SCHOOLS ROUND-UP
SLIGO GRAMMAR SCHOOL
SEVENS RUGBY: The Sligo Grammar School senior and junior rugby teams travelled to Creggs RFC on April 5 for the final rugby outing of the year. The Connacht Rugby 7s Festival saw teams from all around the province play a series of matches. SGS fielded several teams at both Junior and Senior level. There were two junior teams and all 20 players got a chance to play. They played nine games and won seven of them, losing only two. The SGS seniors played four games, winning
two, drawing one and losing one. The day was a great way to wrap up the rugby year and a bit of fun after the hard (but successful) slog of the schools league and cup competitions.
DIVERSITY DAY 2022: On April 1, Sligo Grammar School held a special day-long event to celebrate the wonderful diversity within our school.
The day saw activities and events designed to highlight and enjoy the diverse cultures within SGS. There were special ‘international’ table quizzes held for the first and second year students. The day was nominated a non-uniform day with
the whole school encouraged to dress in blue and yellow in support of the people of Ukraine. Every member of the school community contributed €2 to the Irish Red Cross to help in its work in Ukraine. A total of €1,000 was raised for the charity. The main event was an International Cultural Exposition in the school gym. Stalls were set up by the different cultural groups within the school. This highlighted the food, music, dance, costume, language and culture of their nations. We had 42 countries represented from all continents. Every class had a time slot to visit the exhibition and sample the food
on offer. Mr O’Donnell and the music department made sure that there was musical entertainment to accompany the festivities. The day was a great success, not least because it brought with it a sense of getting back to normal after two years of restrictions. Thanks to Ms McGuinness, Mia Sawai Brandon and Anushka Pathak for organising the day and thanks also to all the many helpers they had on the day itself.
NATIONAL TREE WEEK: At the end of March, with the help of the 2C Geography class, Sligo Grammar School celebrated National Tree Week 2022 by planting 12 saplings around the school. The school was delighted to plant the saplings as two of the old SGS trees had to be felled earlier in the year as they were dying, so the opportunity to replace them was very welcome. National Tree Week aims to encourage people all around the country to plant, look after and learn about trees, stressing the vital part trees play in the maintenance of a healthy planet. Of particular interest are our native broad leaf trees, and, with the help of groundskeepers Harry Nairn and Alan Dunbar, the second years planted rowan, hazel, wawthorn, birch, alder and oak trees. The saplings were gifted to the school by Self Help Africa and Sligo County Council. Many thanks for the gift of the trees and to the 2C class, their teacher Ms Moore and Harry and Alan for planting them. GREEN SCHOOLS FAST FASHION:
On Tuesday, March 29, SGS Green Schools and TY geography participated in an online zoom meeting dealing with issues around fast fashion.
This followed on from work done during Climate Action Week last October, when the Green Schools Committee highlighted the social and moral issues around cheap clothing. They followed this up by organising a textile recycling drive on in November, and Sligo Local Authority nominated our school to receive a free workshop entitled ‘Fast Fashion but at What Cost’.
This was very kindly funded and supported by the Regional Waste Offices as part of the Circular Fashion Initiatives.
The workshop educated the students on the human costs and environmental impacts of fast fashion and inspired us to continue to make sustainable choices around the clothes we wear.
DEBS 2021: On Monday, March 28, the SGS class of 2021 finally got the chance to hold their Debutantes Ball. After two very difficult senior years, dominated by the Covid-19 pandemic, the students finished their secondary school education without the opportunity to hold the Debs Ball in the summer following the exams. They were lucky to have a last day in school in May 2021, unlike the class of 2020, but the familiar rite of passage that is the debs was denied them. Through hard organisational work, however, a core committee of students managed to round up the majority of the class for a formal night out. Some of their classmates were abroad and couldn’t make it but, nevertheless, there was a great turnout, and some of their teachers also came along to celebrate with their
past pupils. It was a great night for all. Well worth the wait!
WALK FOR WATER: On Monday, April 25, first year students accompanied by TY students undertook a Walk for Water along the Garavogue river from Sligo town to Doorly Park. The walk was part of a campaign organised by AidLink, a non-governmental organisation dedicated to the empowerment of communities in Kenya and Uganda.
AidLink works to end the water and sanitation crisis in these parts of Africa, so helping to break the poverty cycle, increase school attendance and save lives.
On their walk the students filled and carried five-litre containers of river water, learning through experience what it must be like for children throughout drought-ridden countries to have to carry water long distances.
The Walk for Water helped the first years and TYs grasp the reality of children living on the frontline of Climate Change in Africa. An extra well done goes to the first years
(1D) who have raised over €500 for AidLink. This money will help fund community boreholes, allowing access to fresh water, thus allowing the children remain in school instead of undertaking long and arduous journeys to collect water for their families.
Thanks to Ms Moore, Mr White and Ms Tiernan for organising the event and accompanying them on the walk.
BALLINODE COMMUNITY COLLEGE
BONDING DAY: On Friday, April 8, the first year cohort finished off another successful term with a trip to Slish Wood. Our students spent a lovely morning on the hike and experienced four seasons in one day, with hail, rain, sleet and sun.
The group walked from Slish
Wood into the village of Dromahair for a well-earned treat. What a great way to finish up for the Easter break.
GIRLS ACTIVE FUN DAY: Girls active is a programme run by the Sligo Sport and Recreation Partnership (SSRP). It encourages girls who would not normally take part in sports to do so by doing fun sports and novel activities. Each year there is a fun day for all participants from all the participating schools. On Wednesday, April 27, there was a fun day and our students played tennis, learned a modern dance routine for a song and had cycling competitions as well as rugby lessons and gymnastics.
Their day was packed with these fun activities and everybody who attended participated fully and went home very tired, but happy. All activities allowed the students from all the schools to mix and socialise. A very special thank you to Kate Frahill for organising this event so successfully.
UKRAINIAN APPEAL: LCA students raised €200 for the local Ukrainian appeal. Having successfully organised a wonderful Easter egg raffle within the school community, they were pleased to donate the money to Ukrainians in the local
area at Cregg House so as to support our newly welcomed friends. There was great excitement on the day of the raffle, with lots of happy students winning fabulous prizes. Well done LCA’s! PHOENIX PARK ECOLOGY STUDY:
Students from fifth and sixth year biology classes, accompanied by Ms Woolley and Ms Walsh, travelled to Phoenix Park, Dublin, to complete an ecology study of a grassland. This was followed by a trip to nearby Dublin zoo. Well done to all the students on their hard work and engagement, the day was well deserved and enjoyed by all. A special thanks to Scott and the staff at Dublin zoo for providing an excellent educational experience. Of course, a trip to Dublin would not be complete without a stop at Liffey Valley Shopping Centre.
EXAM SEASON: Our LCVP and LCA students are busy studying at the minute. Examinations are underway for the Leaving Certificate Engineering Practical component, interviews for Leaving Certificate Applied Vocational Preparation and Guidance and ICT Specialism. Junior Cycle students have completed their practical cookery assessments for home economics.
SUMMERHILL COLLEGE
POPE JOHN PAUL II AWARD:
Congratulations to our Pope John Paul II award recipients who were celebrated at our award ceremony recently in our college chapel. They were joined by our college patron Bishop Kevin Doran. This was a wonderful celebration of a tenacious and committed group of young men. BEBRAS COMPUTER CHALLENGE:
Summerhill students Tom Murphy, Diarmait Fennelly and Andrew Connell competed in the national finals of the Bebras Computer Problem Solving Challenge on Thursda, March 24. The aim of Bebras is to get students all over the world excited about computing by giving them interactive logic tasks to complete online. SUMMERHILL FAMILY FORTUNES:
On Tuesday, March 15, Summerhill College hosted a fundraising event, Team Teachers vs Team Students as we played our version of Family Fortunes. Our TY students were surveyed and the top answers were used on the day. The show was a huge success and, this year, the
students were victorious with a massive score of 678 points to the teacher’s measly 112 points. There was a non-uniform day for this event and we raised €1,500 for local charities. Team Students played on behalf of The Samaritans and Team Teachers played on behalf of Parkinson’s Association of Ireland, North West Branch.
The event was streamed live on YouTube and was watched by students, parents and hundreds of people from all parts of the world. The host for the event once again was Peter Meehan from sixth year.
TY TREE PLANTING: The TY
Green Schools group, assisted by a number of other students, planted almost 100 trees in the school grounds with the support of Mr Whelan, TY co-ordinator and Martina Butler, Junior Sligo Tidy Towns co-ordinator, using trees supplied by Coillte as part of the easytrees.ie initiative.
This national initiative was set up with the aim of restoring one million trees to our environment with the help of Ireland’s one million school children and their communities by the end of the 2023-2024 planting season. Sligo Tidy Towns is supporting the initiative
by encouraging local students to ‘Plant a Forest for Sligo’ of 1,000 trees. Each set of trees that the schools grow in their own school grounds over the next couple of years will equate to growing an actual forest, full of biodiversity with its leaves acting as natural carbon dioxide removers. Through their participation in this initiative, the Transition Year students of Summerhill College have now become some of our local Climate Action heroes.
CANSAT: Congratulations to Summerhill’s CanSat team who qualified for the nationals in mid-March. Their project involves creating a satellite the size of a soft drink can and launching into the air in a miniature rocket to collect data such as the location and acceleration of the can, air humidity, light intensity, temperature and atmospheric pressure and then recovering the satellite with a parachute.
GAA: The Summerhill junior Gaelic football team beat St Jarlath’s College (Tuam) by 5-09 to 2-11 in the Connacht GAA Post Primary Schools Junior Football Championship on Wednesday, March 23. This was the juniors’ first