PJP School News

Hello everyone,

Welcome to the latest PJP School News. As usual things have been very busy for us in school. We were delighted to celebrate world book day last week and are looking forward to the different Seachtain Na Gaeilge events over the next week.

A big thank you to Mr. Murphy who is taking on the responsibility of pulling the newsletter together.

I hope you will enjoy catching up on all the news and meeting Ms. Magner - Ms. Magner will be known to the school community for her choir coordination and help with our school gardens but in this newsletter we are meeting her in her Assistant Principal role.

Well done to the children, parents and teachers in second and sixth class who have started their sacramental preparation. The children are starting to go to mass with their classmates to prepare for communion and indeed confirmation.

Well done to the latest winners of the golden boots - with the mornings getting brighter hopefully more children can walk, scoot or cycle to school.

Le gach dea ghuí,

Ms. Markey

Ms. Magner is former pupil of Pope John Paul II N.S. She began teaching here in 2008. Ms. Magner has returned to the role of a Special Education Teacher (S.E.T.) with fourth class this year after working in mainstream with third class for the previous two years. Ms. Magner is the current teacher representative on the Board of Management.

As part of her Assistant Principal role, Ms. Magner looks after all things Gaeilge in the school and is responsible for coordinating our upcoming 'Seachtain na Gaeilge' with the 'Coiste na Gaeilge '.

Ms. Magner also co-ordinates the PJP Student Council and they are working towards a UNICEF 'Child Right's Respecting School Award'. Ms. Magner is also involved with the school garden winning the GIY Big Grow National Campaign last year and helps with the school choir having recently been involved with the Peace Proms in the RDS.

Welcome to the newsletter ! Today I will be writing about World Book Day!

Everyone can dress up as their favourite book character, I dressed up as Amber from the Midnight Gang.

There was a book fair in the hall with lots and lots of different kinds of books. They also gave tea and coffee for the adults and biscuits for the kids. I bought a book called Code Name Bananas by David Walliams. There was also lots of stationary to buy.

We played a game called book bingo. The fourth and fifth classes had an author in to read them a book.

And that’s what happened on world book day! Bye thanks for reading 😊

A very big Thank You to the PJP PA for organising our Book fair last week. The event was a huge success and we are so grateful to the school community that supported the event. The school will benefit from my new books which will be shared and placed into classroom libraries. We look forward to this becoming a regular event.

The 4th class children from Ms. O’Connor’s class recently had the amazing opportunity of visiting Dream Space educational hub at Microsoft Ireland in Leopardstown.

Dream Space provides immersive, research-based STEM experiences for students and teachers to enhance their STEM skills alongside crucial social-emotional skills such as empathy, creativity, ethical decision making and collaboration.

Our students had the opportunity to work together, using their ingenuity and creativity to explore the future and solve problems collaboratively through engaging, hands-on STEM activities using innovative technologies.

During their time at Dream Space, the students worked in groups to complete computational thinking challenges. They learnt how to code tiny, pocket-sized computers called Micro:bits and they also considered how society might change in the future with the help of A.I (artificial intelligence).

This was a wonderful learning opportunity for the students and it gave us some great new STEM ideas to explore further at PJPs.

Student Council

The Student Council went on their first field trip recently to Malahide Library. The children visited an exhibition called "Viewpoints" as part of their efforts to achieve the Child Rights School Bronze Award for this year. The exhibition consisted of nine paintings by well-known children's book illustrators. The children had to examine the pictures and see if they could figure out which one of the children's rights was represented in the picture . We had a lovely day and even had time to relax and read a few books afterwards . Thank you to the parents that came with us to supervise too.

On 4th February , children from 5th and 6th class participated in The Peace Proms in the RDS. Our school formed part of a choir of over 2,500 children from all over Ireland (north and south) . We sang a variety of songs including a dance medley , a pop medley , brothers in arms and even learned some Irish sign language to perform a song called live your story . Many thanks to Ms. Magner, Ms. Ní Chonchubhair, Ms. Mc Kenna & Mrs. Magner who all helped supervise on the day. A great day was had by all and memories to last a lifetime!

Click here to watch a clip from the RDS!

The students from Room 8 Ms. Millar's class have been working very hard on their on the Junior Entrepreneur projects in preparation for presentation of projects to the Junior Entrepreneur 'dragons'.

On the 21st of February the children presented their projects to the ‘dragons’; Ms. McCarthy from Excursions Ireland, Mr. Elebert from The Yellow Door and Ms. Whyte a teacher from Pope John Paul II school, who has completed the Junior Entrepreneur Programme with a class previously. It was a tough competition and all the groups presenting had excellent ideas and their presentations were super.

Unfortunately, not all the project ideas could win and in the end the ‘dragons’ chose The Yard Shop idea. The Yard Shop will involve the children selling yard equipment such as chalk, skipping ropes and tennis balls to the children in our school. Congratulations to The Yard Shop group! We are all looking forward to buying lots of items from The Yard Shop.

Last October, Naomi and Saoirse and some of Naomi’s classmates decided to do a fundraiser bake sale in aid of Crumlin hospital. They raised a whopping €700! This was used to purchase a percussion instrument for St. John’s garden in Crumlin hospital, which was finally installed this week. You can see pictures of the ‘opening ceremony’ where Darcy cut the ribbon.

A great achievement for the children and a welcome addition to the garden in St. John’s. Well done everyone!

AnaGio from Ms. Hannon's third class had a very special haircut at the weekend. AnaGio cut her hair in aid of The Laura Lynn Foundation. AnaGio has raised almost €2000 and the funds will help to make a wig for a child.

If you would like to support her please visit her just giving page: https://www.idonate.ie/fundraiser/ClaudinePickett1

As the weather gets better, the sporting fixtures are coming thick and fast! Our boys and girls have been working hard and will be donning the Green and Blue several times over the next month. Best of luck to all the children and teachers involved! PJP abú!

Fixture list: (Dates may change)

Senior Boys Gaelic Football:

Oliver Plunketts vs PJP – March 20th

PJP vs Rush NS – March 27th

Senior Girls Gaelic Football:

PJP vs St Marnocks – March 8th

Lusk SNS vs PJP – March 14th

PJP vs St Seachnalls – March 20th

PJP vs St Patricks, Skerries – March 28th

Senior Boys Soccer:

PJP vs St Brigids Killester – March 3rd

Junior Boys Football:

PJP vs Gaelscoil Brian Boroimhe – March 27th

Junior Girls Football:

PJP vs Rolestown – March 20th

PJP vs Gaelscoil Brian Boroimhe – March 27th

Our school community welcomed Fr. Martin and Ronan to the school on Ash Wednesday for a prayer service to mark the beginning of Lent. Well done to the various pupils who read a prayer and brought a gift to the altar. The prayer service was then followed by the distribution of ashes.

There was great excitement in Ms. Kieran’s 2nd Class when the pupils learned how to use rushes to make St. Brigid’s crosses. We also watched a webinar with author Caroline Busher and found out about the various traditions and stories associated with St. Brigid.

This month , we've been celebrating two big events - Valentine's Day and Pancake Tuesday. Members of the Coiste na Gaeilge helped to design both boards :

It’s Engineers Week this week, when engineering is celebrated throughout Ireland, with primary and secondary school children being the target audience. The main aim of the week is to promote engineering and to show the importance of the profession to children in Ireland.

At PJP’s, our students have had many opportunities already this year to learn about engineering and become engineers themselves through various hands-on STEM activities and challenges they have been doing in STEM lessons with Ms. Hayden.

Over the past week, our senior classes have been having lots of fun taking part in the Science Buddies 2023 Engineering Challenge which has involved them using their problem-solving skills to design and build contraptions that can pick up a ping pong ball and return it to a start line. We’re looking forward to testing out our devices this week. Check out the challenge here: