Senior Infants Archives | Ennis National School

Senior Infants

Senior Infants Classes are located on the ground floor. The teachers are Yvonne Kelly, Aisling Howley and Sean Cullinan.

School starts at 8.50am
Your child has structured play from 8.50 am until 9.00am. Being late means they miss out on this important activity. {All late arrivals are recorded}
On dry days, the children remain on the infant yard with their belongings and are collected when the bell rings by the class teacher.
On wet days, your child by themselves will go to their classroom, hang up their own coat and go to their seat and begin their structured play. There is a teacher on supervision duty for infants from 8.40am.
School finishes for Senior Infants at 1.45pm. {All late collections are recorded}
Small break: 10.45am – 11.00am
Big breaks: 12.30pm – 1.10pm
If you need to take your child out of school for any reason, the class teacher must be notified and you must sign the early collection sheet.
County Photos – In Senior Infants, individual and sibling photographs are taken but no class photograph is taken.
Invitations – Please refrain from distributing party invitations in class.
Christmas concert – Once a date for the Christmas Concert has been chosen, parents will be informed via a text from the class teacher.
Parent teacher meetings will take place in November.
Halloween hobble takes place for your child again this year.

All positive behaviour and effort is acknowledged and praised.
Inappropriate behaviour is dealt with through non-verbal cues, proximity praise, verbal warning and time out. {Parent’s will be informed of time out}
All deserving children receive a milseán on a Friday. During the year, a trophy, a teddy, stickers… are given out. {class teacher’s discretion}

Literacy lift Off is a reading initiative that takes place over 8 weeks, in two four week blocks throughout the year.
All reading material sent home with your child should be read by the child themselves as it is graded and is repeated reading i.e They have already read it repeatedly in school. Encourage them to use their sounds.
We revisit Jolly Phonics Step 1 {sounds} that your child completed last year before moving on to Step 2 and Step 3.
In terms of grammar, the focus is on using capital letters, spacing their words and full stops.
In Senior Infants, we revisit the formation of the lowercase letters from Junior Infants and we learn how to form one capital letter a week.
Children will engage in transcription, dictation, formation and creative writing throughout the year.
Reminder that tricky words cannot be sounded out. This is where you may need to help your child by reminding them to call the letter by its name not its sound. There are sixty tricky words which we will cover in Senior Infants, all sixty your child must be able to call out and put into a sentence. However, the first thirty they must learn how to spell.

Please see leaflet of formation of number.
We encourage you to engage with your child in Maths concepts at home and out and about e.g time – o’ clock, money – coins up to 20c, weight – heavier/ lighter.
Your child will be learning the story of number this year. We start with number 5 and continue with one per month up to the story of 10. They learn the different ways to make the number e.g 5+0= 5, 4+1=5, 3+2=5, 2+3=5, 1+4=5, 0+5=5
Each number follows the same process.

The Gaeilge Curriculum is carried out fully in class through the Bua na Cáinte programme. It is all oral work. Encourage your child to share the songs, rhymes and phrases they have learned.

We use the Grow in Love programme in the teaching of Religion. Your child has a Grow in Love workbook that will they form part of their homework every Thursday.
Children of religions other than Roman Catholic, parents of these children are encouraged to send in religious material pertaining to their religion that their children can work on during this time. It is important that your child can work away easily on this material.

Your child will partake in an hour of Physical Education each week.
This is broken down into two thirty minute slots.
PE days are as follows;
Monday – Ms.Kelly, Mr. Cullinan
Tuesday – Ms.Howley
Friday – All three Senior Infants classes together
We will cover a different strand of the curriculum each month e.g. September – Athletics, October – Games…
For the first lesson, each teacher will teach their class during their own slot. On Friday, the lesson is based on a circuit of what was taught earlier in the week and is an opportunity for socialisation of the children as they work together with children in the other classes.

The Stay Safe programme is taught every second year. It is a personal safety skills programme.
Zippy’s friends will be taught every school year in Senior Infants and focuses on your child’s emotional health.

Your child will go to the computer room once a week to work on Literacy and Numeracy programmes.

All communication with the class teacher is to be made through the homework diary. This includes absence from school. All absences without a note in the diary are deemed to be unexplained.
Parents will receive communication from the class teacher also through the homework diary and text message.
If any academic or behaviour issues arise regarding your child, your will be notified through the already mentioned means of communication.