St. Brigid's

Creative Schools

We are excited to be participating in the Creative Schools Initiative, funded by the Arts Council, 2020-2022. We are working closely with our Creative Associate, Valarie Haslam and our School Coordinator, Grace Cowman to explore ways of extending our creativity and participation in the Arts. In the video below, Valarie introduces the initiative to our school community. We are looking forward to the year ahead full of singing, dancing, acting, fun and creativity. 

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The Arts

We love to sing in St.Brigid’s Primary School! Our school choir is made up of 5th and 6th class pupils and music is an integral part of every classroom in the school. As a school we aim to enable each child to experience the joy of participation in music and song. In the last number of years St.Brigid’s School Choir has performed with The Cross Border Orchestra of Ireland at the Peace Proms and with The National Children’s Choir, culminating in a performance in The National Concert Hall. At Christmas time, our choir sing carols on Meath Street in aid of Little Flower Penny Dinners. Last year we were forced to bring our carols online and created a virtual carol service! It is one of the highlights in our school calender. 

In St. Brigid's Primary School, we emphasize the importance of the Visual Arts and offer a broad programme in all strands of the curriculum. Regular visits are organized to galleries and museums as well as workshops with NCAD and Pallas Studios right next door to our school. We have an extensive collection of Artwork in our school. These include both original and reproductions from famous artists. We also place great importance on displaying the children's work throughout the school.

Green Schools

Our School is proud to be members of An Taisce’s Green School Programme. St. Brigid’s first Green School’s Committee was set up in 2002. Over the years, teachers, parents and above all, students have worked tirelessly to attain our flags. The flags we have so far received are for Litter and Waste, Energy, Water, Travel, Biodiversity, Global Citizenship-Litter and Waste and Global Citizenship Energy. In 2020 we won the Dublin Regional Award for Global Citizenship- Energy. We are so very proud of our entire school community for their commitment to the Green School's Programme.

Caring for the environment has always been a huge part of St. Brigid’s ethos and the children play a very active role in all aspects of environmental care both in school and in the community. We take part in community clean ups in the local area and have many workshops in the school from local environmental agencies. Since moving to our wonderful new school building in 2008 we have been developing the new school gardens. We are lucky to have a considerable planting area and a Thinking Garden. Every child in the school from Early Start to 6th Class gets the opportunity to plant something with their teacher each year.

Health Promoting Schools

We partake in the Health Promoting School's Initiative. This initiative works to promote the health and wellbeing of schools. As part of the initiative we have set up a wellbeing committee in our school. It consists of teacher representatives, parent representatives, a community representative and student representatives. We meet regualry to discuss the health and wellbeing needs of our school. This year we have decided to focus on mental and physical health for the whole school community.

Please read below to hear more about the workings of our health and wellbeing committee in the words of our student representatives.

Here, in St. Brigid’s, our healthy school motto is “Run, rest and you’ll do the best”. We encourage all children in the school to look after both their physical and mental health. A few ways that we have helped to improve mental health in our school is to have meditation everyday for every class after big break. We meditate and do mindfulness. Everyone loves it and understands how important it is to take a few minutes break and just breathe. Our teachers help us to be aware of how our inside voices speak to us. We make more of an effort to think positively. We also do children’s yoga in school too. We celebrate friendship fortnight in our school. The highlight of the two weeks is Crazy Hair Day. We love it because it gets across the message that friends should not judge you for what you have or what you look like. We are all loved by our friends and families for being true to ourselves. Part of our role on the wellbeing committee is to help spread kindness through out the school. We sometimes set kindness intentions for the whole school in assembly. We also have playground pals and buddy benches at playtime to help children find friends on the yard. We have a thinking garden in our yard too. Children can think about their actions on yard and how they could make kinder choices instead. We have lots of sports in our school and encourage children to be more active, as the saying goes a healthy body is a healthy mind. We help to organise Active School’s Week with the teachers. We enjoy the class pedometer challenges, walk a mile with a smile and challenge your neighbour’s activities. We also enjoy when the Macarena comes on the intercom and we have to drop everything and dance. Children love getting their parent’s involved and our home school teacher organises yoga and zumba for the parents to do in school. It’s great because we can all talk about yoga at home. We also write up our healthy schools committee newsletter. It gives information to parents on all of the health and wellbeing activities we do in school. We are lucky to have people come to our school and give us workshops. Last year we had one on cyber bullying and 6^th class went to DIT University to do a nutritional awareness workshop. We hope improving wellbeing in our school will make children think more about the thoughts and feelings of both themselves and others. Our school is a very happy, kind and healthy place.

Active Schools

A great emphasis is placed on the value of sport and the importance of keeping active! The sporting activities encorporated into weekly life in St. Brigid’s include:

• Irish dancing lessons every Monday with Linda
• Swimming lessons for 2nd - 6th Class.
• Soccer lessons with FAI coach Ken.
• Hurling lessons with our coach Jenny 
• P.E. lessons delivered weekly by the class teachers

Throughout the year we often invite instructors to our school for hip-hop dance workshops and we take part in other once off activities such as 'drop everything and dance!' Our senior classes take part in a yearly tag rugby blitz and we also have great fun each year at our annual Sports Day. Our school has also been awarded The Active School Flag. This means that our school has been successful in our aim to promote a physically active school community.

Diverse and Multicultural School

The mission statement of St. Brigid’s declares that our school operates an inclusive policy. This ensures access to all newcomer pupils, regardless of their ethnicity, religious or cultural background. Margaret Alyward, foundress of the Sisters of the Holy Faith, initiated this inclusive policy which welcomes and supports pupils of all abilities and social backgrounds. The principal, staff, pupils and parents are committed to the safeguarding of these principles of inclusivity.

Our school strives to recognise and celebrate many festivals throughout the year. These include:

• Eid
• Divali
• Chinese New Year
• Mongolian New Year
• Africa Day
• Mos Nicolae

We also hold a Multicultural/International Day on an annual basis so that the school and wider school community can celebrate our student’s cultures and traditions.

Blue Star Flag

In June 2014 we were awarded the Blue Star Flag for E.U. awareness. All classes from Early Start up to sixth class participated in projects which concentrated on the History, Geography, Culture, Art and Politics of the E.U. In March 2014 we were honoured to receive a visit from the Minister for Foreign Affairs who was very impressed with all of our work. In May 2014 our E.U. Art work was on display in the Mansion House where the sixth class girls and their teachers received the opportunity to meet the Minister and the Lord Mayor.