CARNAUN NATIONAL SCHOOL 

Carnaun National School, Athenry, County Galway, Ireland. 
Phone 091 844668  
E-mail carnaun.ias@eircom.net 
Facts:  3 Teachers: Mr. Finbarr O'Regan, Mrs. Anita Coffey, Ms. Mary Murray and 50 Pupils 

Our Little Rural School is surrounded by small fields with stone wall boundaries in which cattle, sheep and horses graze. Many of the children live on farms. The countryside is dotted with small patches of woodland and long wild hedgerows of whitethorn and blackthorn, which are used as stockproof fencing on the farms.  
There are circa 50 pupils in the school and Teachers: Finbarr, Anita and Mary, Carmel who is a Resource Teacher for Special Needs, a shared Learning Support teacher Ita, Secretary Vera, and Special Needs Assistant Bridie. 
We have about 3 acres of school grounds in which we have a playing area, wildlife areas, flower and vegetable gardens all sown by the pupils.  
We do much of our schoolwork through projects and include most of the school subjects in them. Our main project for the past few years was on Environmental Awareness. For this we have won many prizes and were awarded the European Green Flag last year. We are the first primary school in Ireland to achieve organic status for our grounds and gardens. See "Carnaun School gets National Award"   Check out our "Carnaun School Organic Diary" in Organic Matters. In October 2006 our Environmental Awareness project was presented at Terre Madre in Italy. 
Information and Communication Technology is extremely important to us especially for our international projects and this year we were awarded  "The Digital Schools Award",  a new initiative that recognises excellence in a school's approach to the integration of ICT in learning and teaching. On 26.10.2006 Ms. Mary Hanafin, Minister for Education and Science, visited Carnaun National School to present us with the Digital Schools Award.
One of our first international projects was a lovely project on Butterflies with our friends in Glade Creek School, North Carolina,USA. We enjoyed this very much. “Irish emigration to America” was the name of another one also done with Glade Creek School. We have lots of friends in Wisconsin also. The Lambert Symposium was another flagship project and our book "The Lamberts of Athenry" was a huge success. 
Check out the the Projects page for a report on the many innovative and exciting projects we have been involved in during the past few years. Our first European Commenius Project "I Eat, therefore I am" 2001 - 2004  was one of only four projects out of a possible 30.000 presented in Brussels ar the launch of Netd@ys Europe in 2001 and was also featured at the final launch of Netd@ys Ireland in Dublin in 2005. There has been over 700,000 visitors to the project website since it started! 
We also featured in The Comenius and Technology Project - CAT an international ICT project run by Léargas. Our latest Comenius project "Growing up in a New Europe" is well worth a visit! 
Our Latest Comenius Project is called "Growing up in a New Europe" and some of the work done can be seen on our Projects page also. We are also working on "The Mythology of the Athenry Area" and hope to publish this in book form later! 
We get many visitors to the site and love to hear from people. Email - carnaun.ias@eircom.net 
We also have many visitors to the school and are delighted to bring them on a guided tour of our School Heritage Trail. We are often featured on TV and in the newspapers and have won many awards for our work. Check out "News2day" on RTE2.We are also very proud of our record in the Arts. Check out "Overall Winner AIB Galway County Arts Awards".and "New Sculpture for Athenry" 
 
Many foreign students come to the school and we have friends who communicate with us in France, Germany and Luxembourg, Belgium, Sweden, Finland, Italy, Wales, Greece, Malta, Romania, Czech Republic, Bulgaria, Slovenia, Latvia and Great Britain, North Carolina, Texas, California and Wisconsin USA, New Zealand, Tonga, Australia, Siberia and South Africa. 
For those who are searching for their friends we have maps of County Galway on our site and for those looking for their roots check out the History of Atheny pages. For the latest on the site click Newupdates 
We work hard in our school. All pupils in the senior room are project leaders at some time. 

The children have a "knowledge" of the history articles as they form part of their school programme in local history.

ÉIRE