About the School

St. Joseph's National School, Halverstown is a three teacher country school which is situated in Halverstown approximately 4 km from Kilcullen in Co. Kildare. It was opened in 1959. It is a Roman Catholic school which is under the patronage of the Archbishop of Dublin. In September 2014 we moved into our new school extension. The old school was completely refurbished beyond recognition. All of our mainstream classrooms are newly constructed. The school was officially opened and blessed by Fr. Micheal Murphy on 30th April 2015. In St. Joseph’s N.S. we cherish all of the children in our care. It is the policy of the school to provide an environment where the children will receive maximum benefit from the Education System by being exposed to a broad, balanced and relevant curriculum. Our three teacher school has three mainstream classrooms: the junior room, the middle room and the senior room.

We also have the support of three full-time Support Teachers, two Special Needs Assistants and a part-time secretary. Helping and supporting children with extra needs is something that we pride ourselves on. With our pupil-teacher ratio, we are able to spot needs early on and collaborate with parents to provide the best for all of our children.

In St. Joseph’s National School we recognise and value each child as an individual with different interests, talents and capabilities. We aim to foster and develop each child in all aspects of the curriculum. We strive to enable every child to reach their full potential in the academic, social, spiritual and sporting domains of their lives.

We have a very well equipped school, of which we are very proud.

Books and reading are a priority for us and thanks to the support of the Board of Management, parents and the Kildare School Library Service we have excellent class libraries.We also have a very bright and colourful school library which contains a wide variety of texts from different genres.The Kildare Mobile Library Service also visits the school on a monthly basis. Children in the school are also encouraged to visit their local libraries in Kilcullen and Ballitore. Children regularly bring home books to read and in this way, we hope to cultivate a love of reading in our pupils. We hold a Book Fair in the Autumn term of each year and this usually coincides with Book Week which promotes reading as a fun activity. Our new 'Accelerated Reading' programme is also bringing the joy of reading back to the forefront of our children's lives, while also utilising modern technology to assess and develop their reading at an individualized pace.

We have a varied wealth of P.E. equipment which we use in school on a daily basis. Our colourful yard markings and designs are providing endless fun and activity for our pupils at break-times. We participate in the Cumann na mBunscol Gaelic football league on an annual basis. We also participate in an FAI 5 A-Side soccer blitz in the Spring term. We have rugby coaching with IRFU coaches from Newbridge Rugby Club during the year. We are also developing our interest in cross country running and we participate in the Cumann na mBunscol Cross Country Event in Hawkfield each year. In addition to this, we have an annual Family Fun Run in the Spring which is organised by our Parent Association and we train for this at the end of breaktimes in the lead up to the run. Pupils attend six week blocks of swimming in the Curragh Swimming Pool. We have an annual school sports day which coincides with Active Schools Week.

Mental health and mindfulness is something that is very important to us in St. Joseph's. We are currently developing a mindfulness policy and range of activities to promote skills and coping mechanisms for our children to be happy and content in the modern world. 'Be kind to the person in here and be kind to all the people out there' is a line that is used often in our school assemblies as we remind the children of the importance of positive relationships with others as well as a positive sense of self.

We have five interactive whiteboards and several laptops in each classroom, which assist in opening up a world of I.T. to each pupil. We have initiated an after schools Scratch Computer Programming Club/ “An Hour of Code” for pupils in the middle and senior classes in the school and they are deriving great enjoyment from this whilst simultaneously developing their conceptual understanding of different Mathematical topics i.e co-ordinates, 2-D and 3-D Shapes, Lines and Angles. Pupils submit entries to the National Scratch Competition.

We promote an ethos of active learning. We try to enrich the children’s education by arranging visits and field-trips to different sites as part of the Social Environmental and Scientific Education (SESE) curriculum.

We endeavour to have at least one theatre trip per year. We have school tours for the junior, middle and senior classes in the summer term.

We have been awarded a Junior Entrepreneur Flag and our second Green Flag. We our currently working towards achieving our third Green Flag which is for Water Conservation.

We hold weekly assemblies in the school during which different achievements are celebrated, including medals, birthdays, news, gaelgeoir na seachtaine certificates and the highly sought after 'principal awards'!

We now have a fabulous sensory garden which incorporates our school's vegetable garden. The garden has many natural willow structures which were designed by the pupils in the senior classes as part of the Heritage in Schools scheme. Pupils in the school are responsible for the maintenance and development of the sensory garden.