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

A New Year..................

Heyy people,      
                Happy New Year!!!!!! With a new year comes a new course of school projects and even though we've only been back a few days we've already been set to work on projects :)

   In Geography we are still doing our round the world trip in which we have to learn about two first world countries, two second world countries and two third world countries. My Countries are India and Cuba to learn about.

In History we are learning about the reformation. Today we were set a project on religious reformers, I have been given John Calvin and we also have to do a profile on the religious reformer Martin Luther.

In Religion we are supposed to research an area of ongoing conflict and to a project to learn about the life in that country.

In our Art class we are creating portraits of celebrities and putting them into black and white and using the tape inside a cassette tape to outline the dark pieces on the picture.

In TY Design we are making a teddy bear out of fabric. We are currently in the process of cutting out the shapes we need to put our teddy together.

This week in Home Ec we are making chocolate and strawberry cheese cake with the base of our cheesecake being made from chocolate chip cookies.

In French class we have been given a French pen pal who we must write letters to every couple of weeks. They are from Nancy in the north of France.

In Mini Company we are currently preparing our business report for the competition to submit to the judges so they can learn about our business and our ideas.

In Science we are currently working on our Sci-fest project which is due for the 1st of March.

                   TTYL,
                            Shannon :)

Junk Koture Fashion Show

     Hey People,


Yesterday was our Junk Koture fashion show. Our junk Koture was a dress with footballs, basketballs, rugby balls and Gaelic balls. The skirt part of our dress was made from the hexagonal shapes in the footballs as we tried to give the effect of a quilt. The back of our top contained more hexagonal shapes that we fixed the morning before our fashion show.

The front of our top contained sewn on pieces of basketball and Gaelic balls that took a very long time to sew onto the top and cut to the right shape to fit. The idea of our dress took a very long time to come up with as idea's got changed quite often .

On the day we had a little bit of a disaster as the entire back of our dress fell apart, however with some glue and a couple of almost panic attacks later our dress was complete, however when our model, Emma, tried on the dress the back started to fall off but with a few handy idea's and quick fingers later our dress looked grand and so the show was to go on.

We made it to the fashion show and we were the eight people on the catwalk. l. The walk down the catwalk went well and the judges seemed to like it and none of the footballs fell off!!!!! Wooo

Mini Company Workshop

Hey peoples,

                 Last Friday, the thirtieth of November 2012, St Wolstan's Transition Years went to a conference in White Water Shopping Centre in Nass. In this we spoke about marketing our products and we informed the other students from both our school and other schools in Kildare. Our Mini Company is Cray8 Colour. In this we recycle the old unusable crayons at the end of the crayon box and we melt them down, in the oven or microwave and then we pour the melted crayons into moulds and then we wait for them to harden by leaving them outside or in the fridge for ten or fifteen minutes. Then we sell them in school for 50 cents to a euro. 

At the mini company talk we also discussed the best way to write our business report. We learned how many marks we would get for each part of our report. Then we watched a short video on the types of personality in business: passive, aggressive, passive-aggressive and assertive.

A Week of Projects

Hey People,


The purpose of TY is to learn group work and we are doing a lot of group work. The week was action packed. First were still doing Junk Koture. We have had some progress with this and we are still sewing the footballs to the top and  now we have started the design on the front of the skirt and we may need to hurry up as we only have two weeks to finish our product.

We also have done the F1 in schools project for our technology class, in this we did a design for a formula one car and we did a logo for our team. We had to design and plan for if we got into the competition and explain what we would do to make our car go faster.

In History we are doing a project on the Berlin Blockade in the Cold War. We must present this project to the current third years to aid them in their revision for the Junior Cert.

In Geography we are doing an around the world trip focusing on two first world countries, two second world       countries and two third world countries. My two are Cuba and Australia we must learn about aspects in the countries every day life.

In French we are sending letters to French students our age and are getting pen pals to help us improve our French Language writing.

In English we are doing film studies we are watching the Italian film Il Postina which focuses on the friendship between the main character Mario and esteemed poet Pablo Neruda.

In Religion we are doing a project on a person who has overcome extreme poverty to become a great philanthropist and has made some money doing something that helped them.

Halloween Dress up Day.

Hey People,


The day was Friday the twenty sixth of October and the place was St Wolstan's Community school and there were zombies everywhere.................... Not real zombies obviously it's the entire TY year group with face paint adorning their faces and ripped clothes. The theme we had been given was zombies and it was portrayed around the school fairly well. The class representative from a class Cairdeas was Emma who did Cairdeas proud however did not win over zombies bride :(.

 We however were not the only ones dressed up as First Years were Scary Witches, Second Years became Crazy Pirates, Third Years swapped their everyday selves for Villains and Super Hero's as you know Transition Years became zombies, Fifth Years transformed into scary clowns and Sixth Years got their acceptance letters to the magical world of Harry Potter.

It was a great day full of laughter and good fun as the school participated in a good dress up day and enjoyed the lively spirit that came with it.
 

             TTYL,
                    Shannon

Projects

Hey people
        
         We're finally starting to relax into our TY year and are getting stuck into the projects that we are being given. Our first one is Junk Koture this is where you make a dress out of recyclable materials. Me and my partner are making our dress out of  sports materials eg footballs, Gaelic footballs, basketballs and rugby balls. Our project is going very well indeed and we have the skirt paper mached and we are currently in  the process of sewing the top together.
                    Our next project is a geography project in which we have each been given a county to research and to do a project on. I have been given county Down.
               In Technology we are making a clock which is going quite well I have just finished the actual clock and am now working on getting the piece for the middle of the clock now.
     I'm looking forward to work experience tomorrow as I missed last week and I cant wait for Halloween next week.
    Bye people...................
                 TTYL

Fun Walk

Hey people

    

             On Friday the fifth of  October we had our fun walk it was great. As tradition TY's were yellow and we were delighted at this challenge. There were many ideas thrown around the room the yellow submarine, Spongebob Square Pants and the Simpsons however the one that got the most votes was the yellow pages and so preparations began. 

    We got our more creative people to come up with a dance to go along with our songs- Call Me Maybe by Carly Rae Jepsen and Gangnam Style by PSY. We went along with these songs as they were perfect for our song. 

We spent the entire week perfecting our dance and soon it was Friday and we were rearing to go. Our class were the first to go on so we got it out of the way.

We in my belief performed very well however our class did not win :(. We were a bit upset however we  were good sports and took our loss well and gave the other class our congratulations. That was a good week for us.

  Thanks for reading    

                     TTYL

Work Experience 1 and 2

Hey People :)
        My first day of work experience was a busy one. There was to be a surgery on a horse that had fractured her leg. So we had to prepare the surgery room and clean it out. Unfortunately as it was my first I was not allowed to sit in and watch the surgery. Instead I cleaned and mucked out stables which was fairly fun in itself.
The day flew by and before I knew it was lunch time and I had a packed lunch so it was fine . We got an hour for lunch time. Then we were back to work and I had to clean out the preparation room as the horse had been moved. I power hosed the room down and cleaned out the drains.
Then it was time for treatments. I accompanied the head nurse on her rounds to the horses. I had to put on the head strap and hold the horse while she gave the horse its medicine.
Then it was home time. I was happy with my first day it was great and I couldn't wait for next week.

The next week was considerably slower. I arrived just on time to go on the morning treatments with the head nurse. The day moved slowly however I sorted all the jackets for the horses, mucked out all the stables, I swept the barn and cleaned the x-ray machine. The day flew by again and before I knew it,  treatment time was happening again. I got to check the horses heartbeat and listened to its gut. Then we were let to go home early it was a good day. :)

Carlingford's Adventure

This week we returned from tired wrecked but delighted with our adventure. Carlingford was amazing. We were to be at Esso at ten to seven. Bit early but it was nice to know we were going somewhere for two days of fun and adventure.
We boarded the bus with some hopes of sleep but all those hopes were forgotten as the energy on the bus was buzzing everyone was delighted. We arrived in Carlingford at around nine o'clock and after a regestration and putting our stuff away we were straight into the activities.
Our first activity was laser combat with Chris and Andy. After we were split into groups (go red team!!) the rules were then explained to us and we got stuck in. It was great fun although some competitive streaks came out in Teddy domination ang King of the Hill.
After this we returned back down a really big hill and lunch was ready and we were ready for lunch. We returned from lunch full and rearing to go. We were then taken down to the harbour for a spot of kayaking. I got into the boat with my partner and we were'nt quite as a good as expected as about halfway through our boat capsised and with an unable to swim partner we were slightly stuck. But we made it in the end and when returning to the beach we became much better at kayaking.
Then we returned for dinner it was starting to get dark and rainy but we still had to go out for one more activity: The Night Line. Basically we had to walk through the pitch dark forest with blindfolds on and holding on to a thin rope calling out to the people behind us if there was anything in front, calling out I'm a spoon if you lose the person in front of you. It was a huge trust excercise and was a lot more fun than it sounds.
We returned to the centre cold and some slightly hungry we went to the chipper and were in our rooms and tucked up in bed by the elleven curfew............. Just kidding :).
The next day we were awoken at seven and some were not overjoyed no names. We went down to breakfast and our first activity was high ropes and zorbing. We went to the zorbing first where your strapped into a giant rubber hamster ball and you get pushed down the hill it was amazing and a great way to start the day. The next thing we did was high ropes where you had to climb to the top of a thirty foot pole and stand an a square shaped box on top and get three other people up there with you its really really scary.
Our last activity was challanges. We had to work as a team to complete these challanges and collect gems and whichever team at the end had the most gems won. Great fun getting to know all the others on our team.
Sadly this was our last activity at Carlingford and we were all very dissapointed that it was over and didnt want to leave but we had maybe one day we'll get to go back......maybe.

The First Two Weeks.

     Hey people :)

      We've been back about two weeks although it feels like two days. But I guess time flies when your having fun. Our first week was great craic. We had our first Wednesday of no classes. It wasn't an unproductive day though, We had three workshops to help us learn. The first was positive parties, This was great (not just because there were sweets) we learned how to keep ourselves positive even in bad situations. We had to put ourselves in situations that we wouldn't usually be in so Denise(the woman who was doing it) gave us a pair of (unworn) underwear and in groups we had to find as many nontraditional  ways to wear them as possible. It was great fun and she thought us how to channel positive energy from a happy moment in our lives to when were feeling nervous or sad. The second was an etiquette workshop with Brenda and Kate in this we learned our body shape and our facial shapes. We also learned about personal hygiene (not that anyone needed to learn about it). Although we did end up running out of time on that one. Our final workshop was one on social development with Austen. This one was great we learned how to work as a team and how to communicate and listen with others. After this we all went home with grins on our faces it was great. Then after the next two days of classes freedom arrived and then we were faced with an even bigger epidemic it was the week of Junior Cert Results don don don. We must all come in on Wednesday and face the music.