School Work, Aladdin Connect, and Active Schools Week

29th April 2020
 
Dear Parents, 

I hope this letter finds you all well and safe. Thank you to everyone who responded to the recent Distance Learning Survey. The results and feedback have been shared with all the teachers. We found the feedback extremely valuable to inform future planning of how best to support our pupils during this unprecedented school closure while being cognisant of the needs and demands on families as many parents continue to work from home.  We were glad that the vast majority of parents were happy with the amount of work given each week. We recognise that parents continue to want a balance between online and pencil-and-paper work. We know that there remain issues with connectivity, access to online resources, collection of books, and other issues raised and we will continue to try to devise the best strategy in planning going forward that suits the majority of pupils and their families. We would love to allow for collection of books; however, we have been advised by the Patron’s Office that this is not permitted at this time. Should circumstances change, we will review this.  

I have met with all the teachers this week online. The following changes were agreed and will be implemented from this May bank holiday weekend.  

1. For pupils from Junior Infants to 3rd Class: Each teacher is devising a weekly plan of work to be completed by pupils. This will be sent to you by email or using the Aladdin Connect system by the Sunday before the start of the new school week. The weekly plan will also be uploaded to the school website under the relevant “class news tab” section as before. Children will be offered the opportunity to submit work to their class teacher via email by parents. The teachers are delighted to receive children’s work and will respond  with feedback and encouragement. As highlighted previously, the work set out is only a suggested programme of work. We understand each family has differing circumstances and all work may not get completed each week.  

1. 4th, 5th and 6th Classes will begin to use the Microsoft Teams platform from next Tuesday to receive and submit work. Each pupil will be given a school email address and log-in code. This will only be used for the purpose of school work using Microsoft Teams. Teachers have set up a team for each class. Information with regard to set up will be distributed to these parents and pupils in the next few days. We will continue to upload a weekly plan of work to the school website under the relevant “class news tab” as before for these pupils and also in case there is any difficulty setting up individuals on the Microsoft Teams system. Teachers will be asking pupils to submit some completed work to them  each week for review and feedback. 

1. Our school is delighted to announce that we will roll out the Aladdin Schools Connect to parents/guardians of children in our classes this week.  The school uses the Aladdin Schools software service www.aladdin.ie for administrative purposes and Connect will give you secure access to messages from the school and to details of your child’s attendance, test results, reports cards etc via secure login from your internet browser or Aladdin Connect App. 

In the next few days, you will receive a text message containing your registration link.  There will be one link per parent which will allow the parent to access information for all their children in the school from one user account. Please do not forward this text or share this link as this is a unique registration code for each parent for your child/children in this school. During registration you will choose a password that will be used in conjunction with your email address to securely access the Aladdin Connect going forward. Once you are registered you will be sent an email with links to download the Aladdin Connect App for your mobile device. The main advantage of using the App is to receive immediate alerts for app messages sent by your school. Downloading the App is highly recommended to enhance both the parent and school's Connect experience. 
 
 Aladdin Connect is a fantastic way to enhance a school's communication with parents. It enables parents to stay connected and informed about their child's education by: 

• Ensuring that the school has their most up to date contact information. 
• Allowing schools to gather permission(s) from parents. 
• Allowing parents to quickly and efficiently select preferred slots for parent teacher meetings.  
• Keeping parents apprised of their child's attendance. 

• Keeping parents up to date on school and classroom news via noticeboard messages. 
• Allowing parents to view what items their child had for homework. 
• Allowing parents view their child's approved report card. 
• Allowing parents to view their child's latest standardised test results. 

 Along with strengthening our home/school partnership, we also envisage Aladdin Connect helping the school by: 

• Helping to improve attendance by allowing parents to keep track of any school days their child may have currently missed, along with late arrival information.  
• Helping to reduce the amount of class/school notes being sent home. 
• Helping the school/ teachers communicate with parents when the need arises. 
• Reducing costs by eliminating the need to send school report cards by post. 
• Reducing costs by reducing the number of text messages that need to be sent. 

You can rest reassured that Aladdin Schools uses state-of-the-art security to safeguard information entered by the school and data is stored and processed in strict compliance with Irish and European data protection laws. 

Finally, do not forget that our Active Schools Committee has asked us all to take part in the “Active at Home Week” this week to help us achieve our Active School Flag.  There are plenty of ideas and activities under the Active School section of our school website and clips of some teachers taking on the challenge to become more active. You can use the link http://www.ballinaprimaryschool.com/active-school-week-2019-2020 to view them. If any parents wish to send pictures, video clips or emails of our active pupils please send them to  cslattery@ballinaprimaryschool.com, amcloughney@ballinaprimaryschool.com or cosullivan@ballinaprimaryschool.com.

We congratulate all the pupils for their efforts to complete their work at home during this closure. We sincerely thank the parents for encouraging the children to continue some study at home at this time. Having spoken to many parents over the last fortnight, we understand great learning is taking place other than the academic work set out. Families are enjoying quality time together and undertaking many different activities such as learning to cycle, enjoying some story books, learning new sports skills, baking, cooking, and gardening. We have enjoyed hearing about these new skills and look forward to more news from you all in the coming weeks. The well-being of school community is of paramount concern and importance to us all at this time. 

Príomhoide Bernice.