TY Week :)

Hey people :)
             
                   We've a slightly shorter week this week but no less action packed :). Tomorrow we are off on a mini pilgrimage to our county's patron saints well. We are going to St Bridget's well in Kildare for some prayer and reflection and afterwards we will get a spot of lunch and go bowling :) Yayyyyyyy!!!!!

We are doing a really cool project in religion. It is on gender and it will view many aspects of the lives of women in different countries and continents. We will also look at careers for women, views from a man and a woman from the 1950's and also how women are portrayed in films, books and songs. I think that this will be fascinating to see and learn about and will also help us move forward in life.

Also we have been working on our teddy bear in TY design and it is coming along nicely, in a few weeks we shall hopefully be finished. Also this week we have our music night. Our class will be performing a rendition of Martin Solveig's 'Hello'. Hopefully we will do great and give our music teacher something to be proud of.


Bye People :) i'll update you on the goings on in TY soon :D

Another TY Week

Hey people :) ..........

              So we TY's have been having another fun filled week. So I feel like I haven't updated you guys on my days in a long time however . . . . I'm back. So starting with two weeks ago we had our Scifest at School sadly our project was not one of the ones that was Short-listed. . . :(  but a massive congratulations to all the girls who did. However according to the judges the standard in our school was quite high. When they finished up we had to explain to second and third years what our project was about however a lot of them seemed a little disgusted when we told them about the project.

Then last Thursday we attended a talk in Trinity College Dublin by Intel. This talk was all about careers in Science and Technology for girls. The talk was fascinating we learned about what sciences we should take if we wanted to work for Intel. We also saw a clip for a new movie called Girl Rising which is about education in third world countries for girls. We also got lunch which was quite nice of them and the sandwiches were delicious.

Then yesterday we had another career talk this time on engineering for girls. We learned all about Masdar City and how it is revolutionary and the first of it's kind. This was highly interesting, also we learned that most of the jobs in the future will be in some kind engineering. This will be highly useful for when were doing our leaving certs and picking our colleges.

   BYE people  :D
 

Mexican Drug War

Hey People...... :)



                       This week we have been presenting our projects on areas of conflict in the world in our religion class. My partner Emma and I chose to do the Mexican Drug War. This was particularly interesting as we hadn't heard or seen very much on this conflict and so there was lot's information that we could find out about and learn from.
Our first portion of information came in the form of an ask.com entry where we discovered that at first Mexico was just the shipper of drugs and that Columbia was supplying the drugs to Mexico to send over the border to North America. Then we saw that Mexico decided to start growing their own drugs and shipping them to America themselves because they could earn more money this way.
This happened the late 1980's early '90's during this time Mexico had a closed corrupt government who had no problem with the drug cartels however in 2000 Vincente Fox became president of Mexico and decided it was time for reform. Fox sent Mexican troops to an area in Mexico (that I can't spell) to fight these cartels. But as it turned out the cartels were not willing to give up their power or wealth all that easily and decided to fight not only with the government but with each other for territory. These small drug cartels slowly grew into all out gang's.
Since the war started in 2005 there has been over 50,000 deaths and growing everyday (not including those who died from drug use) but this has been mostly civilians who just happened to be in the wrong place at teh wrong time. But the gangs have also branched out into other criminal activities other than drugs such as gun smuggling, human trafficking and many other aspects of criminal minds.These criminal gangs target those who live in poverty and organise them to join there gangs.
There has been no international assistance to Mexico whatsoever which is really such a shame. I also believe that we should show more of an interest in national news about this war as it ruins lives with and the Mexican government is struggling with the burden of war.

Lollipop Day

Hey people....... :)


           So last week was busy for us in l'annee de Transition. (little piece of french for you guys :P) On Friday we went into Dublin city to collect funds for Lollipop Day. This years lollipop day was in aid of Oseophageal Cancer. This was a great cause and even though we were a bit cold (understatement) it was a huge honour to be helping out and doing something good with our TY year. We had to stand on Lower Baggot Street and we felt that we did quite well given the fact that it was a quiet street.


Yesterday in our Home Economics class we made Chili Con Carne with rice it was really nice (hey that rhymes!) even though ours was a bit spicy thanks to my lovely cooking partner Emma. But it did make for a tasty lunch time. :)

Also its work experience tomorrow which I am looking forward to as well but sadly it's our second last day of this work experience which I am slightly disappointed about :(

Percussion Workshop.

    Hey dudes,
                      Well last week we had midterm so we are all refreshed after our break and ready to bring life and energy to the rest of our TY year. Yesterday was Monday our first day back and we had an enjoyable relaxed day to say the least. In the Morning we made our cheesecake in Home Economics. With my partner Emma we made a strawberry and chocolate cheesecake with a chocolate chip cookie base. It was delicious if I do say so myself.


Then after that we had a few regular Classes in English were currently creating a drama from a poem. Ours is a love drama based on the poem the Thinness of Ice by Liz Loxley. We have decided on our characters and are in the middle of writing our scenes and we will be performing it on TY night for our parents and teachers. Then as a special treat we TY classes were allowed to take part in a percussion workshop. Our instructor was called Dave and we were allowed to play his djembe drums it was good fun, we even got to make up our own rythem's. It was great fun.


This Friday we are going to Lollipop day. This is for oesophageal cancer and we are going into town to collect money by giving out lollipops us Ty's are really looking forward to helping out a great cause and giving up our time.

Bye people.............................
                         Shannon

Another Week.....

Hey People,
             
So we've had another busy week what with our projects and what not. Last Friday was St Bridget's Day and as she is the patron saint of our county we celebrated by making a St Bridget's cross.

In Religion we are still doing an area of conflict in the world, my partner and I have chosen to do the Mexican Drug War. This will help us to learn about an area of in the world that I did not know actually was in conflict. 

In Art we are still doing our cassette tape portraits. We have drawn out our pictures of the chosen celebrities and are sticking down the tape from the cassette tape onto our pictures. This is a lot more time consuming then I previously thought.

In History we are learning about the reformation. We have been given John Calvin and Martin Luther to research and do a project on them.

In Geography I am doing a project on Cuba, we must learn about  the aspects of their culture, places to visit whilst there and other things about Cuba.              

In TY design we are currently making a teddy bear from fabric. We have cut out all our pieces and tacked them together and we have started machine sewing today. . 

In Home Economics we are cooking every week. This week we have made risotto. It was nice however we put in a little bit too much rice. Next week we are making Chili Con Carne.

In Science we are working on our Scifest projects and mine is Is Public Transport as Clean as You Think. We have done our experiment for the competition and are now focusing on finishing the poster and report book.

  

TY Days

Hey people,

                 This week has been a busy one for us Transition Years, even busier than usual. Firstly this week we had our Mini Company presentation day yesterday on Monday twenty first of January. Two judges came to our school to see our projects and listen to us talk about our different sectors of the project. Just to help you keep up our mini company is Cray8 Colour we recycle old unusable crayons and produce them into new colours, shapes and sizes. We after all the judging was finished our mini company won best business report in our class and we will find out the finalists sometime next week.

In Religion we are still doing an area of conflict in the world, me and my partner have chosen to do the Mexican Drug War. This will help us to learn about an area of conflict that we were unaware of previously, before we embarked on this project.

In Art we are still doing our cassette tape portraits. We have drawn out our pictures of the chosen celebrities and today we are starting to stick down the tape from the cassette tape onto our pictures.

In History we are learning about the reformation. Today we were set a project on religious reformers, John Calvin and Martin Luther we must research them and do a presentation on them.

In Geography I am doing a project on Cuba, we must learn about  the aspects of their culture, places to visit whilst there and other things about Cuba.              

In TY design we are currently making a teddy bear from fabric. We have cut out all our pieces and must sew them together and we are currently taking our arms and legs and will start machine sewing next week. We have also decided on names for our bears. 

In Home Economics we are cooking every week. This week we have made profiteroles. They were delicious and we did it quite well in a short space of time. Next week we are making chicken risotto.

In Science we are working on our Scifest projects and mine is Is Public Transport as Clean as You Think. I am looking forward to carrying out our experiment for the competition.

 TTYL
         Shannon