Latest News

Year 7 Equine Facilitated Learning

Tue 15 Mar 2022

Today it was the turn of Miss Walsh's Year 7 pupils to have a taster session in Equine Facilitated Learning (EFL). EFL is an emerging field in which horses and humans work together as guides and facilitators to help people enhance their life skills, improve emotional fitness and increase self-awareness. The pupils had a great time and thoroughly enjoyed the very relaxing experience thanks to the expertise of Simone and her team at Tullynewbank Stables.

Accelerated Reading Success

Mon 14 Mar 2022

Today we celebrated success in our Accelerated Reading Programme achieved over the past 6 weeks. The programme is going from strength to strength and the collective number of words being read is just amazing!

Many congratulations to those boys and girls who have now read 100,000 words or more; to those 12 boys and girls for reaching 500,000 words so far this year and to Connlaith and Nathan (Year 7),and Sophia, Alexander, Ella and Eoin (Year 6) on becoming new Word Millionaires this year.

Keep up the great effort - fabulous commitment shown here to your reading!

Year 3 and Year 7 Paired Reading

Fri 11 Mar 2022

This week we started our Paired Reading Programme between our Year 3 and Year 7 pupils. Year 3 children are paired with a Year 7 pupil for the duration of the programme and engage in three half-hour Paired Reading sessions per week, alongside their usual literacy and reading work.

With the support of their Year 7 partner, Year 3 pupils select their Paired Reading books from a stock of books especially selected for the programme. Indeed in the past our Paired Reading Programme has been shown to have had some excellent results for helping children to read, enjoy reading and developing a positive attitude to reading. We look forward to an enjoyable and successful programme this year!

Appeal for Ukraine

Thu 10 Mar 2022

We have been overwhelmed with the response to our Ukrainian Appeal - the generosity of our school community has just been amazing. We would like to extend a massive thank you to everyone who donated to this very worthy cause - all items sent in will be used to support those who now find themselves refugees as a result of this horiffic war. Many thanks also to Josh and his team who arranged for all items to be packed and transported to their destination!

#great team effort #welldoneandthanks

Safety Bus Visits St. Joseph's

Wed 09 Mar 2022

The Translink Safety Bus visited St. Joseph’s today. The Safety Officers educated pupils on the many safety features on the buses, including the importance of wearing seatbelts and the reason for on board CCTV. They used a range of videos and education packs to bring issues such as anti-social behaviour and vandalism and their effects to life.

They also addressed general bus etiquette including signalling for the driver to stop, letting people get off the bus first, respecting other passengers, putting tickets in the bin, not putting bags on seats, moving up the bus to create space at the front and where to stand in preparation for disembarking.

Our Year 7 pupils enjoyed the interactive and interesting way that the Safety Bus team demonstrated safe use of buses, the safety features on board and how best to represent your school when getting a public bus.

Healthy Kidz Programme

Tue 08 Mar 2022

As part of our Health and Wellbeing Programme our Year 6 and 7 pupils got to participate in the Healthy Kidz Programme funded by Lisburn and Castlereagh City Council on Tuesday 8th March.

The programme aims to enhance the physical, emotional, and general wellbeing of all those involved. The children really enjoyed the workshops. Many thanks to Amy for facilitating the delivery of the programme.

The Masked Reader

Tue 08 Mar 2022

Today we held our Masked Reader Competition. There was great excitement throughout the school as all the boys and girls tried to guess who the mystery readers were. There were lots of interesting guesses ..... but a big congratulations to those boys and girls who guessed correctly. All correct guesses were entered into a draw for a £20 book gift voucher.

Our winners were:

Nursery - Colm O'Hare

P1-P3 - Aleigha Neale (P1)

P4-P7 - Olly Doran (P6)

Congratulations to all our winners and a big thank you also to our teachers and classroom assistants who donned their masks and read extracts from some of our favourite books!

#welovereading

The Fire Service Visit the Nursery

Mon 07 Mar 2022

What fun was had by the children in the nursery unit when the firemen arrived with their fire engine on Monday. The boys and girls got to learn all about the work of the fire service, sit in the fire engine and squirt water from the fire hose. A great day of learning .... and lots of fun too!

Year 3 Pizza Party

Fri 04 Mar 2022

To reinforce their learning on fractions Primary 3 had a pizza party. They were able to divide the pizza into equal parts. They know that half means 2 equal parts and quarter means four equal parts. They challenged themselves by using their problem solving skills. For example, how many halves are there in 4 pizzas? How many slices of pizza do we need for our class? How many quarters are in 4 pizzas?

And the best part of all ... eating the slices of pizza after all this hard work. Delicious!