Walk in My Shoes

Walk in my shoes is a mental health charity that promotes positive mental health and mental health awareness. The phrase “Walk in my shoes” means to put yourself in the same situation that they are in you never know what may have brought someone to the state that they are in so be careful how harshly you may judge someone.

Walk in my shoes is a fundraising event promoted by U2 member Adam Clayton. Today, October 10^th is world mental health day. 

Our school is helping raise awareness by wearing a pair of funky shoes and bringing in €2 to help St. Patricks University Hospital. 

Ireland has one of the highest suicide rates in the 14-24 age groups in the EU and 75% of all mental health difficulties begin before 24 years of age. Between 45% and 65% suffer from treatable mental illnesses such as depression or psychosis. Early intervention in these conditions can stop deterioration, aid recovery, and prevent relapse, giving young adults real hope in returning to a normal life. 

With all of St. Wolstans working together, we could help raise approximately €1500 for St. Patricks University hospital. 

Anna, Leah and Alison. 

Friendship Week

This week we had our annual Fun Walk for Friendship Week. 

Every class did an anti-bullying performance to raise awareness for bullying. Each year had a different colour. First years were pink, second years were purple, third years were green, TYs were yellow, fifth years were blue and sixth years were black and white.

Unfortunately neither of our classes won the prize for best TY performance. Class Aurora, Mr. Kennedy’s class were the winners in TY.

After all the excellent performances, the walk began. TYs led the walk, followed by sixth years and the first to fifth years. We walked a loop walk through Raphael’s and back again to the school. By the time we got back it was time to go home and everyone was really tired after a fun filled day.

Earlier on Thursday we also had our annual beginning of school mass. The priest came in and talked about the year ahead and to love ourselves, love god and love our neighbours. The Ministers of The Eucharist were commissioned and then went on to carry out their job. The choir and the Glee club both performed wonderful musical pieces to go along with the Mass. 

Overall it was a very eventful week, filled with fun and anticipation.

Our first week in Work Experience 

On Wednesday this week, it was our first week of work experience. We had worked hard to get these placements; many of us had to write lots of letters until we got the placement. The week before, we had a work shop on work experience with Mr Corcoran and Ms Hughes. We talked about what to wear and how to address the employer. We were all very nervous but excited to go to our first placement on Wednesday.


We all had very different placements, from beauty salons to primary schools to chemistry labs. We all learned a lot on our first day and we felt very welcome at our different placements. We all really enjoyed our first week and we are looking forward to what our work experiences placements have to offer in the next couple of weeks. 



Thanks for reading,
Hannah Mahon
Chloe Ennis King 

Carlingford!!!!

Day 1:

This week has been a very exciting week for us in TY. We started off early on Monday morning at 7am as we had a long bus ride ahead of us. It was finally time for our long awaited trip to Carlingford and we were all very excited. As soon as we got there, we got straight into our wetsuits and went out onto the water. We were split into two different groups. On the first day, Group A did canoeing and the combat course while Group B did kayaking and laser tag. After all those activities, we were all so hungry and so we headed back to the centre for dinner which was at 5pm. We then had some time to ourselves until 7pm when we headed on the Nightline, a walk through the forest while blindfolded! It was a very funny and interesting activity. It was a great team building exercise as we put our trust into one another. The view from the mountains was amazing!

Day 2:

We were up bright and early again after a wake-up call from reception followed by some music to lift our spirits. We had to pack our bags and get down to breakfast as quickly as possible. Both groups were out on the water by 9am. We then switched activities and Group A took part in Kayaking and Group B had fun in the canoes. Both groups had the chance to go out on the water trampolines which was great fun. After the water sports, we were all relieved to be back in dry clothes. We had lunch and then were off on our afternoon activities. Group A did laser tag and Group B took part in the combat course.

On Wednesday we were all really tired from the Carlingford trip but luckily, we had a fun packed day of workshops. We were asked to bring in our own makeup for the etiquette workshop where we learnt the proper way to apply makeup and false tan.

We then had a work experience workshop with our guidance counsellors about how what to do and how to prepare for work experience which starts next week!

The third and final workshop of the day was the Personal Management workshop. It helped us to gain a better outlook on life and learn about ourselves as people. It was a very helpful workshop full of laughs.

On Thursday, we went to NUI Maynooth for the Student Enterprise workshop. We learnt about past mini company winners and it gave us helpful ideas about our own mini companies for the future.
Overall it was a fun-filled week for us. We are all exhausted and looking forward to the weekend!


Thanks for reading,
Chloe Kairua
Hannah Byrne
Anita Osibuamhe.

Results Week!!

On Wednesday we received our Junior Cert results. We were all really nervous at first but as soon as we opened the envelopes we were delighted.

When we arrived at the school at 11:50 we lined up in our old class groups in the hall. We were given a brief talk by our Principal, Ms. Barry, and then we were given our results. Ten minutes later everyone had left the hall and the preparation for the nights out began.

Everyone was happy with their results and enjoyed their nights out but we were all exhausted the next day in school. However, our attention is now  turned to our trip to Carlingford Adventure Centre next Monday.

Thanks for reading,

Lauren de Salvo

Anna Hepple

Paola Sabio

Making music with Jembe drums

TY's had percussion workshops with David Day from Jabba Jabba Jembe this week. Here is one of the rhythms class Tabei made - and this was only after an hour of instruction!

Well done TY.

 

More videos to follow of class Tereshkova and class Cornaro.

If you would like to book David for a workshop, find him at http://www.jabbajabbajembe.com/ 

Edublog Awards shortlist!

Well three of St Wolstan's TY blogs were shortlisted for the Edublog Awards this year. Eilís was shortlisted for the Best Student blog, Rebecca was shortlisted for Best New blog and Radio TY was shortlisted for Best Podcast blog.

Here are the links to the places to vote for them.

See full list on Listly

See full list on Listly

See full list on Listly

There are other Irish schools shortlisted as well:

See full list on Listly

See full list on Listly

And of course many irish teachers too. Good luck to everyone.

Edublog Awards 2013

We think we will participate in the Edublog Awards again this year. How this works is that we have to write a post with our nominations, link to the nominations and then link to the Edublog Awards website. We then send a link to this post here to the Edublog folks and that's it!

So here goes:

We would like to nominate Radio TY for the Best educational use of podcasts and for Best group blog because the St Wolstan's TY Media Team manage the blog. Here is their Audioboo


We'd also like to nominate the following blogs for:

Best new blog because they have all just been blogging since September 2013, Lauren's Transition Year , Jessica's Transitioning in 3...2...1!
Rebecca's TY experience,
and Eilís' TY Blog

Best student blog award because they are all students,  Lauren's Transition Year , Jessica's Transitioning in 3...2...1!
Rebecca's TY experience,
and Eilís' TY Blog


Best individual blog because they all keep their own blog -  Lauren's Transition Year , Jessica's Transitioning in 3...2...1!
Rebecca's TY experience,
and Eilís' TY Blog


#edchatie as the Best twitter hashtag.

Having a Blast!!

Source

When someone tells you that TY is a doss year you can tell them that they are wrong! Since we've come back from the midterm TY's have been kept very busy, with talks, trips, projects, work experience, and much more.

A few of the girls went to Naas General Hospital to attend talks that were given by the doctors and nurses there. Katie wrote a blog post about the talks she went to, click here to see it.

Many of the girls have been busy with Radio TY interviewing people about the things we are doing in TY like Mini Company and Junk Kouture, as well as things happening around the school such as the Open Day.
Some of the TY's were helping out at the open day, Caoimhe was helping in the music room while Rowen was in charge of the sports displays.

Most of our Mini Company groups now have their businesses up and running, selling their products. Click here to find out about Laura's Mini Company group Candy Blossom.

We have been on a few trips this week and had a little bit too much McDonalds and Starbucks. We went to a talk in Tallaght IT for Science Week, see what Sorcha and Rebecca thought of the talk. We also went into town for a W.B Yeats themed trip, which we all enjoyed. Aoife and Laura wrote about the trip.

We have also started doing Zumba during our PE classes and it is great to see everyone dancing, click here to find out what Karen thinks.

A lot of TY's have decided to get involved with our school Musical Calamity Jane and have been busy with the acting, singing, dancing, production team, etc.

Here are some pictures:

Bog Bodies

National Art Gallery
Source

Open Day
Source

Schools Across Borders

Two weeks ago, we had a talk with Darren Irvine, the founder of "Schools Across Borders" about the work he does with students in areas of conflict. Darren has worked with students all over the world. He helps young people to connect with their peers, both locally and internationally,to help work for a more just, equal and peaceful world. 

We are taking part in a project they are running called Global Citizens Network 2013-2014. This is a network of schools in Ireland and it also includes other schools around the world. There are two main stages to this program the Research Stage and the Campaign Stage.  We will be learning from each other and discussing different key themes in the world. 

Our class has started the Research Stage. During this each school group shall research, reflect and debate key local-global themes. We have been coming up with a theme that we will be researching. First of all we put our ideas forward and we wrote the top 7 ideas on sheets of paper. We got into groups and went around the classroom writing down what we know and what we would like to know about each theme. In the end everyone agreed with the overarching question that we came up. It is: "Is the world child friendly?".

We will be getting into groups and researching the life of children all over the world from different points of view like education, gender, conflict, etc.. In the end we will answer the question from all these aspects of a child's life, discovering where in our world is the most child friendly.  When we have finished this we plan on developing a “mini-NGO” type campaign.

You can find out more at http://www.schoolsacrossborders.org/

Laura uses picmonkey.com

Laura has written a short tutorial post on how to create a picture montage using PicMonkey.

Here are her instructions:


First of all open up a search engine e.g google chrome and search 

http://www.picmonkey.com/

On the top centre of the page there should be a button that says create a collage. When you hover the mouse over it, it should say click to start or drag images here click on it. 

 (It should look like the above images)

Click the Read More below........

Friendship Week fun!

Rowen has been blogging about our Fun Walk last Friday. Here's what she writes.....

Well on Friday was the Fun Walk. Its one of the major events in the school. Each year is given a color and each base class has o think of a song and put a dance to it to preform on front of the school and judges.

                                      1st year- Pink
                                      2nd year- Purple
                                      3rd year- Green
                                      TY- Yellow
                                      5th year- Blue
                                      6th year- Black and White

Click the Read More below.......

Road Safety Week

The RTY team interviewed Pat Mc Neeley of Bayside Services when he came to the school today to deliver the Drive 4 Life road safety workshop. The workshop was sponsored by Kildare Road Safety officer Declan Keogh, who also came into the school to visit TY.

We are only experimenting with podcasting at the moment so bear with us. We have some help to improve our podcasts coming soon though!

Listen to their short interview below.

listen to ‘Road Safety Week 2013’ on Audioboo

Check out Kildare Road safety on Facebook

Work experience has Ailbhe in stitches!

Ailbhe and Laura tell us about what they did on their first Wednesday of work experience.

A trip to St Enda's Park

Sarah Louise and Aoife give a quick report on last week's trip to St Enda's Park. We recorded this with very little preparation - it did take 7 attempts to get it right though!