A Tour in Town

This week the Transition Years were taken into Dublin City Centre for a W.B. Yeats themed trip.

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  We had 3 places to visit over the course of the trip: The National Library, The National Gallery and The National Museum of Ireland.
  First, my group and I went to the National Gallery. We were taken on a short tour of some of the exhibitions, such as the section on the artwork of the Irish artist Jack Yeats, and 20th Century art in Europe. Some of the artwork was very thought provoking and intriguing, even to someone without a shred of artistic talent such as myself!!
  Next we went to the National Museum of Ireland. We were shown two exhibitions; the Iron Age exhibition and the Bog Bodies.

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  In the Iron Age exhibition there were many pieces of gold and ironwork, like coins, torcs and tools. This gave a great insight into the lives and lifestyles of people at this time, even though I had already know quite a bit about this period.

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  Following this, we were taken to see the Bog Bodies. These are a series of bodies that were preserved shockingly well in the bogs of Ireland, due to the chemicals and lack of air in the soil. It was quite amazing to see how accurately well the bodies were preserved - for example, we were able to see wrinkles and marks on the skin that would have been there when the person was still alive!! I found this exhibition quite remarkable.
  After spending an hour walking around Grafton Street and eating in McDonald's for lunch, we were all herded into a big group to be taken to the final stop - the National Library, to see the W.B. Yeats Exhibition.

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  At this exhibition, there were various artifacts and pieces on the life of the famous Irish poet and writer William Butler Yeats, and his family. The Yeats family had a huge influence on the arts in Ireland, for example, as I mentioned earlier, William's brother Jack was an important Irish painter.
  When we were finished learning about W.B. Yeats, we all headed back to the bus, tired but satisfied with the day out in Dublin!
  I hope we get to go into Dublin again soon!

The Hist

This weekend, along with my partner (and sister!), I competed in the Trinity College Senior School's Mace Debate, also known as 'The Hist'. Mace Debates are events which usually run over two days, a Friday evening and all day Saturday. Teams are given 15 minutes to prepare speeches on unknown motions and then compete against 3 other teams. Mace Debates usually have 4 or 5 rounds over a weekend.
   In our 4 rounds, we came 1st, 1st, 4th and 1st, debating motions like 'This House Would Boycott the Russian Winter Olympics', and 'This House Would Make Irish the Only State Language'.
  Juliette and I broke as the 3rd team into the semi-final, which we were delighted with as we are a relatively inexperienced team! We spoke proposing the motion 'This House Would Hold Parents of Bullies Criminally Responsible for their Children's Actions'. We unfortunately didn't make the final, but we were delighted with our performance and had a lot of fun over the weekend!
  One final surprise, was when the overall speaker tab was announced, I had come 3rd, which meant I had received the 3rd most speaker points over the whole weekend of competition! I was not expecting this at all, and it was a great way to finish off a great weekend!

  I would highly recommend debating and Mace debating to anyone who is considering giving it a try!

Snapchats and Science!

This week, as part of Science week, the Transition Year group in St Wolstan's went on a trip to the Institute of Technology Tallaght, to attend a talk on science.

  After getting a bus to Tallaght, and singing a few songs on the bus to keep everyone awake, we arrived at the college. We were ushered inside, and brought into one of the labs to receive an introduction. One of the biologists gave us a brief talk about the work done in IT Tallaght, and told us what each of the apparatus in the lab do.

  I found this really interesting, but as everyone began to move forwards, I heard some people calling for the teachers. I looked around, and Lauren had fainted! Luckily she was fine, and was back in school the next day.

  We then filed into one of the lecture theaters along with another 2 schools, to be given a talk by the Xtraordinary Science group. We were shown experiments and told about how amazing groundbreaking developments have been made in science over the years, and how this has affected people's everyday lives.

  I really enjoyed this talk, but afterwards we were all eager to go and get something to eat. We were brought to Liffey Valley shopping centre, with an hour to spend how we wished. A few of my friends and I headed to McDonald's to have lunch, and we went a little bit crazy by spamming lots of people with taking so many SnapChats!

I'll let you know about any more trips we go on over the year, so don't forget to check this blog for more updates!

Radio TY

This year, Mrs L decided to set up a TY media team. Around 30 students volunteered, and we were all really excited about the work that we would be doing! So, armed with dictaphones, an Audioboo account and Audacity editing software, the media team set out with the task of interviewing students, teachers and any speakers who come to the school.

Interviewing 6th years at Halloween

  So far we have interviewed students on dress-up days, production team members of our school musical, cast members of the school musical and many more!
  I am really enjoying being a part of the media team, and I'm looking forward to hopefully reaching our goal for the end of the year, of recording our own radio show!
  Check out the Radio TY blog here, follow @StWolstansTY on Twitter and search for 'St Wolstan's TY' on iTunes to download all our podcasts.

  I hope everyone had a good week, and I'll be updating soon! :)