Sister Margaret Mary Ryder O.P.

Our Principal Sister Margaret Mary retires this year after many years of service in the school. We wish her every blessing and we are grateful for all she has done for us. She will be greatly missed by staff, parents and pupils. She deserves a rest. We congratulate our new Principal Mrs. McHenry and wish her all the best.

Green Flag Success

Our school has been awarded the Green Flag. We have worked hard to reduce waste in our school.

Interview with the Principal, Sr. Margaret Mary.

Where did you get the idea for the Green Flag?

The idea came from Miss Ashleen Cawley three years ago and was taken up by Miss Paula O’ Toole who really got the ball rolling.

What does the Green Flag mean?

It means that we are all making a great effort to recycle, reuse and reduce materials. We do this because we appreciate our beautiful universe.

Why do we need to reduce, reuse and recycle?

Our wonderful world is being destroyed by excessive waste being dumped and our land, sea and rivers being polluted by carelessness. Why is the Green Flag important?

Because we want a beautiful world for ourselves and the people coming after us.

By Daniel Flynn and Thelma Dunster from Second Class

Junior Infants

We are doing a lunch project. We don’t use tin foil or cling film, we use lunch boxes and flasks. Our lunches are green lunches. By Andrea and Josep

Junior and Senior Infant News

We have lunch boxes. We have beakers. Being good to the world makes us smile. We are trying very hard to bring a green lunch to school each day. First class We got bananas and apples and tinfoil and put them into the tub. The banana went down. The tinfoil did not. These are some plants and robins on our Nature Table. There are grape hyacinths, snowdrops, crocus and daffodils. I am with the plants. By Ciara

Second Class

We are trying to help the environment by putting our milk cartons in our lunch boxes, by putting paper in the recycling box and by taking out the black bag from the bin. We have green lunches. We are trying to save our environment by using the back of our worksheets and putting them in our recycling bin when both sides are used.

Senior Infants

Senior Infants are putting less rubbish in their buckets. They are reducing packaging.

Third Class

We are trying to get the green flag. We don’t put a black bag in our bin because we are trying to help our environment.

Sixth Class

Myself and Adam count the bins every week. We are trying to see if there are less black bags each week. By Josh.

Fifth class

We planted our hyacinth bulbs before Halloween. Each group planted two bulbs. They are now flowering and have helped to brighten up our classroom.

Compost Bin We do the compost bin every day. We bring food from our class. There isn’t any tinfoil or plastic bags allowed. Hopefully the compost will bread down into the ground. By Dwayne Tallant and Paul Flynn. Junior Infants

Compost Bin We do the compost bin every day. We bring food from our class. There isn’t any tinfoil or plastic bags allowed. Hopefully the compost will bread down into the ground. By Dwayne Tallant and Paul Flynn. Junior Infants

Junior Infants

We are doing a lunch project. We don’t use tin foil or cling film, we use lunch boxes and flasks. Our lunches are green lunches. By Andrea and Josep.

Happy Halloween 2003

Halloween is with us once again and the school is full of witches, zombies, vampires, devils, draculas and screams.

Welcome Back to School!

We extend a special warm welcome to all our new pupils and teachers. Ms Piondar sends her thanks to each and all for your generosity towards her on her retirement. She is enjoying a well deserved rest after nearly 30 years of exemplary service here in Dún Laoghaire.

We are most grateful also to Paul Kane, Louise's Dad, who spent his Saturdays throughout the summer in the school kitchen. The transformation needs to be seen to be believed! Thank you Paul. The funds for the new kitchen came from our Parents/Teachers who took part in the Mini Marathon this year and our " Hot Dog Day" and Raffle fundraisers.

We are also very grateful to Stephen Marsh, father of Claudia, Andrew and Thomas who often comes to the school under cover of darkness and spends hours updating, maintaining and, in general, keeping a watchful eye on our computers - it's all very technical and his generosity in sharing his expertise in this area with us is very much appreciated.

While we are all looking forward to a very happy, busy year it is nice to look back on our achievements of last year.

The Basket Ball Season

The basketball season started with practices every week. The first game was a blitz between Oliver Plunkett's , Glenageary, Loretto Dalkey and us. Our next match we played against Oliver Plunkett and we lost. After lots of practices we were getting better. We drew our next match against St Joseph's. A few weeks later we played against The Holy Family and we lost. Since we drew with St Joseph's they wanted a rematch, which we won .That was the last match of the season. We had lots of fun with our basketball teacher Miss Donnelly.

School Concert 2002

We had our school concert on 26th and 27th May. We are very proud to have Amie in our school. She is the Dublin Irish Dancing Champion. She danced a treble jig for us. It was fabulous.
Every class in the school Every class in the school performed also. The theme was visiting forign countries. They danced a folkdance from the country they visited. All the parens came to watch. They said it was a very enjoyable show.

Texaco Art Competition 2002

More than 50,000 school children from Ireland, north and South entered for this competition. We are very proud that Scot Cummins has received a Merit award in the 'under 6 years' category.This is his winning painting 'Spring Flowers'. It will be displayed along with the others at the Dublin Awards Ceremony and in the Autumn at the Ulster Museum in Belfast.

Family Quiz

Our Parent Association ran a family quiz in the school hall on Sunday 28th April. Many thanks to all the families who supported them. Congratulations to the Archer Family who were the winners. Well done!

Spring Show 2002

Third class were invited to exhibit their 'Caring for our Environment' project at the Spring Show in the town hall in April. They went along to see the show and were very interested in the other exhibits also.

Write a Book Merits 2002

Congratulations to Aoife O'Reilly, Sarah Dalton, Daniel Spillane, Michael Moran, Sarah Bergin, Sarah Tallant, Declan Fagan, Nils Sunderman, Leon Clack, Aoife Feeney, Carla Sunderman, and Daniel Flynn for receiving merit awards in the Write a Book Competition. Ms. Cassidy's class and Ms. O'Toole's class also received awards for their productions.

Artist-in-School Scheme 2002

Eleanor Dawson, flautist and Jane Barker, artist, have worked in the school since mid January on a "Space Travel" project. Children had the opportunity to acquaint themselves with music and culture from various countries. They worked on rhythms and made suitable instruments to represent the country of their choice. Some classes used clay to create aliens encountered on their journey through space. On Friday 19th April the children assembled in the hall to perform for each other. A carnival atmosphere prevailed as the children arrived decked out in costumes and colours from various lands. Deryn O'Brien the Assistant Arts Officer with Dun Laoghaire-Rathdown County Council was present to view the performance and was most impressed with the project. We are most grateful to Dun Laoghaire-Rathdown County Council for funding this scheme.

Third Class Winners.

Third class entered their Environmental Studies Project 'Caring for our Environment' in the Dun Laoghaire Rathdown County Council Environmental Art Competition. They won joint first prize with Loreto Junior School, Foxrock. Well done everyone and in particular, congratulations to their teacher Mrs. Brophy.

Confirmation 2002

Congratulations to all our Sixth Class pupils who were confirmed by Bishop Drennan in St. Michael's Church on the 1st March.

Young Scientist Exhibition 2002

Congratulations to Third Class who displayed their lego models in the R.D.S. once again this year. Their theme was 'Caring for Our Environment'. They constructed a town with a cinema, rubbish bins, robots, dogs and lots more. There was great interest in their work. We had some very positive feedback from teachers and parents who were interested in starting this type of construstionist learning in their own schools.
Special thanks to the parents who came to help Mrs. Brophy in the R.D.S.

Credit Union School Quiz 2002

Stage 1

Three Schools took part in the quiz this year - Harold's N.S. Glasthule, St. Joseph's N.S. Tivoli Road and Dominican Convent N.S. The competition was held in our school hall.

Congratulations to all our participants who were excellent. Our Junior Team got First Prize in their Quiz. Members of the team were: Amie Dunstar, Laura Heffernan, Thomas Moloney and Nils Sundermann. One of our Senior teams came Second in their Quiz - the members of the team being: Sam Comerford,Carla Sundermann, Michael Twamley and Darragh Whelan.

Well done all!

We all enjoyed the visit of Billy Teare to the school. He told some wonderful stories and showed us some magical tricks. He really brightened up an otherwise dull Monday. Thank you Billy.

We had a great time in December 2001. We went to Quest 2 at the Pavilion. It was a great show. Santa arrived on the 19th with letters and sweets for the junior classes. We finished term with a lovely carol service on December 21st. Father Mangan and Mrs. Frain were there. Ms. Keating's class did a Nativity Play.

Visitors from Japan

Sister Margaret Mary was delighted to welcome a group of teachers from Japan to the school. They were visiting Ireland to study our system of education. They loved our school, its teachers and the children. They were particularly interested in our S.I.P. Project "Empowering Minds" This project has established a partnership among St. Patrick's College of Education, NCTE, the Media Lab at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) and selected Irish Primary Schools. The aim of the project is to encourage children and teachers to develop technological fluency and by project-based learning to bring ideas of design, control, sensing and programming to children. It also aims to use technology as an integrating agent within the school, connecting these new ideas with the revised curriculum content. We hope to display our work again this year at the Young Scientist exhibition in the RDS after Christmas.

On Friday 26th October there were some very strange visitors to the school. A very nice witch arrived to teach Junior Infants and to protect them from a not so nice one who was lurking outside the door.

This witch was lurking outside the door!

The witch brought some very strange creatures with her. One was trying to get some apple out of a basin of water!

Upstairs there were gypsies and skeletons and dollies and an Arabian Princess.

The Parents' Association made hot dogs and everyone had great fun.

ART COMPETITION
On Tuesday the 6th of November 2001. Margaret, a representative from Dun Laoghaire Rathdown County Council came to our school to present the prizes for the art competition "Sunday in the Harbour". She said that we were the best school in Dun Laoghaire for sending in entries and that our pictures were also the best.

This is William Manahan's picture. He won 1st place in the competition for 10 to 12 year olds.

Aoife Feeney won 2nd prize in the same competition.
Megan Johnston and Ahmad Alhayek also won prizes. They came 1st and 2nd in the 8 to 10 year old category.

This is Megan's picture.




By Aoife Feeney.

BASKETBALL

Ms. Donnelly is the basketball teacher in our school. Anyone who wants to play stays back after school on Tuesdays or Wednesdays.
We won our first match against Glasthule. Our match against Dalkey was cancelled. We have to play ten more matches this season.

It is nice to play basketball with your friends.
By Jake Merriman

NOVEMBER

November is the month of the Holy Souls. Every day after big break we have to say a payer to remember people who have passed away. I think about Sister Ursula. Nobody in my family close to me has died yet, thank God. Hazel collects money to have masses said for the Holy Souls. April is my favorite month of the year.

By Aaron Waddington

IRELAND v. IRAN

Yesterday in our class we were watching a football match. It is Ireland v Iran in Tehran. We hoped Ireland would win. Ireland isn't playing very well at the moment. Iran is playing better. When they played in Dublin last month Ireland won two nil. So if Iran won two nil it would go into extra time. If no one scores in extra time it would go into penalties.
The match was not very good. But Ireland managed to hold Iran to nil all until the last minute when Iran scored a goal from a corner. Iran won one nil but Ireland still qualified for the World Cup.

Federico and Aaron.

Congratulations to Our Lady of Lourdes School in Bunclody on their 'Pride in Our Land' project. Ciara Austin of 5th class wrote a verse for Dublin and it can be read on their site.

The Revised Primary School Curriculum

This year we will be implementing further sections of the Revised Primary School Curriculum. The curriculum aims to develop skills and competences that are appropriate for children in the new millennium.