“Give it a try” whispered the heart!

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The Rugby Gathering, an animation from PCS Transition Year, is currently in use by the Dublin Airport Authority in their Arrivals area. Thanks to Katie Jones, Jessie Whelan, Alex Strains, Rachel Howard, Pablo Lizaran, Adrian Ujma and their teacher Ms. Tynan.

TY students also get a mention in the Malahide Gazette for their work on mental health (here p4). There is more information on this further down this posting.

Liam Harbison, the chief executive of Paralympics Ireland and Chef de Mission of the Irish team at the London 2012 Paralympics spoke to Sixth-year students recently. Liam is a past pupil and his presentation was very well received. He emphasised the importance of change and always trying! Thanks to the teachers and Fifth-year students for making this event a memorable one for the departing sixth-year students (Photo: Paralympics Ireland)

The school will close at 12.05 on Monday 20th May to facilitate the Sixth-year Graduation ceremony which takes place at 2.00PM. 1st, 2nd. and 5th year Summer exam-timetable (here). Details of the Openet competition are in the previous posting below.

Over 200 people attended our annual Sports Awards recently. Past-pupil, Neil Doyle, presented the awards and spoke fondly of his school days and delivered inspiring words encouraging students to do great things with their lives. Mr. O’ Cearra presided over the ceremonies – thanks to all the teachers, parents, students and past-pupils who make so many sporting activities possible in PCS. It is intended to upload a comprehensive set of photos from the night shortly.

Congratulations to Ultan Ó’  Móráin who was runner up in the Best Project Award at SciFest recently. Ultan was demonstrating his proprietary algorithm to estimate real time wave height from video imagery for use in the surfing industry. This idea is behind Surfwatch, the award-winning Transition-year mini-company.

Congratulations also to Katie Jones who won a Tablet Computer at her T.Y. graduation from St. Patrick’s University Hospital. She is responsible for the tagline: We all suffer with mental health, some more then others, but if we all work together we can change stigma. Katie graduated with Ashling Whelan. They both presented the slides below to their peers in Transition Year.

 

Christine Campbell has been running Anyone 4 Science summer-camps in PCS for a number of years. These are the 2013 details: Science camp for MicroScientists – (10 – 12 year olds), Nano Scientists – (7 -9 year olds) and Pico Scientists ( 4 – 6 year olds).

These camps are packed with fun hands-on science, engineering and maths activities with age appropriate experiments covering botany, food science, plastics and energy awareness, pulleys and levers and much more. So if you want to know how to make a mechanism to lift an adult, how to make plastic, how strong jelly sweets are and even test sweets and fizzy drinks to see if there are differences between different brands this is the camp for you.

Camp dates – July 1 – 5 and July 29 – Aug 2.
Camp times 10 – 2pm each day Monday to Friday
Camp cost  - €140
Ask for our €10 early booking discount which is available on all camps booked and paid for by May 31. Christine Campbell 0404-40563 / 087-6749608 christine@anyone4science.com

 

Variety show, the R.N.L.I and Legal-studies and more!

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1st, 2nd. and 5th year Summer exam-timetable (here).

Transition Year: As announced at Assembly we have received the offer of three summer work-placements from the Technology Company, Openet. The places will be awarded by competition. You will pitch a case-study of a ICT type project you have developed: it could be coding, it could be web-design – whatever. You can build on an existing project or start a new one – you must show evidence of how the project developed and what you learned during the process of completing it. Judging of entries will take place Thursday 30th May. You must be available for work on the two weeks beginning Monday 24th June and Monday 1st July. Please indicate your interest by emailing portmarnocktyATgmail.com with the word competition in the subject line and your name and class only in the body of the email.

Athletics: Kate Hawkshaw writes…Our trip to North Leinster Athletic Competition held in Santry was a huge success! School spirit was high on the day, with a great turnout from the students, ranging from first years to fifth years. North Leinster was split over two days this year, and we achieved medals on both days. Every athlete put in a huge effort, and we took part in multiple events, and had two very full days. Our impressive tally of medals included 4 gold, 6 silver, and 6 bronze, with very impressive individual and team performances. We would like to thank Ms.O’Neill, and Mr. Ferrick for all their hard work put in to make the days such successful outings.

Night School Autumn 2103 – classes are here.

Ms. Deeney, Acting-Principal, writes …Thanks to everyone who helped out at yesterday’s fundraiser féte in the PE Hall for Action Ireland, Lesotho  – especially to Ms O’Toole, Mr FitzGerald and Ms Maguire – and again at last night’s Variety Show. It was a wonderful celebration of our students’ musical talents with a fantastic audience of students, parents and past pupils. A huge thank you to Ms McGlynn, Mr Maynes and
to Ms O’ Driscoll, the overall coordinator of the show, with her excellent group of TY students. Thanks to Ms O’Toole, Ms Morrissey and Ms Sweeney for their help last night also. We will publish the final amount raised on the website soon. (All photos: Mr. Fitzgerald)

Pauline McGann from the Royal National Lifeboat Institution contacted the school to commend Transition Year students for their support of their annual collection. Pauline wrote of the students…”They were fantastic and we are very grateful to …them… for helping with our Mayday campaign. We have not totaled up the amount of money that they collected but as soon as I have the figures I will send it on…” The RNLI generously allow TY students to visit their station at Howth over five Wednesday mornings during the school year. (Photo Credit :R.N.L.I.)

The U.C.D School of Law recently congratulated one of our past-pupils, Joe Holt,  who “...was a winner in the final of the English version of the International Criminal Court Trial Competition…” Joe (third from right) is doing postgraduate legal studies at University in Leiden, Holland. (Photo Credit: UCD News).

Coincidentally, the UCD School of Law tweeted about another successful legal career last weekend. Caoilfhionn Gallagher, a past-pupil from the late 1990′s.