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School Newsletter | St. Maries of the Isle

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Our monthly school newsletter is shared to all in an effort to showcase the amazing work done around the school and each members effort in engaging with the community the school resides in.

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(Picture: The newsletter highlights some of the amazing work like this 'Bridges of Cork' project by 6 th class)

The first newsletter was produced in December 2021 and has been published monthly since then by the dedicated team of Max, Rahman, Lexi and new team member, Alex.

Using Apple Pages software, under Mr O'Dea's guidance, the children collate pictures and content from staff around the school, before publishing their work in PDF format.

The school is very proud of the hard work Mr. O'Dea and his dedicated team have put into the project.

You can click on the links to this month's newsletter, as well as those published in the last year.

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School Newsletter | St. Maries of the Isle

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(Picture: The newsletter highlights some of the amazing work like this 'Bridges of Cork' project by 6 th class) The first newsletter was produced in December 2021 and has been published monthly since then by the dedicated team of Max, Rahman, Lexi and new team member, Alex.

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Children enter our school building each day with a welcome sign in their native language. What better way to start the day than a homely welcome ☺️

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The children made these A3 sized canvases to showcase their favourite school novels and help promote others to read these books. These novels encourage children to think about becoming more welcoming and kinder to others especially the new children that may enter our lives.

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Homayoon from Schools of Sanctuary came in to speak to our 3rd - 6th class children about what it means to be a “school of sanctuary”. The children loved hearing his story and talking about our own school

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Deirdre Clune, one of Ireland’s European Union MEPs, visited our school today to speak about the role of the EU to the children, including its duty in providing refugee to those in need.

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One school, many cultures. Our school constantly tries to capture the many different countries that attend our school.

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Our inter-culture day invites family members to come into our school wearing cultural clothes with prepared delicacies and dishes from their own country. It’s always one of our favourite days of the year which celebrates our many cultures.

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Parents are often invited into our staff room, to share stories, learn and teach each other new skills and form friendships. Here, parents were learning to embroiden items, taught by one of our fantastic mothers.

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Our 5th class children attended workshops to demonstrate how Cork City welcomes all members of the world.

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The school achieved its blue flag status recently, stating that we are actively learning about the role of the EU and demonstrating many of its values and practices in our daily school lives.

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Our welcoming school nature was showcased today as we welcomed 5 other schools into our school hall to play in a chess tournament. The children laughed and chatted with one another whilst forming friendships with children from other parts of Cork.

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As part of the School’s of Sanctuary “Open Book Day”, Ms. O’Shea’s 3rd class watched “Home”. By watching the short film, they gained a better understanding of what it must be like to arrive to a new school and learn a new language.

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Our signed contract, where all members of the school made a promise to promote a welcoming environment for all who enter our school.

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Ms. O’Donoghue’s 1st class have been learning about migration. They read “Welcome” by Barroux, a story about a Polar Bear looking for a new home. This led to a discussion about why someone might have to leave their home. They reflected on the importance of being kind and welcoming to new pupils who arrive to Ireland from a different country. They then designed “welcome” posters that will be displayed outside of their classroom. We hope that this will enable new pupils to feel welcome in our school community.

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6th class watched clips from the film “The Swimmers” to gain a better understanding what journey a refugee undertakes when seeking asylum.

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Our sixth class enjoy reading to the junior infants children a variety of stories to help them learn about conquering their fears, accepting differences, adapting to changes and welcoming new opportunities. 

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4th class demonstrate their wonderful lámh skills to the fantastic song “A Wonderful World”. Learning lámh is a vital skill to be able to welcome people who may use lámh as their primary mode for communication.

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Our nurture room had been established as a safe space for children who need a break from the everyday worries and challenges in their lives. It is proving to be extremely successful in the support it has given.

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6th class read the book “The Boy at the Back of the Class” where they read all about Ahmet, a Syrian refugee boy. They absolutely loved that book and the stories it opened up as members of the class discussed similar life stories.

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4th class began collecting postcards from all around the world as a way to show how the world is connected.

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Our school showcases many of the wonderful everyday happenings on our school instagram page.

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Welcome back to Instagram. Sign in to check out what your friends, family & interests have been capturing & sharing around the world.

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5th class students have previously explored and read the book 'Refugee' by Alan Gratz.

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6th class shared all their stories and experiences of what it’s like to celebrate Christmas in different countries. We learned about some really cool traditions and decided to celebrate some of them in school.

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Many of the classes watched the amazing short “exchange student” about the challenges a human girl faced when she started school at an alien school in another planet. She didn’t speak the language and ate different foods which opened up many fantastic similar discussions that children commented they experienced when they first moved to Ireland.

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Book buddies is a popular practice in our school where the older children read stories to the younger children, creating a collaborative and connective community.

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6th class created care packages for the most vulnerable people at Christmas time in their efforts to continue practicing welcoming and caring traits ☺️

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2nd class have made some very creative country flags during art this week. Each flag represents their home country to showcase the many cultures within their classroom.

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The schools Twitter page informs followers of the wonderful everyday work within our school.

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The school took part in UCC’s Equality, Diversity and Inclusion Art Fest this past year. The theme was ‘The Human Race’. Our pupils created some beautiful artwork about what ‘The Human Race’ represents for them. Pupils submitted entries of their art work which can be viewed on UCCs website: https://www.ucc.ie/en/edi/news/kidsartfest/ . We also kept some entries to display in our school as we want to share that we are an equal, diverse and inclusive school community.

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Kindness is a vital message our school conveys daily to help us become kinder to everyone around us. This has really helped us all become that much more welcoming to each individual who enters our school. 

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Soft Starts - Our teachers recognise the everyday challenges children may face before ever even entering the school gates so we often begin the day with something soft and light as a nice way to begin the school day like art, ping pong, volleyball.

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The school choir attended Peace Proms in Waterford where they sang with thousands of other children from across Ireland, accompanied by the Cross Border Orchestra. Peace Proms brings the magic of music to almost 35,000 children in 700 primary schools each year across Ireland and Northern Ireland. Peace Proms is more than just a music program – it promotes 'peace through music' and empowers young minds to make a positive impact on the world around them.

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The 3rd - 6th class children got a special visit from Homayoon to learn all about his journey and the role and responsibilities of a champion school of sanctuary.

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Our positive mindfulness wall in our staff room to help teachers remember our true value in the children’s lives. It really adds to the atmosphere of the room. 

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6th class worked closely with 1st class in teaching them all about the cultures of a specific country. This buddy system not only taught valuable skills and knowledge to the 1st class but it also gave them many more ears for their ideas, opinions and thoughts to be heard. 

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Members of our sanctuary team visited one of our neighboring schools, Greenmount, to chat about the many great ideas we utilize to create a welcoming environment for all. We even got to share some of our chess skills with them. 

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School should be a welcoming place and that’s exactly what we try to encourage with many of our breakfast mornings where the children start school with a tasty pastry and a juice box. It’s also a great opportunity to catch up with friends and eases all children into a day of work. 

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The children at our school are always encouraged to join in with their community games teams and share their skills and heritage with other members of the community. This has strengthened their relationship with local businesses and neighbours within their community. Here is a picture of many of our children on the community chess team that won 1st prize in two categories in the All-Irelands.

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Our 6th class children bring out our junior infant children on special walks to learn about the many amazing features of our community. 

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Our school were visited by a neighboring champion school, to both learn about all the amazing aspects that make their school welcoming and also share some of the great welcoming features of our school. We even got to play a game of badminton together. 

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Our neighboring secondary school put on an athletics day for our fourth class who utilised that opportunity to share of the many good practices our school undertakes as we strive to become a school of sanctuary. 

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The children are constantly encouraged to learn about a variety of musical genres to help them appreciate the vast array of cultural interests in music. Here, one of the girls was creating a project on Bob Marley after discovering a particular interest in his reggae style of music. 

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Child-friendly books like this one are read to the children to help them learn about the various ways our minds may differ. These are really important in understanding why we need to welcome everyone regardless of their differences. 

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Another of our wonderful breakfast mornings 😋 

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Sharing stories, skills and knowledge happens so often through cross-class projects. 

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We have clubs for all at our school to give each member an opportunity to develop their favourite extracurricular interests. Badminton, chess, soccer, guitar, art are some of the most popular choices. Here are our girls football team representing the school proudly at the FAI Soccer Competition. 

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Representing the school is proudly encouraged as children gain a sense of pride and accomplishment. It shows that we welcome every game or sport and will help you achieve success. Here our school chess team won the All Ireland Chess Competition. 

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Some of our sanctuary members were delighted with their ice-creams they got from the nuns in the convent next door to our school. We aim to continue a positive relationship with the convent where we swap stories and learn from one another. Most recently, the children sang songs as part of the May Procession and shared some of the wonderful work they have done over the past few weeks. 

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Our buddy system brought the Junior Infants to the local cathedral to teach them about some historical figures in their community. They shared stories in the field out the back of important figures from their own home countries. 

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We run yard games monitors to help each child feel included in games and all children feel safe and happy at yard times.

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Our school’s neurodiversity logo that promotes the acceptance of the variety of individuals that enter our school. 

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What better way to celebrate our individuality and uniqueness than an odd sock day 🧦 

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Children in 1st class researched the countries they are from. They then had the opportunity to share their reports with their classmates and discuss what it has been like for each of them to move to Ireland.

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1st class created a collaborative art project to celebrate our multicultural community here at St. Marie’s of the Isle!

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Our school organised a bake sale to raise funds for our upcoming school tours. As a school community, we want to ease the pressure on parents as every family in the school come from different backgrounds.

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6th class students supported 1st class with orienteering activities last week. This was a great support for all EAL children and it was great to see some friendships being made between the two classes.

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We had the pleasure of welcoming the Schools of Sanctuary monitoring team to our Multicultural Day in school. We were delighted to be awarded with recognition as a Champion School of Sanctuary!

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3rd class spent an afternoon learning all about World Peace Day. They had some interesting discussions about the need for peace among the world and the importance of accepting each other’s differences.