December 2014
As we come to the end of another busy term I would like to congratulate our pupils for completing an excellent term, packed
full of tasks, learning and activities. Thank you to all of our staff members for their dedication and continued hard work for the
children of St. Matthew’s. Well done to the children who have represented St. Matthew’s on our sports teams. Thanks in
particular to the teachers who give freely of their time to coach and support the teams at their matches.
Parents, thank you for your continued support bringing important issues to our attention and supporting your children at
school. I would like to thank in particular the parents on the library committee, garden committee and those who supported
teachers by accompanying children on recent school tours.
A number of our pupils are busily preparing for participating in the Credit Union Quiz. Thanks to Anne Deacon and Carmel
O’Connor for all their guidance in this project. We also hope to participate once again in the Eason’s Spelling Bee competition
this year – further details to follow!
Thank you to those who attended the Annual Parents’ Evening in October. Parents present heard about the life saving
defibrillator that was given to the school by last year’s Parents’ Association. This is now in place in the school with trained
staff. The Board of Management also spoke of their plans to make best use of and develop the children’s outdoor play space.
There are also plans to establish an outdoor classroom space. These developments are still on track and I look forward to
bringing you detailed information in the New Year regarding the project. The construction of our new website is at its final
stage and we aim to launch it in January!
Congratulations to the Parents’ Association who organised a fantastic Christmas Fair and beautiful calendar. Many thanks
also to the parents and businesses that sponsored the calendar. If possible, please give these local companies your custom
and support.
The co-curricular activities in which classes participated during this term where swimming (3rd & 4th Class), Artzone, football
with FAI coaches (Senior Infants – 6th Class) and Stretch & Grow (Junior Infants and Pre-School). Over the next term, Junior
Infants to 6th Class will be doing Drama with Orla on Tuesdays and 5th & 6th Class will be swimming. Parent-Teacher meetings
will be taking place for the Pre-School, Infant Classes and 3rd Class in early February.
Please find next term’s Extra Curricular Registration Form enclosed. If your child(ren) wish to participate in any of the
activities, please complete the form, attach payment and hand into the School Office. You can also register for an activity
using our Aladdin online payments on www.stmatts.ie from Wednesday.
I wish you all a very Happy Christmas and a Peaceful New Year. I look forward to seeing you all when the school re-opens on
Monday, 5th January 2015.
Naomi Rousseau, Principal
INVITATION
St. Matthew’s National School
Carol Service
Wednesday 17th December 2014
7pm in St. Matthew’s Church
Hosted by 6th Class
with help from 3rd, 4th & 5th Class
Carol Service Assembly
Thursday 18th December 2014
9am in St. Matthew’s Church
Hosted by 2nd Class
with help from Pre-School,
Junior Infants, Senior Infants & 1st Class
(Family members are very welcome to attend. It would be great to keep the aisles free, all buggies
should be left in the foyer. We would also request that if you are taking photos,
that you remain seated out of courtesy for others).
Parents Association News – Christmas 2014
We have had a busy couple of months in the run up to Christmas, but we are delighted with
the enormous success of our activities thus far.
We couldn’t have asked for a better response from you for our themed calendar pictures and I think
you will all agree that the results were well worth the effort. The calendars look better than ever, the
children all look fabulous and the photographs and graphic touches by Shane McCarthy are just
amazing. We made the decision at our first meeting this term to try a different approach to the school
Christmas Cards by getting each child to design their own individual card, we think it has worked and
will tweak any of the problems that arose this year so that we have a much smoother, and timely,
process for next year. We would also like to take this opportunity to most sincerely thank all the
businesses that sponsored the Calendar this year.
Just before mid-term in October we staged our Scary Movie night, with movies for younger and older
children, we raised €812 on the day! Thanks to Sinead Haughey and Philip Feddis for their organisational
skills.
On December 6th we had our Christmas Fair, the brainchild of Annaleise O’Leary and Lisa Gibbons. We
have received very positive feedback from many parents and are happy to hear that a good day was
had by all…..even our two BBQ chefs stood out in the cold all afternoon! Jolly Jars proved a great
success so thanks for all your last minute scrambling around for treats! We had an army of Elsas with hair
braiding by Martina and, as usual, our cakes, bric-a-brac, toys and books all proved very popular.
Reptile Zoo was a popular attraction once again! Thank you all for your contributions to the Fair, with
your help we raised €4636!
Next term, on February 5th, we will have a talk for parents given by John Lonergan, former Governor of
Mountjoy Prison. This is a very informative and entertaining talk on Parenting. John will provide his
services for free with the PA making a contribution to his preferred charity, Grow Mental Health. We
hope you can join us for this.
Remember, the PA is your PA, if you have any comments, queries or suggestions please do not hesitate
to contact any of your class reps, the names of whom are at the door of each respective class. We are
on Facebook also, St Matthews NS D4 Parents Association, we find this is a great method for quickly
picking up on concerns that arise and also for reminding parents of upcoming PA events.
Thanks again for all your help, have a Happy Christmas and see you all again in 2015!
St. Matthew’s PA
St. Matthew's Parish
Christmas Services
Sunday 21st December The Fourth Sunday of Advent
St. Mary's 10am Holy Communion
St. Matthew's 11.30am Holy Communion
Wednesday 24th December Christmas Eve
St. Mary's 10.00pm Holy Communion
Thursday 25th December Christmas Day
St. Mary's 10am Parish Communion
St. Matthew's 11.30am Parish Communion
School Calendar 2014 – 2015
th
Friday 19 December 2014
Monday 5th January 2015
Friday 13th February 2015
Monday 23rd February 2015
Friday 13th March 2015
Wednesday 18th March 2015
Friday 27th March 2015
Monday 13th April 2015
Monday 4th May 2015
Monday 1st June 2015
Friday 26th June 2015
School Closes for Christmas Holidays at 12pm
School Re-opens after Christmas Holidays
School Closes for Mid-Term Break (usual home times apply)
School Re-opens after Mid-Term Break
School Closes for St. Patrick’s Day (usual home times apply)
School Re-opens after St. Patrick’s Day
School Closes for Easter Holidays (usual home times apply)
School Re-opens after Easter Holidays
School Closed for Bank Holiday
School Closed for Bank Holiday
School Closes for Summer Holidays at 12pm
Sports at St. Matthew’s
Football
We played football with Rob and Ken from FAI. They did lessons for Senior Infants – 6th Class from September to November.
We learnt lots of football skills including drag back, drag on, roll off, step over and dribbling. We played mini tournaments, we
were divided into six teams and played matches against each other. We had lots of fun. I can’t wait until next year!
GAA
Claire has been coaching 1st and 2nd Class GAA for the past few months. It has been wonderful to watch
the children grow in confidence and work confidently as part of a team. The children have developed a
range of new skills including balance, coordination and agility. We would like to thank Claire for her
dedication and hard work this term.
GAA - Cumann na mBunscoil
First we tried out for the GAA team which would decide who would make the squad of eighteen. The
team was selected out of 4th and 5th Class. We trained for 4-5 weeks with Mary Tobin, Mrs Donlon and
Ms McConnell. Our first match was against Scoil Mhuire Boys School. At half time we were up by a
convincing score. The final score was 3-12 to 0-6. At the next training session, everyone was getting
excited for the next game against KPS. We just about won the game 0-18 to 3-2. It was end to end
stuff! Next, we played John Scotus at Clanna Gael. We won the game 3-13 to 0-0. The next game was
against Griffith barracks which was an away game. We also managed to win that one too!
Our final match was played in Clanna Gael against St. Louis. It was nail biting stuff because whoever
won would take it all! We’re happy to say, that we were the better team on the day. Big thanks to Mary
Tobin, the teachers, the referees and other teams for a great tournament. Looking forward to next year
already!
From the beginning of November, 3rd & 6th Class have been doing rugby training
every Wednesday morning. The rugby coach who has been training us is Leinster coach Ken. We
have played games such as Rabbits and Rats. We have done warm ups such as bulldogs, Passing the
Ball, jogging, jumping jacks, high knees and heel kicks. We have also played tag rugby matches. We
really enjoyed rugby training and would like to do it again.
Tag Rugby
Girls Hockey Blitz
The Hockey this year has been really fun because the girls team are in a league. We have played two matches and
the games and training are really fun every week. At the end of every term, we play a tournament which I look
forward to!
Lana, 5th Class
Boys Hockey Blitz
The boys Hockey team from 3rd-6th Class are playing in a Hockey blitz league. Our first Hockey blitz was in
Newpark Secondary School, we played their team. In our first match we lost 1-0. They scored a really jammy goal!
In the second match we played we won 1-0. We had loads of chances but only scored 1 goal unfortunately. I have
loved being part of the team!
Davitt, 5th Class
Swimming
We went swimming every Tuesday in Marian College Swimming Pool. At swimming this year we
played sharks and dolphins and learnt the butterfly, back crawl and front crawl. We went
swimming with 4th Class. It was lots of fun!
3rd Class
Cricket
4th & 5th Class are doing Cricket training with Kamal this year. We started off with some basic catching and
throwing and then we moved onto batting and blocking and then we picked teams. We were with him from
September – November and we had a lot of fun. Kamal will be back in January for more training and we can’t
wait!
Active Schools
We have had a very active first term! A wide variety of active Extra-Curricular Activities have continued
this academic year with the addition of Athletics on a Friday. School teams have been established in GAA
and Hockey which is exciting! We are busy planning our Active Schools week which will take place in the New
Year! We have had a great response from parents in helping us to plan active events for the children, thank you. If
anybody else has any contacts which you think might be useful in planning activities for the children, please touch
base with Ms Levis or Ms Clotworthy. Thank you!
Our Special Projects & Activities
ArtZone
Every class has just completed a project with ArtZone. Projects will be on display in the school hall in
the coming weeks.
Our class did still life paintings with Louise and Stephanie. We had a watering can, a welly boot and
some carrots. First we drew our sketches onto a piece of A3 Paper. Next we scribbled all over the
back of the paper so that when we traced our drawing onto the canvas it left a mark. We used acrylic
paint, and mixed colours so we could get different
shades. Then we painted our still life. We had a brilliant time. 2nd Class
We learned about various print-making techniques from the
qualified Artzone teachers. The children really enjoyed completing
block prints using foam sheets and black ink. The children added
colour to their work by using a variety of coloured cards. We would
like to thank the Artzone teachers for all their hard work this year. 1st Class
In ArtZone this year we have been making puppets with our ArtZone teachers
Dermot & David. We have been doing it for six weeks. We are making puppets
to go with the story The Enormous Turnip. Even though it’s based on The
Enormous Turnip we are allowed to do any characters we want. It is fun
laughing at our goofy creations! We used paper maché and masking tape to
make them. Then we painted them with acrylic paint. We used wool for their
hair and air dough for their eyes and mouths. For the final touch we used
cloth for their outfits.
5th & 6th Class
Art Week
We enjoyed a very successful Art Week this year which ran from the 1st - 5th
December. As it was getting close to Christmas we decided on a winter/Christmas theme for the
week and lots of different activities and events were arranged. Each of the classes created a
different Christmas craft to decorate the halls, we created a whole school collaborative art piece
based on a winter scene, which is hanging in the school hall. We had an 'Art Appreciation Day'
where each class learnt about the life and work of a famous artist, each class also created
Christmas bunting to decorate the school and 5th and 6th Class went on a trip to see an
exhibition in the Irish Museum of Modern Art.
We would like to say a very special thank you to our two guest speakers, artists Carole
Shubathham and Orla Kaminska. They both gave very interesting and engaging talks about art.
Orla spoke to Junior Infants - 3rd Class about Mosaic and Carole spoke to 4th to 6th Class about
the process of art and her work. Carole also, very generously, donated a piece of her art work to
the school!
We would also like to thank all the class teachers for making all the different events possible.
IT
Our laptops and iPads have been well used this term! We’re researching, publishing, creating
PowerPoints and using our expanding bank of apps and educational games.
Thanks to all those who have gifted apps to the school. If anyone else would like to send us apps which
you have found to be particularly good we would really appreciate it!
This term 1st Class have done computer classes with me. They have written wonderful pieces about
themselves using Microsoft Word. I am looking forward to working with 2nd Class next term.
Ms Poyntz
Science Technology Engineering and Maths Programme
As part of the school’s STEM programme we are looking for volunteers with a background in science, maths,
engineering and technology. Please contact the school if you are willing to do an experiment, give a talk or do a
workshop with any age group.
Our Special Projects & Activities
Assemblies
Halloween Assembly
This year we focused on the theme of recycling. The children designed and created some
wonderful costumes using a range of materials. We would like to thank the parents for
their continued support when it comes to Green School activities.
1st Class
5th Class Assembly
One of our favourite things we have done this year was our class assembly. We spent a lot of time
preparing and getting our props ready. The play was based on everything we had learned this term. We
talked about French history. “Are you smarter than a ten year old?” was fun for the people doing it
because you got to learn a lot of things and you had to learn the lines off by heart. We also did a Science
experiment, a History debate and X-factor. We all really enjoyed it and so did the audience!
Movie Night
Luckily for us, tickets were affordable and we got lots of sweets like popcorn, juice and haribos.
The movie we watched was Malificent. The classes that were there were
2nd – 6th. There was a really good part in the movie when the little girl was about to fall off the
cliff but she was saved by Malificent! All and all, it was a good movie but VERY far-fetched.
Luckily, the floor wasn’t too messy after the movie and we cleaned up pretty quick!
5th Class
Stretch-n-Grow
We did Stretch-n-Grow with Sarah in September and October! It was so much fun! We
played lots of games in the school hall and had a great time. Sarah gave us a special
stamp on our hands each week for doing so well.
Junior Infants
Aistear
Each day Junior and Senior Infants complete a session of Aistear in their classrooms.
Each week we have five stations. This month Senior Infants
have been working on the theme of Christmas. This week in
the Senior Infant classroom, Santa’s elves have been very
busy preparing for Christmas in the workshop (role play and
small world area), building Santa’s sleigh (construction) and
making lots of Christmas treats (playdough). We have also
been experimenting with paint to make Christmas prints
(art corner). We have been using our writing table to write
Santa’s lists. We have great fun learning through Aistear!
French
At the start of the year 5th & 6th Class didn’t know much French. But when Ms Levis came to our
classroom she taught us very useful phrases and greetings. We had loads of fun and are learning basic French
such as counting, greetings and lots more.
Robert & Leah, 6th Class
Our Special Projects & Activities
School Garden
We have been busy in our school garden during the autumn term. 5th and 6th class have been
conducting an experiment in our large flowerbed to see what conditions will produce the best soil.
The bed has been mapped and treated differently with a variation of coverings and nutrients and we will
check the soil again in the late spring to see which patch faired best. 5th Class have also been busy feeding the
St Matthew's bird population and cutting their teeth as meteorologists, recording our local weather conditions with
their up-cycled weather station. 6th Class have been policing our compost and we look forward to having some very
nutritious compost to help our plants along in the late spring.
1st-6th Class did a fantastic job of creating 'A murder of scarecrows' for the Sandymount Tidy Towns competition
and we were delighted that their efforts were rewarded again this year with 2nd prize in their category.
Amongst the other projects carried out this term - 3rd Class took to the Dodder Banks and investigated and
identified our neighbourhood foliage. 1st Class have planted a bumper crop of winter growing vegetables to kick off
their Incredible Edible programme and 2nd Class have been beavering away at seed gathering, bulb planting and
preparing something special for Mother's Day…Watch this space!
Merry Christmas from the Garden Committee!
Library
The Library would like to wish all our parents a Happy Christmas and we want to thank you for
helping us manage the return of books every week. We know it is you crawling under the bed on a
Sunday night trying to find that missing book and we appreciate that!
The library is growing all the time and is a wonderful busy hub for our children to explore. We have
started dividing our weeks into themes to encourage our readers to expand their horizons. Themes to
date include: classics, mystery, history, travel, horror, fantasy, Ireland, sport and animals. When we
return to school in January our first theme will be snow and ice, which does seem to be tempting fate!
We hope reading becomes a lifelong joy for our young library readers. It helps greatly if we as parents
encourage our children to experience reading at home as a personal pleasure and not simply a school
subject. This relationship with books is different for each child. Naturally many of you will be buying
books as presents for Christmas. These books don't have to be intellectual classics, just something that
will give your child joy and a positive experience with a book in their hand. Encouraging reading of any
book that captivates their imagination is more important than the book itself. This grounding in books
as a positive experience starts a lifelong relationship with the written word and it is this association
with a wonderful experience that will help create our avid readers in the future.
A very Happy Christmas to you all and happy reading over the festive season!
Green Schools
This term there were many impressive decorations made to brighten up our school for the
holidays. Decorations made by Sonner, Naia and Adam were entered into a competition by
ReCreate as they were beautifully made out of recycled materials. We look forward to the New
Year when we will be re-establishing our Green School Committee and will be putting our Action
Plan into action. We will be surveying the litter and waste in the school to see where we can
improve. Our main focus will be to encourage the proper use of our recycling and compost bins and
to discourage disposable packaging in lunch boxes. We hope everyone will be on board with us!
Choir
We've really enjoyed a fantastic term of choir. Our highlight this term was singing at the Iris Charles Centre’s annual
Christmas Party. The children and the audience both thoroughly enjoyed the Christmas cheer and we received many
compliments on the children's beautiful voices.
Choir Practice will resume after the Christmas holidays on Friday morning's from 8:15am. The choir is open to all children from
3rd to 6th class and children are welcome to join at any time. We will be continuing to sing at St. Matthew's
Church on the first Sunday of each month resuming on February 1st 2015.
Many thanks, Ms Lee and Ms Goodbody
School Tours
IMMA (Irish Museum of Modern Art)
For Art Week, we went to the Irish Museum of Modern Art on the 4th of December. We got on the bus at
10.30 and arrived at the Museum at 11.00. When we arrived at the Museum they gave us a quick run
through of the rules and then we split up into two groups and then we saw the art. One of our favourite
pieces was a sculpture that looked a little bit like a water slide or a rollercoaster. Another really cool
piece of art was one that was made by a South American who had ran away from his country because
the government had not allowed artists to paint or make sculptures. If they didn’t obey the rules they
would be put in jail. That piece that we saw was supposedly an illusion that had a lot of different
coloured squares that got lighter and lighter as they got closer to the middle and then in the middle it was
a diamond shape. The final piece of art we saw was a giant, brown sculpture that looked a bit like a
sausage. We all got underneath the piece of art to see if we got scared. After we saw the last piece of art
we went into the lunch room to have our lunch. All in all, it was a good trip.
5th & 6th Class
The Mill Theatre, Dundrum
We went to see ‘Little Red Riding Hood’s Christmas Adventure’ with the children from the Pre-School
and Senior Infants. Two big buses drove us to the theatre. We had a little picnic before the show started.
The show was fantastic! There was lots of music and even Santa was there! We had such a fun day out!
Junior Infants
Leinster House
In November, 6th Class went to Leinster House. We went on the Dart to and from the Dáil. In the Dáil
we saw debate about the water charges. We learned about the Dáil and the Senate. We saw portraits of
all past Taoiseachs. At the end of the trip we got books about the Dáil in both English & Irish. We also
got a copy of the Declaration of Independence. The trip was really fun and the Dáil was awesome to see.
We learned pretty interesting facts and had a fun trip!
6th Class
Dublinia
On the 28th of November, 3rd & 4th Class went to Dublinia. It was very interesting. First we got a bus to
get there. It was only half an hour drive. When we got there we met our tour guide. We saw lots and
lots of things. There were lots of things to see and I’d recommend it to anyone. It’s all about Vikings.
My favourite thing was Maggie the Skeleton!
Kate, 4th Class
Pre-School
The Pre-School have had a great first term in school, having fun and meeting new friends.
We have enjoyed learning lots of new things. We had a teddy bear’s picnic last week and
we really enjoyed our trip to see ‘Little Red Riding Hood’s Christmas Adventure’. We
especially liked big bad stinky wolf!
PE Days for Term 2
It is really important for children have a bottle of water and to be wearing the
appropriate clothing and runners on their PE days. A list is attached below for your
convenience. We will endeavour to keep parents updated when this changes. It would be
extremely helpful if children were always dressed for activity as they run in the yard at every break and
might also pop outside with their class for an impromptu run around!
Junior Infants
Tuesday & Wednesday
Senior Infants
Tuesday & Thursday
st
1 Class
Wednesday & Friday
nd
2 Class
Tuesday & Wednesday
rd
3 Class
Tuesday & Thursday
th
4 Class
Tuesday
th
5 Class
Tuesday (Swimming)
th
6 Class
Tuesday (Swimming)
Literacy & Numeracy
The Department of Education & Skills has a new initiative for self-evaluation and school improvement plans. We are busy working on our
second year of literacy and our first year of numeracy. Data has been gathered and reviewed over the last few years to guide the school’s
target setting and teaching or learning priorities.
Literacy
In Literacy, the area of spellings has been highlighted as a main priority. In particular, we are looking at children’s attitude to and
confidence with spelling, the content of our spellings plan, the way in which we teach and assess spelling, the way in which children learn
their spellings, children transferring spellings learned to their written work and pupil development in spelling.
There will be some changes in our spellings programme. Children will still have a number of common letter string or phonics based
spellings (cat, bat, fat, hat etc) to learn as a part of their homework; however, children will also have individually assigned spellings, based
on common mistakes your child is making or words that your son/daughter needs to target.
Rather than looking at the number of spellings a child is getting incorrect, we will be looking at the type of spellings and letter trains your
child needs to learn. Every child will have a notebook to record personal spellings that he/she is working on over time. Most importantly,
we will be making a very conscious effort to recognise that spelling is primarily a written and visual skill (not verbal). Children will be
assessed through regular dictation exercises, which contain words from their spellings lists. We will no longer test words in isolation. The
most important thing that you can do to support your child is to learn his/her spellings using the ‘look, cover, say, write, check’ method
for every spelling. Also, if a child asks you how to spell something, please encourage them to have a go themselves (and praise the letter
trains that are correct) or to look it up in a dictionary.
We are also continuing to implement our reading comprehension skills development plan and our writing genres plan, looking at reading
fluency, children’s self reflections on their reading ability and targeting the areas of confidence and enjoyment in reading. We urge parents
at all times to provide an environment where children are encouraged to read and write for pleasure.
Numeracy
In numeracy, our main priorities will be in the area of problem solving sums (Anne and Peter went to the shop. Anne bought 74 penny
sweets, Peter bought 5 times that amount. How many sweets did Peter buy?). We will also be targeting the areas of number facts (knowing
tables, fractions and decimals etc facts by heart) and mental maths (doing sums quickly in your head). We will be updating you shortly on
how best to support your child in this area.
As a staff, we have been focusing on our assessment of and assessment for learning, in order to improve the learning taking place in the
school. To develop this area, we have SALF Folders for every child. A SALF Folder is a Self Assessment Learning Folder. Each child has
his/her own folder, which they have complete ownership of. Each child is encouraged to choose to file pieces of their learning that he/she
feels is noteworthy and explain why that is the case. For example, a child may choose to store a page from their maths copy – it may be the
day in which he/she cracked long division. This serves as a great, positive medium for communication between children, their teacher and
home. Children will be given opportunities to bring these SALF Folders home to share and discuss. We know that this pupil self
assessment folder will be of great benefit to our pupils.
Term 1 in pictures ........