St. Colman’s College honoured the GCSE class of 2009 at a ceremony in the College on Wednesday, December 9th. This event was in recognition of the outstanding achievements of this year groups in their GCSE examinations.
Over 250 students and their parents at St Paul’s High School gave a warm reception to the special guests at the Annual Prizegiving Ceremony at St Paul’s High School last Monday.
Saint Colman’s College honoured the GCSE class of 2009 at a ceremony in the College on Wednesday, December 9th. This event was in recognition of the outstanding achievements of this year groups in their GCSE examinations.
A group of A level Business Studies students formed a mini enterprise company under the direction of Miss Bernie Farrell and organised the marketing and selling of Selection Boxes. The aim was to raise money for the Hospice and this boys did, raising a generous £130 which has been handed over to the Hospice.
Three of St Coleman's top young scientists, Barry Carragher, Darren Luckie and Ronan Barr went to the BT Young Scientist Competition being held in Dublin last week.
Under the direction of Mr Darragh Corvan and Mr Michael Mc Laughlin, the three Year 8 boys have put together an impressive display of their work using the College’s telescope and a web cam. The aim was to produce a guide that local schools can use to undertake similar projects.
The boys used a telescope that was donated to us by the Society for Popular Astronomy ‘SPA’ and a ‘Microsoft Live Cam VX-3000’ web camera. The Dundalk institute of Technology Astronomy Department were extremely impressed and gave a talk to the boys on astronomy.
The boys learned an awful lot about the competition and hope to go back next year and improve on this year’s performance.
On Friday 15th January, the Year 10 students of St Colman’s College became budding entrepreneurs and business tycoons. Organised by the Careers Dept in conjunction with Young Enterprise, students took part in the ‘Project Business’ programme designed specifically and tailored to give students a unique insight into the world of business. On the day they explored themes such a Business start up, Production, Finance, Marketing and Business growth through series fun interactive tasks.
Commenting on the day, Mr O’Hare (Head of Career Guidance) said, ‘the boys thoroughly enjoyed and engaged with the programme and were left with a very positive attitude to the world of business and business start up.’
Specialist School Connecting the Learning Collaborative Project for J1-“Healthy Lifestyles”
As part of our specialist school plan St Colman’s college have once again embarked on an exciting venture with all Year 8 students taking part in a collaborative learning project.
The project ran over 3 days with some prior preparation in class. We saw it as an opportunity for our pupils to participate in a fun and active project during the last week of term.
The theme of the project was “Healthy Lifestyles”. Each group took part in the following activities;
• Design and make a fresh fruit salad.
• Carry out physical activities to determine your heart rate during exercise.
• Create a role-play on the effects of poor health.
• Create a poster outlining scientific facts about different aspects of physical and spiritual health.
• Create a power point incorporating music suited to the theme and include images /facts on health and a photo of participation in the three activities.
There were many opportunities for connected learning with PE/HE in the designing and carrying out of physical/healthy eating activities, music in incorporating the health themes, English/literacy with research of dietary facts and figures etc and of course the use of ICT in creating power points, all with a scientific theme.
We did not make assessment a priority, however there were opportunities for the students to work on these skills throughout the project and teachers of the various subject strands made good use of the many opportunities for Assessment for learning throughout the course of the extended project. The awards ceremony was an ideal occasion to celebrate pupils’ efforts and initiative whilst promoting the importance of team work and self evaluation.
Pupils and teachers reviewed all of the completed tasks discussing effective aspects of their work and areas for future improvements In evaluating the project both pupils and teachers thoroughly enjoyed the three days with many of the boys commenting on how much fun they had and in particular they enjoyed the opportunity to work with and meet people outside of their normal class.
The teachers were very impressed with the skills and knowledge of the pupils and we in St Colman’s are looking forward to working on more exciting events in the future as part of our vision as a specialist school. Pictured is Fr Brown President of the College with the various prize winners from Year 8.
The annual Year 8 Christmas Card Competition at Newry High School. Each year NHS run a competition to produce four designs for the school Christmas card. This year the competition winner was Hannah Kennedy and the three runners up were Aine Mc Grath, Sophie Hempkin and Annabel Stewart. The designs were innovative and exciting and all money raised from the sale of the cards will be donated to Cancer Research. Local businesses have once again been majorly supportive in providing donations for the printing of the cards, we would like to express our appreciation of this.
Recently students from the National Diploma in Interactive Media (Multimedia) at Newry Campus, Southern Regional College had the opportunity to go to UTV, Belfast.
The visit organised by John McEvoy a tutor on the course, was inspirational and fun packed event for the students. The students had a tour of the building to see the Radio studios, Newsroom, Sound Department and Internet Department. Students were fascinated to see how the Greenscreen works for television and they had live demonstrations of Software such as Avid.
To add to the enjoyment of the experience Pamela Ballantine personally gave them a tour of all the departments. They also had an opportunity to see Frank Mitchell from an on-looking studio presenting on Live UTV Radio. Each student received UTV souvenirs and memorabilia to take away with them.
It was a fantastic educational experience for the students to see some real industrial practice within Northern Ireland. For further information on the BTEC National Diploma in Interactive Media at Newry Campus please contact Course Coordinator Jacqueline Toal toalj@src.ac.uk