St Kilian’s Community School
SOUNDWAVES FESTIVAL
The first Soundwaves Music Festival took place in St Kilian’s from May 8 to May 12 2017. One of the aims of the Music Syllabus is to promote ‘a culture of creative enjoyable engagement with Music’ and what better way to do this than through a week of music.
Student from Transition Year organised ‘Welcomes’, ‘Thank Yous’, Biographical notes about performers, Certificates, Goodybags, Programmes, Comperes, and the technical and artistic aspects of the performances.
The school resounded to the music of O’Carolan, Beethoven, Gershwin, The Strokes, Handel, Bach and an array of popular artists.
The week was packed full of activities, with events for the entire school community during the lunch break, when staff and students took to the stage in Lip Sync battles, song contests and our special Lunch-Time to Shine Concerts.
Students from every year participated, and it was a fantastic display of talent. The fourth, fifth and sixth classes from St Fergal’s joined the students of St Kilian’s in a wonderful joint talent showcase, and the experience was thoroughly enjoyed by both groups. St Kilian’s is looking forward to next year’s Soundwaves Music Festival already.
St Kilian’s was very privileged indeed to have live performances and workshops from artists with very distinguished National and International musical profiles: Redmond O’Toole on the Brahms 8-string Guitar; Tim Doyle on Uilleann pipes; Ross Scanlon, Tenor; Anne-Marie O’Farrell, Harpist; and her son Steph on Electric Guitar. Laura Heffernan, Don Farrell, Sylvester Byrne and Frank Kelly joined staff and students performing a selection of traditional tunes.
Second year student Emily Beattie, from Temple Carraig Secondary School in Greystones, exhibited some of the infinite possibilities of music arrangement and composition with our Transition Year students. I.
n addition to all the various entertaining aspects of music, which we enjoyed this week, cross-curricular resources for each subject area were widely used by teachers. Teachers themselves also ran with their own ideas for their classes culminating in ‘Maths is da bomb’ – a lively engaging and very cool rap about all aspects of maths, with plenty of audience participation.
A special thank you to all the students who participated: Saoirse McDonnell, Louise McCormack, Nathan Coster, Zach Fisher, Leo Shortt, Anthony O’Brien, Taylor Flood, Ben Rowsome (with his own beautiful and newly composed song entitled Wherever this road takes me), Fionn Doyle, Jake O’Brien, Christian Wang, Luke Windsor, Sophie Ward, Jade O’Hagan, Amber Kenna, Kate Leadbetter, Nathan Flanagan, Seán O’Dowd, Emily Montague, Dillon Verdon, Ronello Nuqui, Thomas Horan, Tia Kenna, Megan O’Daly, Moesha Chong, John Kelly, Brandon Conway and the first year 1T and 1N classes.
This wonderful initiative is the latest brainwave of our super enthusiastic and highly innovative music teacher Ms Louise O’Sullivan, who wishes to thank management, staff and students at St Kilian’s for their encouragement and support for her latest project, and without whom she says the week could never have happened. But without Louise’s Trojan efforts and super ideas, none of this would have come about, so the school wish to thank her for all that she does to fill our days with the joy of music.
At any time of the day or evening, St Kilian’s rings with all sorts of wonderful musical interventions inspired by our ever inventive and energetic music teacher Louise, who has been inspiring our students and their Mums to get involved in all aspects music since she took over in St Kilian’s from the very well known Choir Master, Composer and Musician Frank Kelly, who retired as our music teacher. Thanks to Louise’s fantastically interesting and innovative ideas about music, our students are loving the opportunities that she creates for them to perform, and are very involved in all the extra-curricular musical events that Louise plans for them in St Kilian’s such as.
MUSIC COMPETITION
The new band ‘Upon Experiment’ performed at the Over 15 Rock Band category at the Wesley Interschools competition on Saturday, March 4. The band is comprised of students from Transition and Fifth Year: Nathan Flanagan, Hannah Larkin, Emily Montague, Ben Rowsome, Luke Windsor and Christian Wang. The band formed as a consequence of work with Music Generation tutor Rama.
It was a big challenge for the students to perform after so little time together as a group. Their performance of Greenday’s ‘21 Guns’ was energetic, lively, and they looked very relaxed as they played. The adjudicators were impressed by their performance and they received very positive and constructive comments.
EMMANUEL
19 students attended the annual music event organised by the Archdiocese of Dublin for schools in its jurisdiction. Our students attended practices over lunchtimes and after school in preparation for the event. There were over 500 students from 20 schools performing the same repertoire together with a full band and a packed house on Monday, March 6. Well done to the students involved.
MUMS ALOUD
Or maybe it’s ‘Mums Allowed..’ to let their hair down and enjoy a bit of fun and music-making. These are the Mammies, who are taking the opportunity to do some ukelele, drums or keyboard and are set to be the next great internet sensation. They are a fantastic group of enthusiastic women who are enjoying music-making.
COMIC BOOK ARTIST VISIT
On Wednesday, March 8, comic book artist Aidan Courtney visited St Kilian’s Library to work with students as part of the Seachtain ne Gaeilge celebrations. Aidan has had his work published internationally and is the founder of Comici Gael, an Irish language comics publisher.
Brainstorming ‘as Gaeilge’ with second and third year students Aidan demonstrated simple illustration techniques to produce quality comic books with each group. Aidan was full of praise for the talent on show and encouraged anyone with an interest to not only draw, but also to submit work Many thanks to our very innovative librarian Chris Stokes, and our Irish Department.
YOUNG SOCIAL INNOVATORS
On March 21, our young social innovators took part in the National ‘Speak-out’, on their issue of Mental Health in the RDS, Dublin. Our students had to present their project on stage in front of hundreds of students and teachers as well as the judges. They were very professional and represented St Kilian’s to the highest standard. Now they just have to wait for feedback, to see if they will be invited to the final.
We wish them and their teacher Ms Brophy, the very very best of luck they have worked so hard on their important and inspiring project. Their notice board in the school is always filled with interesting and useful tips for all.
TY TRIP TO KILLARY
At the end of March, 69 St Kilian’s TY students enjoyed a fabulous three-day trip to Killary Adventure Centre, Leenane Co. Galway. The students were accompanied by their Year Head, Mr Fitzpatrick, TY Coordinator, Mr Kelly, Ms Murray, Ms Ryan and Ms McGuinness.
The students took part in water and land based activities including the infamous ‘Turf Challenge’, the centre piece of the RTÉ programme, ‘Ireland’s Fittest Family’, which was filmed in Killary late last year. Other activities that the students tried were the giant swing, the rope bridge, kayaking, gorge walking and the trapeze swing. They went on a long trek at night and had a table quiz and other games to keep them busy and entertained in the evenings.
The students thoroughly enjoyed the trip and their behaviour and good humour was exemplary. Everyone commented that it was the high point of the year so far, as it proved to be a great bonding and fun experience for everyone concerned.
Thanks to the excellent staff at Killary Adventure Centre and to the teachers, who excelled by getting ‘down and dirty’ trying many of the difficult challenges themselves.
Well done Mr Kelly for organising such a wonderfully rewarding and enjoyable trip for our fourth years. They really had a fantastic time.
GREEN SCHOOLS UPDATE
On Wednesday, April 26, all fourth years and 6LCA were involved in a litter pick around the Ballywaltrim area. This was organised as part of a National Spring Clean day, designed to get the whole community aware of litter in their area, and contributing to the clean-up. Students collected rubbish and litter along School’s Road, the playground and around the pitches. Many thanks to the students for being so enthusiastic throughout the morning, and to the Green Schools Committee for co-ordinating and organising the event.
SCIFEST COMPETITION
On Tuesday, May 9, 20 students accompanied by their teachers, Ms Ryan and Ms Watson, attended the SciFest competition in IT Tallaght. A broad range of projects had been entered, and everyone who took part was brilliant. We had one successful candidate – Ben Rowsome, from fourth year, who won best overall space project in the ‘Discover Space Award’ and his project was titled ‘Time Dilation at Terrestrial Speeds’.
As well as presenting their projects and answering questions, the students had a chance to attend two lectures on the day. One lecture was about Space and after the second lecture they attended, students had an opportunity to ask questions about careers in STEM. We all enjoyed the day and can’t wait to attend next year. Many thanks to Ms Ryan and Ms Watson.
2ND YEAR TRIP TO DUBLIN
As part of their numeracy project, 2v planned and went on a trip to Dublin. They did a fantastic job choosing appropriate bus and train times which ensured they could have the maximum possible time in Dublin. While in Dublin they took the opportunity to visit the National Gallery of Ireland to see a painting by Megan O’Daly, one of our sixth year students. They had lunch in Trinity College followed by a run around the cricket pitches. Then the last stop was the Science Gallery to see the ‘Humans Need Not Apply’ exhibition. Thanks to their maths teacher Ms Flynn.
NATIONAL GALLERY AWARD
Congratulations to sixth year student Megan O’Daly, whose entry for the National Gallery of Ireland ‘Imagining the Ireland of 2016’ was one of only 38 entries from all over Ireland, to be selected and exhibited at the National Gallery during April and May of 2017. We are all very proud of Megan particularly her Art Teacher Ms Hume. Very well done Megan on your wonderfully inclusive Poster on gender and marriage equality in the Ireland of today which can still be seen in the gallery if you hurry.