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Mission Statement
Our mission in Transition Year is to give our students an opportunity to develop personally and socially so as to enhance and further develop their potential to achieve academically and to enable them to approach life and work as responsible, independent, considerate and content members of society.
Activities
Transition Year is a one-year programme between the end of the Junior Certificate and the beginning of the Leaving Certificate programme. Students get the chance to engage in a wide variety of interesting activities so as to develop their personal, social and research skills. While students still engage in 'traditional' class-based subjects like English, Irish, French, History etc, they often approach the material in an exciting new way. In the case of English, for example, students are encouraged to develop their writing skills through entering schools' competitions in letter writing. Individuals from our Transition Year group have won Irish Times awards in letter writing for the past two years in a row, entitling them to spend their work experience in the stimulating atmosphere of that newspaper's newsroom.
Students complete project work during the year (for example, in Science and Home Economics), which encourages them to work on their own initiative and greatly improves their research skills. A good deal of this project work is assigned as homework.
Transition Year also has a series of modules (short study units) which concentrate on developing practical skills and providing certification in these skills at the end of the year. Modules include First Aid (click here for pictures) and Self-Defence (click here for pictures).
Transition Years also have the opportunity to prepare for adult and working life through work experience, and the help of local employers is greatly appreciated in making this part of the programme operate as smoothly as it does. Students keep a journal during their time on the job and have time to reflect on what they have learned back in class.
The Enterprise education (mini company) segment of Transition Year helps to bring out the entrepreneurs in the group as the students develop, produce and market their business ideas. Past entries have included Christmas Logs, decorated bottle lamps, stained glass pictures among many others. The work goes on to be judged in the Young Enterprise Awards competition in Tullamore.
The Transition Year group also gets the opportunity to stage the school musical. This year's dramatic offering was Our Day Out by Willie Russell (click here for pictures).
This year's Transition Year group are the first to be offered the opportunity to complete the ECDL (European Computer Driving Licence), an internationally recognised qualification in basic computer skills.
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