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2012/13

Transition Year 2012/13

 

Success for The Bovine Brigade

Congratulations to the The Bovine Brigade, a Transition Year and 5th year group from Glenamaddy Community School who has been selected as one of the top 20 campaigns in the country for the grand final of the National Dairy Council’s Milk-It Advertising Awards 2013. The awards take place in the Mansion House, Dublin, on May 1st, at which the team will give a live presentation of their campaign, “Dairy on ur Break 4 Goodness sake”, before a panel of judges made up of experts in the sectors of nutrition, media and business in Ireland. From January to March the team has been working hard promoting dairy products to the students of Glenamaddy through a variety of innovative methods including Facebook and Twitter pages, a TV ad, posters, leaflets, weekly promotional events such as cheese and yogurt tasting days, a draw and a quiz and novelty day where students took part in a Harlem Shake on their dairy break! The campaign kicked off with a lunchtime event on Tuesday 22nd January and a humorous TV ad, where Ali D. Airy, rapper extraordinaire visits Glenamaddy Community School and gets the students diggin’ dairy. Check it out on their Facebook page http://www.facebook.com/TheBovineBrigadeGcs.

 

Seanad Eireann Student Challenge 2013

 Mark Garvey, Transition Year student in Glenamaddy Community School has been chosen as one of 35 students to put a question to the Seanad as part of the Seanad Eireann “Young Senator” Student Challenge for Transition Year students. Students were asked to write a speech for or against one of the motions: Do you think the Leaving Cert prepares you for life? or The challenges that face Ireland and does my future lie here?  From more than 250 essays received, 35 students were selected to put a question to the government’s representative in Seanad Eireann. Mark will speak, with the others, in front of the Leader of the Seanad in Leinster House on April 23rd.

Events/Speakers to look forward to this month (February)
Knock

We are going on a retreat to Knock on the 6th of February. We will be going to various activities and meeting different schools.

National Concert Hall

We are looking forward to our trip to the National Concert Hall on Tuesday, February 5th.

Song School

We are really looking forward to writing our TY song at the end of the month.

Castlerea Prison.

We will visit the prison at the end of February.

Hooded tops

We have finally decided on a colour and design for our hooded tops and we look forward to getting them in the next few weeks!

Young Scientist

On Thursday, 10th of January 2013, Mr Delaney and Mr Ward brought us to the RDS in Dublin to see the BT Young Scientist Exhibition.

It was a great day out and we saw many interesting exhibits. Some of us even met some RTE Presenters! It made us think about entering the competition next year and showed us the standard of the projects up there.

Barcelona

We have just organised a trip to Barcelona in April. We will be staying there for four nights. We hope to visit places such as Port Aventura, water parks and get a tour of Barcelona itself.

Gaisce

We are currently completing our Gaisce. Gaisce is the Irish word for good deed. It is the only award given to young people from the president.

As part of Gaisce we must take up a physical recreation, a personal skill and spend time in community involvement. This include things like dance classes, woodwork, teaching the elderly computers, getting involved in green flag activities, going to the gym or acting.

Killary

As part of Gaisce, we are going to Killary for two nights. We must complete a two day action adventure which we are going to do with Mr. Ward, Ms. Colleran and Mr. Delaney.

The Bovine Brigade’s Dairy Campaign

 

Community Involvement

We are currently going to the Community Centre on Monday afternoons. We are teaching the elderly computers and engage in several activities with the people from Dochas. We also enjoyed our Christmas Carol Service with these groups and were delighted to see Santa make an appearance.

Public Access to Law Programme

On November 27th, a Barrister came to speak to us. We learned many interesting facts as to how to become a Barrister and what sort of work they do.

We also had a mock trial. This is where we pretended to have a trial and we all took on several roles in this such as being barristers, judges, witnesses and on the jury.

We also completed a certified Law exam as part of this programme.

We extend a huge thank you to Glenamaddy Credit Union for their sponsorship of six hundred euro to complete the programme.

Art

We are currently making a sculpture out of steel. We are being helped by the artist Donnacha Cahill. Donnacha has made many large pieces around the country including one in Athenry.

We are making individual pieces and one large one between each of us.

Fundraising

We bake buns, cakes, brownies and many other treats each week. We hope to raise money for our Barcelona trip.

We sold bracelets for the Galway hurling final. They were a great success. The proceeds of this went to the Comfort Fund in Portiuncula Hospital.

We made Christmas cards and sold them at the Christmas fare in GCDC on the 8th December.

We make tea and coffee for the Parent Teacher Meetings.

Speakers

Mr. Barry Kilcommons who is ACO in Castlerea Prison came to speak to us. He told us how the prison works and what the prisoners do each day. It was very interesting. We are going to visit the prison soon.

We attended a speech about Alzheimers. We learned about how Alzheimers affects the brain in many elderly people. We learned where the designated nursing homes for these people are.

Mr. Ciaran Morris from Ability West, gave the students a wonderful insight into the life of a person with special needs.

Mr. Noel Higgins from Western Alzheimers also spoke to the group about their role in the West of Ireland and students were given the opportunity to ask questions about this debilitating condition.

Bord Bia Cookery Demonstration: We attended a cookery demonstration in our school which was very beneficial and enjoyable.

 

Humourfit Theatre in Education Company:

On Tuesday, December 11, the whole school enjoyed a range of dramas created around issues that affect young people in their school or social life. First and Second Year pupils were treated to “The Malice of Miss Brady”, Third and Leaving Certificate students enjoyed a drama called “Slow Down” and Fifth Years and TYs attended a drink awareness drama, “Message from a bottle”. Students and teachers were really captivated by these dramas and we hope to invite Michael O’ Sullivan, the Artistic Director, back to our school at a later date. Thank you to the Transition Year students who organized this.

CERN

In October we went to visit the CERN exhibition in Leisure Land in Galway. CERN is a large European organisation which carriessout research on particles and physics. The exhibition was very interesting and we learned a lot.

French Film

We went to the Town Hall Theatre in Galway to see the French film ‘Le Garson AU Velo’ – The Boy with the Bike. It was interesting to see how well we could understand the French.

NUIG

We went to visit the National University of Ireland Galway. We ate our lunch in the canteen with all the college students. It was scary as we were very small and wearing our uniforms! We were then given a tour of the campus.

Film Studies

We went to the Arts Centre in Roscommon to see the movie ‘ Garage’. This was part of our film studies module in English.

We are currently preparing for a competition for “The Gathering”, sponsored by Bank of Ireland, which requires us to make a short film to promote our town or village.

Business Awards

Siobhán Murphy, Nicola Ward and Louise Ward had a trip up to NUIG as they received an A grade in their Junior Cert Business studies exams.

Milk It Awards

Congratulations to Mark Garvey and his team on getting through in the Milk It Awards. His video ‘We Diggin Dairy’ is shown in the canteen during lunch time.

His team is currently doing a lot of work in relation to this project , promoting dairy products on a weekly basis.

Young Social Innovators

We are taking part in the YSI project. Our project is on cyber bulling. We are currently doing a lot of planning and work on this.

John Paul II Awards

We are also taking part in the JP II Awards. For this, we must take part in several Youth Masses throughout the year.

Seanad Ėireann Transition Year Student Challenge

Students have submitted speeches to the Houses of the Oireachtas on the topics of the Leaving Certificate and the challenges that face Ireland. A number of speakers from around the country will be selected to speak to Senators and deliver their speech in the Seanad chamber.

Tidy Towns Glenamaddy

We are delighted to do some work with our local Tidy Town’s Committee to help enhance our locality.

Christmas Entertainment for our Local Community  

Since September the Transition Year class have been working with two groups from the community as part of their Social Awareness Studies with Ms McGann. One group has been assisting in teaching computer studies to the Senior citizens in the Day Care Centre while another group has been working with the service users from Dochas and Ability West. The TY class, ably assisted by the  1st year Music class,  the Trad Group and some staff members provided some singing, Sean Nos dancing and refreshments for our Xmas party. The party was so good that Santa dropped in to say hello!

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October 2012

It has been a very busy few weeks for TY students; we have begun our new subjects and have already handed in numerous projects. We are really enjoying the TY experience and we get on well together and with the teachers.

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All Ireland Medalists

We are delighted to have three All-Ireland medal winners in our midst, Megan Heneghan and Nicola and Louise Ward. The girls play for the Galway u16s, who came up against Cork in the final. They now have two All-Ireland medals each under their belts.

New Subjects

We have started doing new subjects which we didn’t study for our Junior Certificate course. Nobody in our class had done Woodwork and we are thoroughly enjoying this new subject. We are still doing the usual subjects, e.g. English, Irish, Maths, Religion, Computers. We are doing a lot of presentations for most subjects so this takes up a lot of our class time. We are also visiting service users from Dochas and helping the elderly with computers. We are having a lot of fun helping these people and I think they enjoy our company.

Work Experience

We began work experience on Friday 7th of September. We are going to a range of work places-schools, restaurants, vets, dentists, shops and many more! Everybody has to fill out a Work-Experience Diary for each day of work they do.

Competitions

Some of the TY students are taking part in a competition called Junk Kouture- we have to design a dress out of rubbish. It has been hard work so far but we are hoping for some beautiful end products.

Press Pass is a unique initiative between the National Newspapers of Ireland, Transition Year students and the Department of Education. We are involved in this programme in English where we get the opportunity to study daily newspapers and then compile news stories, features etc. We then get the chance to enter a competition run by the National Newspapers of Ireland.

Some of the TYs are also taking part in the Young Scientist competition.

Speakers

We have had many speakers including last year’s TYs, representatives to discuss bullying and one from the organisation Aware. John Murphy from Glenamaddy, who is the Credit Union Administrator, also came to discuss setting up a Credit Union in the school, which now operates at lunchtimes on Thursday.

Back to the 80's

Everybody in TY is taking part in the musical Back to The 80s. We are really enjoying ourselves and cannot wait for the show!! We are participating in Gaisce which involves doing 13 weeks of two new activities and 26 weeks of another new subject.

Fundraising

Recently, we raised €500 for The Portiuncula Hospital Comfort Fund by holding a ‘Maroon and White Day’ within the school. There was a wonderful atmosphere and everyone enjoyed the day.

We set up our first mini-company at the beginning of the year and made a handsome profit by selling maroon and white wristbands and buns.

Trips

We had a trip to Kenny Art Gallery in Galway where we saw the art of Bernard Cavanagh. We also went to Charlie Byrnes bookstore and bought lots of books for the school library. We went to Leisure land in Galway to a CERN talk as part of our module on Science. It was a very interesting and enjoyable trip.

We plan on going to Roscommon Arts Centre at the end of the month to see a film. We are going to Galway to see a French film called ‘Le Gamin Au Velo’ and we have also planned a visit to NUIG in November.

Mark Garvey had a memorable day on Sunday, October 7, when he got the unique opportunity to conduct scientific research on board the Marine Institute’s research vessel, the Celtic Explorer. GMIT organised a competition to give ten students the chance to do this and Mark was delighted to be chosen as one of the candidates.

 

 

Glenamaddy Community School, Church Street, Glenamaddy, Via Castlerea, Co. Galway, F45KF50 

 

Telephone +353(0)94 9659315 | Fax +353(0)94 9659354 | This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it. 

RCN: 20149543