This year, as a school we are prioritising Reading as one of our literacy areas of focus. Reading is a skill for lifelong learning and the importance of fostering and instilling a love of reading in children from a young age is vitally important. Daily reading helps to increase a child’s attention span, improves memory and concentration, and encourages children to be curious and creative learners.

Reading also helps to develop the 5 essential skills that are important for a child’s development.

These are:

• The ability to hear, respond, and play with individual sounds; referred to as phonemic awareness. 
• The ability to establish a connection between written language and words that come out of one’s mouth. This is known as Phonics. 
• Having a strong vocabulary to be able to communicate or write better. 
• The ability to read something and interpret what is written, in other words, being able to comprehend and understand what they read. 
• The ability to be orally fluent while speaking a language

Reading is a habit and like all habits, it needs repetition and regularity to establish itself. This means consciously making time to read. As a school we are asking families to commit to 5 minutes reading a day. While we encourage children to read at home as much as possible, we are asking children to upload just 5 minutes of their oral reading each day to SeeSaw (Monday-Thursday). This will allow teachers to monitor and track their reading progress throughout the year.

Classrooms are incredibly busy environments and it can be difficult for teachers to listen individually to each child read aloud daily. Some children also shy away from reading aloud and this will enable teachers to hear their reading practice.

What we want you to do!

Details of how to log in to SeeSaw will be sent home today. SeeSaw is an online learning platform and many parents will be familiar with using SeeSaw already and children in the middle and senior classes are very familiar with it. The SeeSaw app can be easily downloaded onto any device e.g. ipad, tablet, smart phone or laptop.

Each child will be given a Read At Home book and we would like them to first practice their assigned reading page and then upload their piece to Seesaw each day. In order to so this, once logged in, children will press the green plus symbol and click on tools. There will be an option to record their reading. Once finished, simply click on the green check mark to submit to their class teacher for feedback.

If you require any additional support using SeeSaw please contact the class teacher for assistance.

We thank you in advance for your continued support.

Click below to View
Christmas Concert Trailor 2021

A huge thank you to Una Halpin from the Heritage in Schools programme who visited our school today. The children had great fun in the outdoor classroom learning all about trees in autumn and carrying out some scientific investigations. How lucky are we to have such a lovely school situated on such an amazing green, outdoor space, full of nature!

3rd-6th class have been enjoying weekly ukulele lessons with Shane Sullivan from Music Generation, Kildare. The children are making fantastic progress. Take a listen to Ms. Lacey’s class performing ’Roar’.

Click here to listen! 

Third Class celebrated their First Penance and First Holy Communion on the 8th of October. It was a beautiful ceremony and we are so proud of all the children. Thank you to Ms. Carter and the parish team, Fr. Hannon and Natasha for helping to prepare the children for their special day.

We were delighted to be joined by David Hyland (Kildare GAA captain) today to help us raise our Active Renewal Flag. We are thrilled to have our new flag flying proudly to highlight that our school is one where physical activity is valued, promoted and enjoyed by all! #activeschoolflag Well done to all our pupils and staff who work so hard to keep Kilberry NS fit and active.

The new school term will begin on Tuesday, August 31st 2021 for all pupils.

As per Department of Education guidelines issued recently, our school’s Covid-19 Response Plan which was in operation during the last academic year will continue for the foreseeable.

Our Covid plan is available to view on this website. Please familiarise yourself with this plan to ensure the safety and welfare of all in our school community.

School begins at 9am for all pupils. Pupils will be admitted to their classrooms from 8.50am onwards to facilitate social distancing and a smooth drop off. We ask parents not to drop their child before this time as children will not be supervised.

Junior Infant pupils will finish school at 12pm until Friday 10th September and should be collected from their classroom door. Senior Infants finish at 1.40pm, 1st and 2nd Class finish at 2.30pm and all other classes at 2.40pm.

We look forward to seeing all our pupils back on Tuesday 31st as we hope for an uninterrupted year of fun and learning ahead.