Teaching and Learning continues with a mixture of live classes and assignments/projects being e mailed to students using out Google classroom platform. I am asking parents and guardians to continue making sure that students are fully engaging with classes unless they are unable to do so. In general, participation levels are very high and therefore all concerned deserve much credit. The behaviour of our students on line has been exemplary and this has helped in no small way to benefit all participants.

Assemblies:

At this stage most on line Year group Assemblies have been completed and it is hoped to have the remainder of them after midterm break. These assemblies have given an opportunity to me as Principal to meet with students in the company of their respectiveYear heads, to keep everyone informed on issues that might have arisen. It also informs students as to what is expected of them during this time of on line Teaching and Learning.

Parent teacher reports:

We have also fully completed our Parent/Teacher Meeting reports through our VSWare system. While it is not as personal as our normal Parent Teacher Meetings it still conveys much information of student progress in their subjects.

Midterm Break:

It is difficult to believe that we have completed five weeks of on line classes since our return after Christmas and that Midterm commences on Friday 12th at 1.20pm. Classes will resume on Monday 22nd of February. Like everyone else, we are awaiting an announcement from Minister for Education Norma Foley to inform us as to the form this reopening will take, i.e. do school continue with on line classes or do  schools reopen to some or all year groups. St Farnan’s will of course keep you informed by details posted on our school website, Facebook page and Schooltext when we hear more information.

Mock Exams:

In my previous Newsletter, I mentioned that St Farnan’s PPS intends to have Mock Exams for 6th and 3rd Year students. This still remains our intention when it is safe to do so. It is hoped that these exams will be done in school during school time. At this stage we have all exam papers ordered and will be ready to commence mocks a short time after our return to school.As a guide we are suggesting that we will commence Mock Exams 1 week after our return to the school building.

Of course it is assumed and strongly recommended that our Sixth and Third years continue with their revision and study during Midterm Break.

Wellbeing:

At a recent Webinar that I attended the speaker made reference to looking after our mental health and wellbeing and gave the following recommendations

Finally:

I continue to be available by emailing principal@stfarnans.ie if there are any issues that you need to discuss or bring to my attention. Stay safe.

Stop Press:

On Thursday 11th Feb. at 3.30 we were informed that schools with ASD and ModerateClassrooms will reopen from Monday 22ndFebruary. At time of writing school personnel have made contact with parents of students enrolled in our Room 25 and Room 26 classrooms informing them of this development.

In short, these classrooms are open and available to students for their timetabled classes and will be supervised by teachers and SNA personnel and available for your mainstream classes which will continue to be on line. I am available at principal@stfarnans.ie if any parent would like to discuss any issues that may arise. I will contact individual parents as required.

Eddie Collins.

Principal.