27th March 2020

Dear Parents and Carers

As we arrive at the end of the first full week of our partial closure I hope you and your families are well. While the situation across the country is challenging us all, I hope that you have found more time to spend together living a less frantic life.

In school, we have been supporting the children of our key worker parents. While it is very quiet, it is good to know that we can support our community in a small way at this time.

We will be continuing to do this next week, however school will be closed to ALL children during the Easter break (ie Saturday 4^th April- Sunday 19^th April).

School will then re-open for the children of Key worker families, unless of course, there are new government instructions.

As you know we have put home learning work on the class pages for the children. There will be more new work set after the Easter break.

With regard to home learning, supporting your children can be enjoyable but also challenging.  I would suggest agreeing with your child or children what they will study and learn during the day and how they will do that. Then ensure there are regular breaks and times to relax with you or by themselves.

Anything academic that you can support with, is a real bonus but the main thing is that we all get through this period of time safely. It is a great opportunity to be with each other and an opportunity that we may not get back as our children grow up.

As you can see we have written a letter to your children. This time last week was an extremely busy and unplanned for day. Children will not have really known quite what to make of it all! We are aware that is was sad for many of our children, particularly the Year 6’s who have left school suddenly, possibly never to return. Some of them even said they were very disappointed after all that work not to be doing their SAT’s!!

It is our intention to stay in regular communication with you. Each week the Teachers will put a message on the Class page on the Monday morning by 10am to keep in touch. We would really like it if you want to share anything you are doing through Twitter using @stbellarmine and we can still get a sense of being together as a school community, looking out for each other and sharing our learning and experiences.

Kind regards,

Mairead O’Neill Dowell