School Excellence Fund Project

Las an tSlí 2018-2022

What the project is about

Scaffold transitions between primary and post-primary

This project aims to build meaningful relationships between the child, parents and teachers across primary and post-primary to ensure that transitions to post-primary occur in a routine way, over time rather than being abrupt transitions.

Although post-primary schools have induction programmes and homework supports in place, further scaffolding is required to support children from DEIS schools safely navigate the transition to post-primary.

Empower parents and promote family learning

Equally, empowerment of parents to value and share in their child successful transition requires active, explicit engagement over time, both at primary and post-primary level.

This project aims to

Scaffold the child’s educational journey by focusing on Comprehension Strategies: key basic skills in information processing filing and retrieval, critical thinking across primary language and SESE curriculum
Focus supports on class levels 4^th-6^th in primary and 1^st year post-primary
During the first year primary school pupils and teachers will access IT support and expertise from post-primary schools in the cluster. Workshops for children and parents will ensure that parents get the opportunity to share new learning with their children.
Through school visits between all cluster school, teachers will get the opportunity to share classroom practices in relation to teaching and learning
From the visits it is hoped that an agreed approach to the use of comprehension strategies to support learning will be formulated and piloted in the following year.
During the second year of the project we will scaffold the child’s cultural journey by focusing on basic drama and theatre skills that will promote
- key basic skills in communicating and working with others
- develop an awareness of cultural contexts
- ensure that learning outcomes are grounded in relationships connected to family and community
We will collaborate and promote the HSCL’s recent initiative on family learning to provide focused, proactive support for parents.

Who’s involved?

St. Joseph’s NS	4^th-6^th class
St. Vincent’s Post- Primary	1^st years, TY students
Redeemer Boys	4^th-6^th class
O’ Fiaich College	1^st years, TY students
De La Salle Post- Primary	1^st years, TY students