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






Sunday, October 30, 2011

A History of Celbridge

On Wednesday, 26th October, Tony Doohan came in to talk to TYs about his book on the history of Celbridge. He is the principal of a local primary school so a lot of us were happy to see him.
He presented a slide show of images of past and present Celbridge and had a story to accompany each picture. We all found it really interesting to learn so much about where we live. It turns out Celbridge is one of the most historic towns in Ireland, which shocked most of us as Aoibheann explains here. And Sarah talks about some of the facts we found out here. Who knew the man who named New York came from Celbridge?

'A History of Celbridge' by Tony Doohan is available in local bookstores and businesses  now.

http://www.facebook.com/AHistoryofCelbridge
historyofcelbridge@gmail.com

Tuesday, October 25, 2011

Hannah likes to write

Hannah has been writing about her Creative Writing class with Ms Ward. Read what she has to say here

Thursday, October 20, 2011

TY News from TY TV

This is our first attempt at our TY News programmes. Through trial and error we will surely get better! Maybe next time we will add a bit of background music and we can work on the background screen too!!

Thanks to Rebecca and Aoibheann for being our first newscasters.


Juno and the Paycock

Yesterday, all the TY's went to Dublin on an English Trip. We went to see the Yeats exhibition and then went to the National Museum and National Library. At 2 o' clock we went to the Abbey Theatre to see Juno and the Paycock, the play that we read in English class. I really enjoyed it.

Isabel seem to have enjoyed it as well. Read her blog post here.

Martha didn't understand Johnny's character until she saw him on stage. Read her post here.

Eleana

Wednesday, October 19, 2011

We took part

I am delighted to see so many TY's actually remembered to write a blog post last Sunday for Blog Action Day.

Here is a list of their posts. Perhaps readers will leave comments for them?


Eiru






 








Banba




Fodla





 

 
 

 


Sunday, October 16, 2011

Blog Action Day 2011 #BAD11

Today is Blog Action Day. Yesterday I was redecorating my kitchen and didn't get to have lunch because 1)  I was busy painting and 2) the cupboards were all covered with splash sheets and I couldn't get to the fridge. By 5pm I was very, very hungry. I did not enjoy the hungry feeling and could not wait for food.

I woke this morning and remembered it was Blog Action Day and World Food Day. I started my breakfast with a lovely cup of hot clean water and then had some cereal. I turned on the TV to check the news and watched an interview with a representative from the Red Cross on Sky News. I scribbled down these statistics:

There are 13 million hungry in East Africa today.
They spend 80% of their income on basic food.

It's only been an hour or so but already I want a cup of tea and my toast to finish my breakfast routine. How wrong is this inequality? I could not imagine having to go without food everyday. The Blog Action Day focus on food has made me think.

In St Wolstans we deliver a Development Education programme in Religion with the help of Self Help Africa and Mr Patsy Toland, so I turned to the Self Help Africa website for some inspiration.

Here it is - It starts with a seed.




@blogactionday11

#BAD11

#WorldFoodDay

Saturday, October 15, 2011

Work experience

A few students are still looking for work experience placements after mid term. Here is a spreadsheet with some placements held by previous TY students. It has contact names and details and also a brief report about what the work experience involved.

It might help those struggling with finding a placement.

Work Experience placements

Remember, Mr Corcoran and Ms Hughes are there to help.

I will make the file public in November so you can all add your November placements and that might help some students for next March.

Mrs L :)

Tuesday, October 11, 2011

Can We Fix it for our Friends?

Last week St Wolstans held their annual Fun Walk to coincide with Friendship Week.

Each class performs a song and dance on the theme of Friendship and the whole school gathers in the tennis courts to watch. After each class performs they head off on a 5 km walk.

I had the pleasure this year again of judging the dances and it was a great day - such fun and happiness throughout the whole school.

Here is Claire's post about the day and a few photos included. Enjoy :)

Can We Fix It?

Catriona posted some videos on YouTube here:

Fodhla dance

Banba dance

ErĂ­u dance

Class Fodla in Kazza's Car













Mrs L :)

Tuesday, October 4, 2011

Blog Action Day 2011

Last year TY took part in Blog Action Day in October and the theme was WATER. All we had to do was register and join bloggers all over the world by writing a post about water.

This year's Blog Action Day 2011 coincides with World Food Day, so BAD's topic this year will be FOOD.

Food is something that we all share in common, but is distinct to each of our cultures. The way we produce, distribute and consume food is crucial to our shared future, and the unhealthy imbalance of food scarcity in developing world and food over-abundance in the developed world is unsustainable for us all.

Blog Action Day 2011 will be an opportunity to open the conversation about how food impacts all of us – individually and globally.

The big event is only a few days away. I am hoping that TY will take part again.

To kick things off register for Blog Action Day 2011 by clicking the link below:

http://blogactionday.org/register-for-blog-action-day/

Mrs L :)


Suggested Topics for Blog Action Day

  • My favorite food
  • The famine in East African
  • To be organic or not to be:
  • Best and worst food memory
  • Slow Food, Fast Food: What does it actually mean
  • Malnutrition
  • Conflict over Food:
  • Is your hamburger hurting the enviroment?
    It takes 24 liters of water to produce one hamburger. That means it would take over 19.9 billion liters of water to make just one hamburger for every person in Europe.
  • Vegan, Vegetarian, Meat eater – Which one are you?
  • Will we be able to feed 9 billion people in 2050?
  • Freeganism
  • The scandal of Food Waste.
  • What is the best way to farm food.
  • Growing your own – the joys and heartache of growing what you eat.
  • Too much or too little taking food to extremes
  • Strangest thing you have ever eaten.
  • What food means to your culture.
Can you think of any more?