Dear Parents and Guardians 

This is indeed a difficult time for your families and extended families and friends. As you know the schools across Ireland were closed indefinitely with just one hour’s notice last Thursday, leaving teachers with little or no time to plan for the coming weeks. 

We, as a staff, wish to support you and your children in remote learning to the best of our ability. We have planned two methods of communicating with our parents and pupils: 

Pupils from junior infants up to IV class will have work assigned to them by their class teachers. This work will include worksheets, references to textbooks, referrals to educational websites, etc. Communication will be directly between parents and relevant teachers by email only.   Each teacher will use a specific email address and she will make contact with the parents of her pupils using her new specific email. 

Pupils of V &VI classes will communicate directly through their @tinahely.com emails, by using their GoogleDocs user-names and passwords through the Gmail app.   These emails are in a closed network confined to pupils in the school and their teachers, so no outsiders can enter the network and the pupils cannot send emails outside the network, using their @tinahely.com addresses.   There they will have an invitation to join my class, accept the invitation and after checking their emails, they can look for a square made up of 9 dots, which they will find on the top righthand corner of the email screen. The will see a button that asks about joining a class. The class code they will need is  w6tv7yh . This will bring them into the classroom where they will find Senior Principal’s box. If they tap on this it will bring them into assignments. They can leave a comment on the page to let me know that they have accessed the classroom. 

Many pupils are already doing this and returning work completed over the internet for correction. If problems arise, however, parents can email me at the school email address. 

With these systems up and running, pupils from the school will be able to keep in touch with their studies, and their education will suffer as little as possible during this time of national lock down. However, it will take a little time to get the system fully up and running, but it will be worth it in the long run. Each teacher will make time available in the day to respond by email to any queries you may have. 

Regarding schoolbooks for pupils from junior infants to IV classes, we will have them available for collection at the school on Saturday morning between 10:00 and 1:00. Each child’s books will be bagged and labelled, and each parcel will be resting on the school front wall by the gate. When collecting your child’s books, please observe social distancing rules, and do not delay at the wall, and do not enter the school itself, as it is not open to the public at this time. 

Siofra Gallagher, Principal