Gaisce - The President's Award

This year all TY's were given the opportunity to participate in the Gaisce Bronze Award or the The President's Award. Each individual must choose a Community Involvement Activity, a Personal Skill Activity and a Physical Recreation Activity. Each student must spend one hour on each activity every week for 13 weeks. You must also choose one of your three activities to extend for a further 13 weeks. So, for my Community Involvement Activity I will be supervising the Homework Club after school for 13 weeks. I love working with computers therefore, for my Personal Skill Activity I will be taking an online computer typing coarse for 13 weeks. And finally, I will use one of my swimming sessions as for my Physical Skill Activity and my Additional Activity for 26 weeks.

As part of the Gaisce Bronze award each student must partake in the Gaisce Adventure Challenge, a mandatory part of the award. This challenge involves a 25k hike over a 48 hour period.  Ms. Mc G has organised for us to stay at the Kippure Adventure Centre in Co. Wicklow when our hike will take place in April. We are already looking forward to it! 

If you would like to find out more on Gaisce check out their website here.

Simon Community Mementos

When Ms. O'S was giving us our talk on the work the Simon Community do, she spoke about Mementos which are like snapshots of life. This video gives you and example of some people's mementos who are part of the Simon Community in Cork. 

Simon Community Talk

This year as part of our religion coarse we are writing and preforming our own dramas on issues that we have a particular interest in. My groups drama is about the effects that war has on all sorts of different people. This week Rósin wrote the first part of the script and we had our first sort of rehearsal today in religion. I am playing the role of the killer who was reluctant to actually kill another soldier on the opposition. I am really look forward to seeing how our entire play turns out. We have to act out an actual war so we're buying fake blood, toy guns and adding some cool sound effects! Should turn out pretty impressive ;) 

The other group in my class are preforming their drama on homelessness. So as part of their 'research' they or organised a talk from our Art teacher Ms. O'S on the work she did with Simon Community. She spoke to us about the different projects she worked on and how they tied in with art. I found the talk really interesting and made me realize that I really want to get involved in Volunteering work when I'm older. Thanks to Ms. O'S for giving us the talk yesterday. 

Rápido y Furioso

This year in technology everyone must enter the formula 1 racing competition called "F1 in Schools". Everyone is in either a group of 5 or 6 people. Within every group there are different roles allocated to each person. These include; Managing director, Design Engineer, Manufacturing Engineer, Resources Manager and Marketing Manager. There are five members in my team. Our team name is Rapido y Furioso and my role in the group is the team manager. Our name means Fast and Furious in Spanish! We choose to use a graffiti background to match some of the streets in Spain. 

This is our portfolio cover

Each group has to research into the factors that can influence the design of the car. The design engineer then has to come up with a design that satisfies all  requirements. The team also has to write up their plan or strategy for advertising, marketing, fundraising, and sponsorship. All of this information is then compiled into one portfolio which we will send in on Friday. Only 2 teams out of our entire year with qualify for the next round, so fingers crossed!  

The Language of film

In English we were asked to chose our favorite scene from our favorite movie and write about the camera angles at various parts throughout your chosen scene. We were also asked to write about the lighting and sound effects, costume and makeup. Another key aspect of film is no-verbal communication. We had to look at his in detail. 

The language of film from katiehurley06

D.E.A.R. Moment

This year the school library is no longer being used as a classroom, therefore it has had a complete make over. Towards the beginning of this year my class carried out survey's in English with Ms. W on 3 students from every class in the whole school. We asked them who their favorite author was, what were their favorite reads of all time were and what new books they would like to see in the school library. Once we got all of our results back we analysed them and made a list of new books that need to be ordered in for the library. 

Before the open day at school, under the instruction of the new full time librarian, the library committee worked on laying out all of the new books. Our English class also wrote up reviews on different books to decorate the walls. The library is also newly refurbished with cool single desks scattered around the room which looks really well.

Today our English teacher Ms. O'R brought us to the library during English class for a D.E.A.R moment. ( A Drop Everything And Read moment!) It was actually really relaxing just to sit down for like 40 minutes and read in silence. Afterwards loads of girls opened their first library account and took out a book they were interested in reading , including myself. I think D.E.A.R. moments are a really good idea and I hope we get to do more of them in the future. 

Homework club

As I am in Transition Year, this year everyone in my year was given the opportunity to supervise at the homework club after school from Monday to Thursday. I along with another transition year student stay for an hour after school every second Monday to help any 1st, 2nd, or 3rd year with any problems or questions they may have in doing their homework. I think it is a really good idea as we can share our knowledge from our Junior Cert with the current Junior Cert students. Supervising the homework club makes me realize that the learning structure of TY is entirely different to that of the Junior Cert, in a good way of coarse! ;)

Catch the Cyberbully

In our last IT class Ms.L showed us how to catch the cyberbully by keeping the evidence. This video outlines how you can take screen shots of any nasty comments you may receive on social networking sites or anywhere on the internet. 

Bond, James Bond!!

Today we traveled  to Odeon cinema in Naas for our second mini company workshop. However, when we arrived we got news that our presenter, Orla was ill and the workshop would not be going ahead. So instead the staff decided that we could watch the new James Bond film "Skyfall"!! The shouts and screams let out by everyone was unreal! We all couldn't believe it and we were so excited. It's fair to say everyone got really into the film as-well, like clapping when Bond killed the villain! :D

Afterwards we were greeted with another present surprise.... everyone got a goodie bag with popcorn, sweets, a drink and a Madagascar cup! ;) It amazing how excited TY's get with free stuff! ;) Today was defiantly one of the best days of TY so far!! :) Thanks to the business teachers for bring us today it was truly enjoyed by all.

Say Cheese! :D

Here is an example of light photography,
however ours weren't as good as this! ;)

This year Ms. O'S set up a new photography club after school every Thursday. There are 15 girls from TY and 5th Year in the club including me. So far we have learnt lots of new and interesting techniques. The first few weeks Ms. explained the basics of taking a good photograph. We each learnt how to use certain settings on our own individual cameras which could be used in order to take a good photograph.

Ms. also introduced us to light photography which was actually so much fun!It gave us the  the opportunity to create unusual images and show our artistic flare. Light photography is basically drawing an image using a torch or a light  while working in complete darkness. It can sometimes be difficult in creating the image and it takes a few practice runs, but it is defiantly worth it. 

The end result! 

Over the past three weeks we have been working on our Avatar! ;) We are using an online programme called pixlr (very like photoshop) and changing a normal picture into an Avatar type picture. We follow an online tutorial in order to create our Avatars. 

Here's the link to the online tutorial if anyone would like to give it a shot:

http://www.icanbecreative.com/create-james-camerons-avatar-movie-poster-in-photoshop-tutorial.html

And here is the link to the Pixlr website:

http://pixlr.com/editor/

How to use Pixlr

Here is a video that I found online which shows you how to us the Pixlr software with step by step instructions, I find that it is really helpful! 

Green schools

This year I decided to join the Green Schools committee. We meet up once a week on a Monday at lunch time to discuss different ideas that could be used and implemented in order to maintain our three green flags and also work towards securing a fourth green flag for Bio-diversity.

Within the green committee we are divided up into different groups . Each group as one role or task that they must carry out. For example, I am part of the Recycling/Bins group. Each week we look at the contents of different bins throughout the school and calculate the amount of waste in a particular bin. Ruth and I are in charge of checking the 5 recycling bins for cans around the school each week. This data we then be complied with the other bins such as paper and plastic in order to create a chart to show the results.

Towards the end of our weekly meetings we have a discussion on what actions we could put in order to achieve a fourth green flag for the school. So far there are talks of a garden in the school and setting up bird feeders in the courtyard, nothing is official at the moment but watch this space! ;)