Dear Parents/Guardians,

We hope you are enjoying the fine Spring weather this week. Our news is as follows

• Best of luck to our boys’ and girls’ soccer teams who are travelling to Lee’s Road today to take part in the schools FAI soccer tournament. They have been busy training over the past few weeks at lunchtimes and we hope they do well today and enjoy the competition. Thank you to Muinteoir Gary and Muinteoir Amanda for organising and training and Muinteoir Lorraine and Muinteoir Alanna for accompanying the teams today.
• Well done to our boys basketball team who took part in the Marion Keane competition on Tuesday. They played well but luck was not with them this time and did not qualify for the next round. Thank you to Dean Flynn and Cliodhna Mulcahy from Shannon Jets who gave up their time to coach the boys with the assistance of Múinteoir Clare over the past few months.
• Can you please make sure that your child has a drink in school every day in a reusable bottle.  Water or dilute fruit juice is best. Pupils can get very thirsty during the day particularly as the weather improves. We appreciate your co-operation in this matter.
• 6^th class pupils making Confirmation this year will have their Ceremony of Light next Wednesday in Mary Immaculate Church at 7p.m. We wish them well on this step of the journey towards Confirmation on 2^nd May.
• We had a wonderful Cruinniú (assembly) last Friday to celebrate Seachtain na Gaeilge. All classes performed a song or poem for the rest of the school and we finished with the whole school doing a dance to An Dreoilín. It was a great celebration of our language and song. Well done everyone.
• Thank you to all who supported our bookfair last week. The orders were sent in on Tuesday and we expect to take delivery of outstanding books shortly. We are thrilled that the school has earned €1281 in free books from Scholastic and this total will be used to add to our AR library and class libraries.
•  Just to let you know that we will be carrying out standardised testing in 1^st to 6^th classes in reading and Maths in early May this year. We hope that all pupils will be present for these tests.
• The staff are currently working on updating our Anti Bullying policy and will be attending training on Friday 4^th April. To facilitate the training the school will close to pupils at 12p.m. on that day. You might want to mark this in your diary.

Kind regards,

Mary Dunlea Fitzgerald, School Principal