Welcome to our blog about the Transition Year in St Wolstans Community School, Celbridge, Co Kildare. Here you will read all about what happens in Transition Year. You will get a good idea of how busy our year is!
Follow individual student blogs as well and see how they are getting on.

All contributions come from the students themselves and the TY Coordinator.
Enjoy






Friday, February 26, 2010

Lollipop Day

Just a taster....until someone sends me a report!!





The lovely Brian Ormond and Meg and Ali

Our Conga made it to YouTube!! http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HbzPCWzSMXQ

Finally got these emails.

Meg says,
"Lollipop Lollipop O Lolli Lolli pop" was all that could be heard around St.Stephens Green shopping center and of course the occasional "Love you Brian!!"
We started the day of in school getting our caps and official t-shirts to wear then we went into town and met the organisers and we got our boxes of lollipops and badges. Then we all lined the streets of Dublin in aid of Oesophageal Cancer fund to sell lollipops. I was on Baggot Street with Ellie and Nicolle and at the start we didn't have a lot of people around but as the day went on we sold loads of lollipops and a lot a badges as well.
At 12.30 we all headed down to St. Stephens Green shopping center for the launch where we all got to sign a wall and a choir from another school were singing songs! But of course once there’s music our girls can’t stay still for very long, we all joined in singing and dancing conga lines and Mrs. Leahy was the one to get the party going :)
Brian Ormond, a presenter from RTE, was presenting the whole event so we got pictures with him and autographs."

Ellie says,
"We were separated into groups of 2 or 3 and assigned a street to collect on. We got lots of generous people and a few not so generous. However by the end of the day we had collected lots of money for such a good cause and had great fun in the process.
Watching Mrs Leahy dance around in St Stephen’s green shopping centre was one of the highlights to the day. Girls got pictures with Brian Ormond who was there to officially launch Lollipop Day. We all had a really great day overall, and felt so happy to be able to help."

Katie says,
It was so good! Dancing in St. Stephens Green shopping center and almost getting lost going to our destinations!!! It was brilliant!!!
Thanks so much Ms Leahy and Ms O Callaghan for coming with us!!!

Mrs Leahy would like to thank Emma Murphy, Katie Ryan, and Paula Cunniffe who, over the last 3 weeks, did all the organising for the day. Well done girls.

Thursday, February 25, 2010

Savvy Savers on RTE


This week, John Murray of The Business on RTE Radio 1, launched the Savvy Savers Bank. Later John interviewed the girls and they might....just might...be on the radio this Saturday morning, Feb 27th.

Catch Johns show here, hopefully he'll use the girls interview.

http://www.rte.ie/radio1/thebusiness/index.html

Update: The girls did very well and you can catch their interview on John's link above...fast forward to about 32 minutes.

Here's what John says about the interview
"BEHAVED LIKE A BUNCH OF GROWN UPS IN THE SWEET SHOP !
Their mummies and daddies wrecked the economy, invested nearly two thirds of our new found wealth in houses rather than job production and have saddled us with about 80 billion of bad debts.. So what does the new generation think of all this.? Will they be more sensible than their elders? We asked these questions of the Transition Year class in St Wolstans in Celbridge Co Kildare."

Beatbox!

On Wednesday 24th February all TY’s had a Beatbox session with Klaus.

Sinead says, “First we started with some simple snap/clap rhythms, it was hilarious. After that he got out some tuned percussion instruments called Boomwackars, they were great fun. They were like poles each one a different colour and a different note. To get a sound off them you hit them off you lap. We did the song that used to be on the Carphone Warehouse ad. It took a while to get everyone doing different things at the same time but it worked out in the end and it sounded really good.

After lunch we learned the song Jammin’ by Bob Marley using the Boomwackars, it sounded really good and two girls sang along with Klaus.

Then did some work with untuned percussion instruments i.e. drums, tambourines, ago-go (bells).

We worked on a samba-regee piece using different drums and other instruments, it took ages to learn and we practices for ages. We had a great day altogether.”

Emma says,
“It wasn't beat boxing but a percussion workshop with our man Klaus. We did body percussion , drums and also used the cool sound instrument called the' Boomwacker '. Klaus was cool and he was very good at teaching us what to do. We got used to the Boomwacker and then we put it all together and played a song called Popcorn. We also got to play all different types of drums and play a carnival type song at the end of the day. I'm sure the girls in the office outside the music room were going mad with all the drumming and shouting but we all had great craic and really enjoyed ourselves.”


Ellie says, “– we had such fun it was great! And of course the sound improved as the day went on and we all got a little better.
We got to try different instruments such as boom-whackers, African drums, base drums and tambourines. We were split up into different sections and we each had a piece of the beat to play, we all had to work together to make the music!
There was lots of fun and laughter and we all really enjoyed it – apart from the sore hands afterwards!
Thanks so much to Ms O’ Reilly for organising it :)”

Check out Megs video of the workshop. She says the songs are our actual ones from the workshop :) we recorded them.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GLviHJzmK7E
~Meg

Tuesday, February 23, 2010

Savvy Savers Bank Launch



Today Tuesday the 23rd of February, Savvy Savers, the school bank, had the official opening of the school bank.

After weeks of preparation from all the team members, the day came and was a great success. Guests included Minister Áine Brady, Councillors Paul Kelly and Catherine Murphy, as well as our special guest John Murray of The Business on RTE. We also had press there form the Liffey Champion and The Student Press.

The event began with our meet and greet, and myself and Pamela, the Assistant Manager gave a speech to all those present informing them about our bank and thanking them for coming. Lots of sweet treats, tea and coffee were to be had by guests, staff and students. We were delighted to have a few words from Mrs Barry also.

Pamela, Meg and I were interviewed by Mr John Murray for The Business on RTE and lots of pictures were taken by the local newspaper.


A special thanks to the TY students that came along to help out, all the teachers especially Ms Mc Mahon and Ms Wheatley, for their ongoing support. We really appreciate it all.

Next event for the bank team is the National Final on Wednesday 3rd March, and remember our blog and Facebook page have constant updates of our work.



Ellie
Bank Manager

Irish Student Press

We had a visit today from James Reeves of the Irish Student Press. James was at St Wolstan's for the launch of the Savvy Savers Bank (more on that later).

Mrs Leahy gives out the Student Press every time it is delivered to the school and it is full of really useful stuff. Each edition is also online.

Check out the website for features and competitions. St Wolstan's won the last student and teacher competitions!!

Why not send in an article to the paper? The best contributors to the March issue will recieve €100 vouchers for Penneys. Go one....we have lots to share at St Wolstan's:)

http://www.studentpress.ie/

Lolli-pop day preparation!!!

On the 26th of Feburary 2010, all the TYs will be going to Dublin to collect for Oesophageal Cancer Fund!
Emma, Paula, and I have been preparing the whole day from grouping people together to collecting permission slips and organising buses. We have being working alongside Ms. Leahy and Claire from OCF. We can't wait for it and hopefully will be a great day!

Hope you enjoy the day girls xD

~From Katie

Find out more about Oesophageal Cancer at the Lollipop Day website

http://www.lollipopday.com/

Monday, February 22, 2010

Eva's Cholera project

I have just finished my second geography project on an infectious disease in Peru. I made a brochure on the disease and included information like what it is, how it is caused, how it can be prevented, vaccinanations, symptoms and all about the medicine needed to cure it.
I learned a lot about Cholera and that it is caused by drinking or eating excessive amounts of drink or food that contain Vibrio Cholerae 01.
If you are travelling abroad for long term you will be offered the Vaccine which is called Dukoral and it is an oral vaccine. If you dont want to get the vaccine you can prevent Cholera by only drinking bottled water and not eating anything that is undercooked or raw.

To learn more about cholera clcik the link below

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cholera

Eva Brady ( :

Friday, February 19, 2010

Monday, February 15, 2010

TY's collect for Self Help Africa

Eileen just sent in this report......

Yesterday morning, Sunday 14th February Robin, Eimear and myself collected money outside the church in Celbridge in aid of Self Help Africa. We collected for about 2 hours and people were extremely generous. We had great fun while collecting for a great cause. We were glad we could help out and get involved through TY.

It was a pity it had to rain towards the end :)

Eileen :)

Movie Time in TY

On Friday, the last day of term, both TY classes got together in the Demo room to watch a movie called "Sometimes In April" which was based on the Genocide in Rwanda. This was a topic we were looking at in our RE classes. The movie was very good and everyone enjoyed it. It was a good chance for both the TY classes to come together.
It was hard to watch at times, but very true to what happened at this time of conflict in Rwanda.

Ellie xox

Saturday, February 13, 2010

Self Help Church Gate Collection

Some students are giving their time this weekend to help Patsy Toland with the Kildare area Church Gate collection in aid of Self Help Africa. Patsy has given us a lot of help with our Towards 2015 book project so it's nice to be able to return the favour:)

Once again, thanks to everyone who has volunteered and to Grainne Clarke for organising the teams.
Mrs L

Towards 2015 book project

Everyone is continuing to work on their contacts for the Towards 2015 MDG book project. Most of the team have interviewed an older person, a granny or grandad, and have sent us their reflections.

You can see some of the snippets we share on our blog at

http://www.stwolstanstowards2015.blogspot.com/

We don't want to put all our stories on the internet because we are saving them for the book, but you'll get a good idea of how the project is going if you read the blog.

Most of the TY's are using their involvement in the book project and giving their time after school to it, for their Gaisce Award.

Thanks to you all for your help.
Mrs L

Still Life models

I supervised at the Junior Certificate Art exam yesterday afternoon. Nine TY's were the models for the still life drawings, they were great. It must have been very hard to sit there for all that time. Big thanks to Aoife, Hannah, Niamh, Ellen, Nicolle, Ellie, Susan and Louise for posing.
Mrs L

Thursday, February 11, 2010

Savvy Savers Bank launch

New blog post from Savvy Savers

http://savvysaversbank.blogspot.com/2010/02/100210.html

In School Science Competition

Today, in triple science, the science teachers announced the winners of the in school science competition. There were some great prizes won, like boxes of Celebrations and vouchers for Liffey Valley. Prizes were given to the students who got through to the BT Young Scientist, and also to students who the teachers thought deserved a prize for all their hard work. The teachers judged our projects in 3 areas.

Scientific Content.
Presentation of the project.
The originality of the idea.

The overall winners were Ali Bell and Eileen Maher. They did a project about fake tan, which was quite original. Although they did not get through to the BT Young Scientist, they continued working away on their project and even went to Maynooth College to complete it!

Ms Barry came down to give out the prizes and to look at our posters which were displayed on the walls of the demo room.

After the prizes were given out, we watched "Creation" which is all about Charles Darwin's theory of evolution and his life. The teachers had kindly bought us chocolates, lolliops, crisps and fizzy drinks to reward us for our hard work.

Overall, it was a great few hours! Thank you Ms. Ward, Ms. Healy and Ms. Coogan for such a great afternoon! :)
- Sarah McE .xo

Thursday, February 4, 2010

Irish dancing

Today, Class Selam did Irish dancing with Ms.Farrell. Becky Eiffe and Eva Brady from Desta came in to show us how to do it.

We did two different dances; The Haymakers Jig and The Marching Dance. We all had really good fun and Ms Farrell hopes to do it agian next week. We are all looking forward to it :)

Ellie xox

And Meg says....

Today in Irish class we were introduced to the world of Irish dance by Becky and Eva! It was great fun. We danced to jig music and learned the "1 2 3" step, some of us were better at it then others. We also did group dances like the Haymakers Jig and The Marching dance. The moves were pretty basic but me, having no co-ordination couldn't quite handle them!
The whole class listened and learned and had loads of fun in the process! :) Bonding!!!!
Hopefully we'll get another shot at it! :)
XOXO
~Meg

Monday, February 1, 2010

Blog updates

Thanks so much to all the girls who send items for the blog, you all do such great work. The blog is looking great and will be a great resource to the 3rd Years who are making up their minds about TY or 5th Year at the moment. I hope they see what hard work you all do:)
Mrs L

Garda Talk on Road Safety

On Thursday 28th of January both class Desta and Salem had a talk from two Naas Gardai. It was amazing! But I don't think any talk has ever had such an impact on me! It was so scary but yet so interesting.:O

They both talked about car crashes and gave us the facts and statistics of crashes on the road in Ireland over the past few years.

It was amazing to see actual videos of crashes and then hear people talking about the effect of the crashes on the families lives. They showed us videos of people crashing and losing their lives and pictures of the aftermath of car crashes.

Overall it was terrifing but a brilliant lesson all at the same time.

Katie Ryan, Desta

Savvy Savers Update


Since the last blog post, Team Members of Savvy Savers have been working so hard organising lots of things including lunchtime openings, the official launch day and our work that we will enter into the Regional Competition.

We had our first lunchtime opening which went down so well, I think all our new customers enjoyed the sweets :) We have gotten lots of forms back and we are now really encouraging people to lodge money every week. We as a team are working really well together and we are currently really focused on planning our launch day which we hope to be on Tuesday 23rd of February. Lots of things still have to be done so that the day is a real success. We really hope to have some interesting public figures there along with all our Bank customers. Along with working on that we are also keeping in touch with our customers and Pamela our Assistant Manager had the lovely job of giving some happy customer’s €10 credit vouchers the other day- which they got as a result of joining the bank.

Our Regional Competition is also fast approaching; it will take place in the Killashee House Hotel on March 3rd. We are doing lots of work in preparation and we really hope to do well there on the day!

I would just like to say how much I am enjoying working as Bank Manager, and with the girls they are a great team! :)

Pamela- Is constantly doing great work as a brilliant Assistant Manager!
Meg- Sales and Marketing is doing great, great job, I am sure you will keep everyone updated
Laura and Sinead- you guys are doing great work especially at the busy lunchtimes when you are taking forms and lodgements
Sinead Keogh- Doing lots of great work as the teams Auditor

Well done guys! :)
x x Ellie
Bank Manager

TY Information Night

The 28th of January was Transition Year Information night in the school. Meg and Pamela were asked to go up and speak to the parents about their TY experiences so far, and to promote the programme.

Ellie, Eileen, Louise, Emma and I went up to the school as well to help out for the evening. We were opening the door and handing out leaflets to all the parents. At the end of the night, the parents came up to us asking what we thought of Transition Year, and if it is worthwhile. The evening went well, with the parents appearing happy with the TY programme.

We also helped out the following morning with the TY talk for the 3rd years.

Ali Bell

Ellie adds......

"It was a pleasure to be able to help and of course talk about what a great experience TY has been for us so far and how much we enjoy it. Meg and Pamela gave a wonderful speech to the parents about everything that is involved in the year and all the events and things we have done so far. They did a really good job, well done! :) "

Ellie xox

Pamela's Young Scientist experience


The BT Young Scientist and Technology exhibition was held from the 12th – 16th January.

Myself and the girls from the other four projects that were accepted woke up at six o’ clock on Wednesday morning not knowing what to expect. Several bus rides later, we reached the RDS and went in to register. It was only then that we found out that we didn’t have to be there until twelve. This was at HALF EIGHT.

After registering, getting our free stuff, making new friends and setting up our projects we headed out for some lunch.

After our lunch we came back to our first judging. The judges were a lot friendlier than I thought they would be. After the stress of the judging we went off to make some friends. We met people from Cork, Limerick, Galway, Tyrone, Donegal, Roscommon, Louth and our neighbour, Dublin.

On the first night we had a disco, but we all only had jeans and a jumper so we thought we might be a bit underdressed, but in the end it turned out that most people just wore their uniforms. Shannon and I started off dancing and it started a trend. After ten minutes, everybody in the room was on their feet and the night turned out to be a blast! I didn’t make it home until half eleven, and had to get up at half five the next morning!

The next day, I was suffering from sleep deprivation and that’s when Caoimhe and I decided that we’d stay in a hotel. We booked the hotel and went home to pack our gear. Although we were only staying for two nights, being girls, we brought bags and bags of clothes!

We had the table quiz that night and we thought it was hopeless considering we were in a room filled with scientists, but surprise surprise... WE CAME THIRD! (:

The school came on the Friday and all the girls came to look at our projects. Mr Lawlor took pictures of me, and now they’re on the school website, CRINGE.

The whole week was completely amazing. We made new friends and I just can’t wait to go back next year :D
Pamela