Accord Talk!

Today we had a really nice person come in from ACCORD to talk to us about relationships and how we react. She seemed really open and said that there woudln't be a teacher in the room at the back listening so we could talk to her about anything not having to be shy about what we say. She came in at 9:30 and she started talking about relationships and gave us hand-outs to answer. She was there for about 4 hours and at 1:20 we went back to doing school work. There was a lot of information and she said most things in a lot of detail so it was a good day.

Mini-Company!

We are now nearly finished our first term in school seeing as we are coming up to Halloween. On Wednesday all of the Ty's we set to go to the Motte Theatre in Naas for our Mini-Company workshop. We left school at 9:10 and we got there at about 9:40 there was 2 other schools there (both mixed):(, and Orla,the speaker went through different advertisements and went through our ideas and how we could improve on them. So she went through the first session and let us have a break at 10:50 until 11:10. That gave us a chance to go down to the village to get something to eat. We then went back in for our second session and in this we went through averts that had been put in newspapers etc. and the errors that were made when printing them. After the second session the teachers had told us that we could go back to village, so we all went in McDonald's to get some curly fries and wraps. we had about 30 mins so that was grand before we went back to school for more lunch.:] We arrived back in school at 1:40 so we missed half of our lunch but we didn't care because we had a McDonald's!!!

Guest Visitors!

This week in school we had a few guests come in and help us with projects. On Thursday we had a man come in from NUI Maynooth, his name was Martin Ryan and he just came around to all of our groups and listened to what we said we were planning to do for our Mini-Company projects. He seemed really nice because he was so helpful and understood what our plans were. On Friday we had two woman come in and give us some advice on what colours suit us most and what suits our body shapes. there names were Louise and Lys and they were really helpful and thought us allot about what colours do and do not suit us and they put us into categories according to our eyes, hair and skin colour. I was in the clear category and they told me that I should be wearing really vibrant colours, which I already do so it wasn't that bad! :)

Geography Project

Last week our Geography teacher Ms. Leahy told us that we were going to do a fun project. I was so excited because I love doing projects, anyway she said that there was 2 or 3 people in a group and we all had to imagine that we were going on a trip around the world. We had 12,000 euro to spend on the WHOLE trip. In my group there was Lauren T., Bebhinn C., and me. Lauren decided that she wanted to take a trip to countries in the 2nd world.(eg) Bosnia. Bebhinn was doing the 3rd world countries.(eg) Kenya and I was going to do the 1st world countries.(eg) Australia. We all had to pick 2 countries from our chosen worlds so we had to pretend that we were actually going there because we even booked airline tickets! We are still working on it at the moment so I think at the end of the year we will be presenting our projects to the class and our parents/teachers :O

October

We are now into October and it's been over a month since we started and it is getting a bit tough; learning a lot of new things and how do do out mini-company project, our science project, our technology work and a lot more. I guess I was sort of expecting it seeing that it's Ty. Nothing really happened this week in school, just our geography teacher Ms. Leahy gave us a geography project to do in groups of 3. I was in a group with Lauren Tierney and Bebhinn Cullen. All of us had to pick either 2 1st world, 2nd world or 3rd world countries. I was doing 1ts world, Lauren was doing 2nd world and Bebhinn was doing 3rd world countries. First of all we had to get some interesting facts about the countries that we were doing and then we had to pretend we were actually going there, so even had to book times and flights. Ms. Leahy said that we had 12,000 euro to spend on all 6 trips and we had to go to all 6 countries in a year so that's about 2 months for each trip and 2,000 euro per trip. At the end of the year we might have to present tour projects to the class and possibly our teachers and parents! :O We also had to do a science project over the past few weeks and me a Róisín Power were in a group together and we decided to do our project on how food affects the vocal chords by way of different temperatures and/or textures. We are actually entering into the BT Young Scientist & Technology Exhibition in the RDS, Dublin. We had to enter it online first and pay a fee of 20 euro per person for our science project to be read and hopefully they will let us take part in the competition. There is a lot of schools entering into the competition as well as our school. We really hope that they will look at our application form and think that our project is interesting enough to be entered into the competition. Nothing is really happening this week in school apart from an English drama that we have to perform in like January so we are really excited. There are 2 groups, one are doing there drama on a best-selling novel;Noughts and Crosses. And the group I am in are doing our drama on the poem "But you Didn't" and actually acting out scenes from the script that we wrote. It is going to be really funny because we are working on it at the moment and we all can't take it seriousley! In the group there is me, Bebhinn C., Stephanie S., Alison L., Lauren T., Ciara M., Grace D., Davina J., Ruth F., Chloe O'D., Niamh P. and Jessica Mc H.

Fun Walk

We were supposed to have our fun walk on Wednesday but it was raining and the teachers thought we would have a rubbish time so it was postponed to Friday 24th. We all had to come into school wearing tracksuit bottoms and a chosen coloured top, some people were a bit sad because the couldn't dress due to people saying that it costs a lot to make costumes and buy clothes. So each year had a chosen colour; 1st years were pink, 2nd years were red, 3rd years were green, Ty's were yellow, 5th years were blue and 6th years were black and white. The Ty's were in charge of standing at the roads and making sure that everyone crossed the road safely so that was a bit fun. I was standing with Ms. Douglas and a few of the girls and we just started talking and some of us were messing until the people came. The walk was down past Wolstan Haven down towards Tesco but stopped just before that so we all just turned around and walked back to school. When we got back we were greeted with food and drink after the "long" walk.

Mini-Company

Now into my 4th week of Transition Year and on Monday the 20th all of the Ty's went on a trip to Naas to discuss the TY Mini-Company Project and listen to other peoples ideas and it was really good. We had to wear our uniform because we were representing the school, the bus left at 9 and took us about 25-30mins to get to Naas. When we got there there was about 5 schools there and we all sat in like a presentation room and there was this woman who organised the mini-company project.She talked about what was involved in doing it and how big it was if you entered. One session lasted till like 10:30 then we had like a break so we could either stay in the cafeteria of we could go to the town. Me and a few people went to the town. We only had like 10mins to have our break so by the time we were down in the town it was time to go back for the second session. After another session of going through the mini-company projects and asking what products would be suitable to sell. We had another break at 12:30 until 1:05pm when were to be going back to the school. During the break we went down to the town again but this time we went to McDonald's(Tm). All in all we had fun and learned a lot that day.

JC results

On Wednesday 15th of September 2010 all the 3rd Years from last year (2009/10) received their Junior Cert. Results and before that, we were so nervous about getting them back wondering how good/bad we had done. We were all told to go to the hall at about 12pm and put ourselves in alphabetical order. I was so excited when I got my letter, I couldn't even open it! Me and Bebhinn walked out of school together both so excited so we went "1 2 3" and opened the envelopes at the same time and were shocked because the both of us got all A's, B's and C's. I got an A in Geography, mostly B's in everything and 2 C's. Me and Bebhinn were screaming most of the way home, and when I got home my mam was waiting in the hall and when I told her the both of us just started screaming and jumping up and down.

Carlingford

I am really enjoying Ty so far now I am into my 3rd week and it just can't get any better! On Monday 13th and Tuesday 14th all of the Ty's were off to Carlingford in Louth for two full days of activities. Our teachers Ms. O'Callaghn and Ms. Rowan said that they were coming with us; we were so excited. On Monday we all went to Esso petrol station at 6:30am because the bus was leaving at 7. When we got on the bus a lot of people went back to sleep for the 2 hour drive. The time seemed to go by really fast, when we got to the hostel it was just gone past 9am. After we all got our room and unpacked it was time to get changed into clothes that could survive the rain and muck. We were split into 2 groups; one group went to do group activities and others went to do the high ropes. I was in the group that did group activities which was really fun because we all had to work together to complete the tasks. On Monday afternoon we then all went to do canoeing in the sea which was really fun because when we were all in our boats we had a boat race to the castle. Our teachers said that after we could possibly jump if piers into the sea. When some people heard that, they were so socked because there was strong currents. When we had stopped in our boats this guy in a life boat comes over and threw bucket loads of water over us and drowning us with the water. People were screaming because they were getting their hair wet which we all knew was going to get wet in the first place! After he stopped he then jumps on to one of the boats and picked up random people and threw them in the sea.......I was one of them :( I was so lucky that I was wearing a life-jacket and wetsuit because the water was FREEZING and I am not a good swimmer. Finally after we had got back in our boats and back to shore we went to the piers. A lot of people jumped off both piers; the high and low, whereas I just jumped off the low one because I would've drifted out to sea after jumping off the high one. When we all got dressed into dry clothes we headed back to the hostel to relax. At about 5 we had our dinner in the cafeteria, we had meat, potatoes and gravy which was absolutely gorgeous. The guide told us that at 7pm we were all going out up to the mountains to do an hour hike! We were so tired and didn't have any energy to walk up a mountain in the lashing rain. It wasn't that bad going up it because it was just light rain but when we got to the steep hills I struggled a lot because the rain made the ground very slippery. When we were on our way down the rain got a lot worse but I didn't really care because I was already wet. It was a lot easier walking down the mountain than up.One of the groups didn't get back to the hostel because they got lost in the rain whereas we got back at about 9pm. We all went to the Chinese Place for s treat after all the hiking and at 11pm we were told that we had to go to our bedroom but didn't have to go to bed until late:] We were woken up at 8am the next day (Tuesday) and were given until 9 to get up, get dressed and get breakfast (cereal) before we went out to do more activities. :(hehe.......We were again split into two teams and had to do what the other group the day before. So this meant that the group I was in had to do the high ropes today and the other group had to do group activities. When we got the high ropes we were so excited because it looked fun to climb up so high, we knew we were save because we all had helmets and harnesses even if we weren't doing it. We had until about 12:30 until we would go back to the hostel to have our lunch so we made the most of it. So I said I wanted to do the obstacle challenge which looked cool to do. What I had to do was climb up a ladder and walk across 2 logs (1 straight and 1 slanted) and ring bells when I made it to the other side. We had to also climb up these peg things that were nailed out of the side poles. And finally when we were at the very top we had to walk across a tight rope holding onto these ropes that had chains attached; which wasn't very helpful. It was all really good but I was happy that it was over because I was knackered. We left at about 5which gave us time when we got back to pack all of our stuff and relax for a bit. On the bus it took us roughly 2 hours to get back home so we arrived at 7 pm on Tuesday.

Social Development Day

On the 6th - 7th of September all Ty's had Social Development Day. Class Amina in a circle all looking in at the speaker; Austin Dunne. He was so down-to-earth like he didn't make you feel uncomfortable that you could talk to him about ANYTHING! It lasted the whole day and we did a number of activities. We learned a lot about each other and had it on the Monday and Emnet had it on Tuesday. On the Monday when my class were having it, we all went to the library and set the room ourselves.