Friday October 23rd brought some very strange pupils to our school! Work was completed with enthusiasm and good fun was also had in a worthy cause as the children donated money to helping sick children in hospital.
In September the children decided to organise a Cake Sale to raise money for the Just One Charity. This Charity has become very close to everyone’s hearts with Declan Murphy’s annual visits to show us the children he works with and their living conditions in Nepal. His two companions, who were once street children in Katmandu, are now helping the Charity themselves, which shows how much can be achieved. So the children baked cookies, chocolate biscuit cake and mini muffins in school and brought in other goodies from home which made a mouth-watering selection. We were very pleased indeed to raise €125 which we presented to Declan when he visited.
Gerard Keohane, 5th Class and Eli Higgins, 4th Class have just finished courses in U.C.C as part of the C.T.Y.I. (Centre for Talented Youth of Ireland) programme. This programme is based in U.C.C. and other colleges and gives children an opportunity to study subjects that would otherwise not be available to them. The boys did an Assessment Test in U.C.C. earlier in the year and were delighted to qualify for the courses as it is a great achievement to be offered a place.
Gerard's course was on Engineering, while Eli studied Zoology. They attended U.C.C. for ten Saturdays and both really enjoyed the experience. We have also enjoyed hearing about some of the things they studied during the course. Very Well Done, Boys!! We did lots of very enjoyable Literacy Activities on World Book Day, March 5th. Everyone (young and.. not so young!) dressed up as a character from one of their favourite books.Children from the Junior Room joined the Senior Room for activities such as making bookmarks and board games based on the favourite books.
In January, we had Molly Marner, a student from CIT, on work experience with us. While she was with us, we produced our first edition of our Class Newsletter, Derryclough Days, and she gave us great help putting it together. Everyone contributed articles on a wide range of topics from Picasso, whose work we had studied, to everyday news from our school. We look forward to producing another edition before the Summer Holidays.
Without doubt the highlight of the year so far was our trip to the Primary Science Fair in the RDS on January 10th. The BT Young Scientists Exhibition has been a prestigious event in the Secondary School calendar for many years and The Primary Science Fair, its equivalent for National schools, is fast becoming just as important. Places are eagerly sought after and only 120 projects from the whole of Ireland are chosen, so there was huge excitement in Derryclough N.S. when the news came through in November that we had been offered a stand to display our project. The project was entitled ‘How do wind turbines turn wind into electricity, and could we build a working model?’ It was a fascinating project, involving a lot of work and research. Parents and members of the wider school community willingly shared their time, skills and expertise, helping the children to construct two working models of wind-turbines. We want to say a huge thank you to them for their help and support - we couldn't have done it without them! One model lights a bulb, while we can measure the voltage of electricity which the other produces using a multi-meter. The trip itself was hugely exciting, with an overnight stay in Dublin, as we had to have our stand set up at 9.30am on Saturday January 10th. The day was an amazing experience which was all about the children. They had to explain the project, demonstrate the models and answer many questions from the public and the judges. The Irish American Partnership, as part of their Primary Schools Science Programme, granted travelling expenses to 32 rural schools to facilitate the trip to the RDS, and Derryclough was delighted to be one of those schools. Derryclough has been very lucky to receive other donations from the Partnership in the past so we were delighted to welcome the Partnership’s representative, Liam Connellan, to our stand. We also had a visit from the BT Young Scientist of the Year winners with their trophy, and their teacher, Derry O'Donovan, who originally came from just a few miles away from the school. This was very exciting for us indeed! Overall, it was a memorable occasion, a wonderful experience and opportunity for the children and we will treasure the trophy presented to all participating schools. Ita and Larry Southard came in January for what has become their annual series of Folk Dancing lessons as part of the Dance Strand of the PE Curriculum. It would be impossible to do justice in a photo to the enjoyment the children get from these lessons. The first year Larry and Ita came, some children would have groaned at the thought and were heard to say "Do we have to dance?" This changed during the very first lesson that year and now children cannot wait for dancing to start and the groans are heard at the end of the four weeks, when it is over for another year.
Here are Ita and Larry with 6th class pupils, Ciara, Shauna, Lilly and Rosie - happy from dancing but sad that it was their last year to enjoy this. We had a very interesting visit to a local Lios in December, with the kind permission of the farmer. We were able to see its circular shape and survey the surrounding countryside as the early settlers would have done, nobody could have approached without being seen. A very effective History Lesson!
We had a visit from The London Chamber Brass Quartet in October which was great fun and very educational for all the children in the school. The four musicians explained their individual instruments (trumpet, tuba, trombone and french horn), and played a variety of musical pieces. Children also had an opportunity to conduct the music and this had very interesting and hilarious results! Ricky has a go at conducting. Laura learns how a trombone is put together.
Áine Brosnan, an archaeologist working with the Heritage in Schools scheme, visited the school on Friday October 10th. She wore a costume which was a replica of a tunic which was found in a bog and would have been worn by a Chieftain's wife in the 1500's. She traced a timeline from the Stone Age to Christian times and had some interesting artefacts to show us including a replica of an arrow head, flint stone and knife. It was very interesting and we hope to follow it up with a field trip and further class work.
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Teresa HollandI teach 3rd, 4th, 5th and 6th classes.
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