Zombies...boooooo

Halloween Dress Up Day

Today, we had our annual dress up day. There was an unforgettable atmosphere in the school hallways as students dressed up as many different Halloween characters. From witches to harry potter characters! Two members were voted to represent each class for the fashion show in the hall. Luckily, Zoe and I were chosen!
Smiles were on our faces as we both won out of TY. Lots of sweets for us! Everyone in school who participated in dressing up all looked amazing and put in a lot of effort. The money donated from today goes to a charity so this whole dress up day is for a good cause, leaving unforgettable memories with everyone.

Mad Music Classes

As music is one of my favourite subjects, I've been enjoying music a lot this year. Our teacher has been teaching our class guitar. I like this as I already play guitar so I can help teach others. We're also singing the song, "Say a Little Prayer For You" by Arethra Franklin. We're all really enjoying this, we should sing more! I wish we had music more often as we only have it once a week, and it's such an enjoyable class and an opportunity for everything to get involved and enjoy themselves.


Here's the link to the song if anyone is interested:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KtBbyglq37E

Encouraging Cycling

So this morning we had a talk off a man from Kildare County Council on cycling. He highlighted the positive benefits of cycling, and reasons why to cycle to school. It was pretty convincing. He showed us different videos and a Powerpoint presentation on cycling. In the presentation there was statistics on cycling, and it showed that Salesian's college (The boys school in Celbridge) have the most amount of people cycling to school in Kildare! Our school has a green flag in Transport, and in order to maintain this more people have to walk or cycle to school. So this talk was a great encouragement for all of us. Kildare County Council are also giving free bicycles to four lucky Transition Year students. It is very kind of them. :)

Shannon's News

I recorded my news today

What us TY's are getting up to so far...

Transition Year is a great opportunity to focus on things you usually wouldn't have the opportunity to do in other years. In each subject, we've been getting up to a lot so far...

Irish: In Irish we're doing presentation's about life in school, our area, sport in our school and so on! Standing up in front of my class and present something I wrote myself was a bit out of my comfort zone, but I overcame it and its really not as bad as I thought it was. We're also learning about different careers and what people do. 

English: For the first few weeks, we did a module on Film Studies. It was like what we covered in the Junior Cert, but more expanded. We read an inspirational speech by Nelson Mandela which included the line "Our greatest fear is not that we are inadequate, but that we are powerful beyond imagination". I really enjoyed that speech. We're now on debating. I'm really enjoying Transition Year English so far.

Maths: We're working on simultaneous equations and algebra, which I've always found slightly difficult.. but I'm beginning to get my head around them all!  Last week our Maths teacher assigned us a project on a famous mathematician. I'm looking forward to get cracking with that.

Spanish: In Spanish we've done a lot on describing movies, and talking about going to the cinema. My Spanish vocabulary has expanded a lot already. We wrote a paragraph in Spanish on our favourite movies. Mine of course, was "How To Lose a Guy in 10 Days". We typed these out and our teacher is pinning these up on the walls in the classroom.

History: So far this year we've been focussing on the government, and what the government does. I have a different History teacher this year and I'm beginning to look at History differently. It's really interesting!

Geography: We've spent the last few classes in the computer room working on our, "Trip Around The World" project. There's a lot to do in it, but it's really fun and interesting. I'm learning a lot about countries that I never would have known.

Home Ec/Art: We're still working hard at our Junk Kouture projects. We have a whole box, of about five hundred crisp packets cut up into shreds which we're sticking on our outfit. Never knew designing an outfit would take this amount of time and effort. The result at the end will make it all worth it.

Music: Our class is learning how to play the guitar. I think it's amazing that more girl's are learning how to play, because it's such a great instrument. I love music!

Technology: In the first week or two, we learned how to use the technology instruments and learned about the techniques needed by making a keyring out of plastic. We're currently making a clock.. it's slightly harder than the keyring.

Science: We've been doing a Nanotechnology module with Ms.O'C. It's been so interesting! We're changing teacher next week to do another module. We also have to get started on our Sci-Fest projects.

Religion: We did projects on the 2015 World Millenium Goals. I had Goal 4. We've watched "Educating Essex" as part as anti-bullying week to highlight the damage that bullying can do to someone emotionally. We're watching "The Secret Millionare" at the moment. This shows us all about the poverty in Ireland. 

Overall, we're doing so much work in Transition Year. We're learning a lot, and having fun along the way. I hope the rest of Transition Year is as enjoyable as it has been so far :)

The Journey of TY so far in pictures..

 

Anti Bullying Week

We're certainly ending Anti-Bullying Week on a high as we have our fun walk today! The hallways in school are so colourful with pinks, purples,greens,yellows,blues and blacks. My class and I are doing lego. I spent all of yesterday evening designing my yellow lego box.. so worth it.
We're dancing to "Hey Ya" by Outkast. It's a really feel good, upbeat tune which everyone will love. I'm really excited for this afternoon. My class, Síocháin were chosen to stand at different points on the fun walk route to help guide the students. I have never done this before so I'm looking forward to it.
Yet again I had another eventful week in Transition Year. My second Wednesday of work experience was great. I'm getting an idea of what college is like as I'm doing Work Experience in NUI Maynooth Chemistry labs. It's really fun :)
On Thursday we had our school mass to open the school year. It was the first service that the whole school has been together for this year. I had a lot of fun singing as I was in the choir. All the hard work paid off. Fr.Kevin said a great mass and everyone had a lovely time. 
I'm so excited to see everyone's dance this afternoon. 


Since it's anti-bullying week, I might as well leave you all with a nice quote I found...
"To be kind is more important than to be right. Many times what people need is not a brilliant mind that speaks, but a special mind that listens."