To celebrate the start of Mental Health Week, this morning pupils in our three Primary 4 classes joined a live virtual Art lesson, with 93 primary school classes taking part.  They had a wonderful time time exploring the beauty of Monet's masterpiece, Path in the Wheat Fields at Pour Ville'.  They studied the world of seascapes, complementary colours and created beautiful mixed media artworks following step by step guidance from Sinead McDermott.

The children thoroughly enjoyed this therapeutic activity whilst raising awareness within themselves of the importance of embracing calm activities to help with their mental health. Our Primary 5 and 6 children hope to complete the activity later this week. Well done boys and girls and thank you to Sinead!

#childrensmentalhealthweek

Have a look through the photographs below to see the variety of After-School Clubs which were on offer this week to includes Soccer, Hockey, Gaelic Football for boys and girls, Hurling and Nature Rangers. 

Great skill and teamwork and fun for all! 

The various classes involved in our Shared Education Partnership Programme were out in force today to show care and commitment for the environment and our local area by completing a community litter pick.  In addition to having a good morning's fun, 19 bags of rubbish were collected and successfully taken for disposal.  Well done to all who took part - great community team work on display!

This was National Storytelling Week.  Stories teach us about the world. They allow us to step into someone else’s shoes and feel empathy.  They help us to relax and escape and they can help develop essential literacy skills.

As part of our programme during National Storytelling Week, Mrs. Matthews' class, in partnership with poet and author Steven Camden, have been working on creating a storytelling project designed to inspire a love of story creation and storytelling.

The project kickstarted with a live interactive story building event.  Follow-up classroom resources, courtesy of the National Literacy Trust, have been supporting pupils to create their own story world.  We look forward to reading the final stories produced and sharing these with other groups of children throughout our school.

"A book is a gift you can open again and again." 

Our Year 3 pupils have been paired with a Year 7 pupil for the duration of our Paired Reading Programme which started last week. The children will engage in three half-hour paired reading sessions per week.   Year 3 children, with the support of their Year 7 partner, select their Paired Reading books from a stock of books especially chosen for the programme. 

Paired Reading which has two distinct parts - Reading Together and Reading Alone - has been shown to have excellent results for helping children to read, enjoy reading and to develop a positive attitude to reading. 

We look forward to all children involved with the programme having an enjoyable and rewarding literacy experience.

"A word after a word after a word is power."

On the eve of St Brigid's Day (1st February) Year 6 mark the feast day celebrations of this special Irish saint by carrying on the tradition of making St Brigid's Crosses from rushes.  We thank Canon Colm for calling into school this to bless the crosses before taking them home.

Congratulations to our January Award Winners!

Congratulations to all those boys and girls who represented our school at the recent Camlin Credit Union Quiz.  Our Year 6 team finished in first place and one of our Year 7 teams were Runners-Up.  Well done girls and boys - super representatives for St. Joseph's! 

A big thank you to all our Year 3 Grandparents, extended family and friends who came into school today to hear the beautiful singing, storytelling and poetry of our children.  Visitors enjoyed some light refreshments and were then invited to spend some time with the children in their classrooms.

Also, a big thank you to the Year 3 teachers and classroom assistants for the beautiful gifts the children made for their Grandparents.

Well done girls and boys - the treats were definitely well deserved.  This was indeed a very fitting conclusion to our celebrations for Catholic Schools Week - a family community who exemplify the theme of 'Communities of Service' in so many wonderful ways!