The Primary School year has now also come to an end, after a three-month roller coaster ride for all of us in the school community: distance learning, Zoom classes and, from a teacher’s perspective, staring into a soul-less computer screen each morning instead of greeting our students with a cheery ‘hello’ in a real classroom. But, try as it might, we couldn’t allow Covid19 to tear the heart out of our school. So, over the last few weeks teachers pulled all kinds of rabbits out of all kinds of hats to bring the school year to an end. (Of course, we also kept up our lessons!)
Some important traditions had to be maintained and records of school life meticulously kept, as we always do, for the Yearbook. The class photos were taken on Zoom, Virtual Wandertag was organised taking the children to far flung places such as Sydney, to virtual Escape Rooms and even on a Treasure Hunt around the school.
From a sporting perspective, the last few weeks – normally our busiest time of the year – have been different but the pupils of St Kilian’s have embraced it all with enthusiasm and a smile. Our fundraiser for LauraLynn raised a fantastic €3,320 by our school community. The pupils completed exercise challenges throughout the week and we finished with a Zoom dance party on the Friday which was very well attended and great fun.
For 6th class the end of their primary school journey was a very different one than they had expected, but we endeavoured to make it as special as we could for this amazing group of students.
The celebrations began on Friday 12th June with the traditional teachers versus students challenge. It was a historic victory for the pupils as the teachers were previously unbeaten. There were sporting challenges, questions to flex the brain and lots of fun in between.
The traditional 6th class Wandertag is to go down to Brittas Bay. Unfortunately, this wasn’t to be but instead the children were given the choice of visiting the EPIC Emigration Museum in Ireland, the Vatican Museum in Europe or embark on a worldwide tour of the UNESCO heritage sites on Google Earth.
On 16th June we invited the parents to join their children on a special Graduation Zoom session. It was extremely emotional as we heard messages from their teachers, memories from some of the children, poems and a photo montage of how much 6th class have grown since they began their primary school journey. 17th June was the final day for 6th class in Primary School and we celebrated in a Zoom session in which Mrs. Finnegan popped in to say goodbye and wish the students well.
Annette Black, Siobhan Collins & Lucy Bowen
