Rang 5/6 had the great pleasure on Wednesday afternoon of visiting St.Attracta’s Nursing Home in Charlestown as part of their Centenary Celebrations marking the Easter Rising.

Our students shared the story of how Ireland arrived at the point of rebellion in 1916 before the students shared their proclamation for a new generation with all gathered. This was followed by a playing and singing of our National Anthem and some musical pieces we prepared with Ms.Doherty, a lovely end to a special afternoon.

Sincere thanks to Tríona, the staff and residents at St.Attracta’s Nursing Home for their very warm welcome. Thank you also to Ms Doherty for all her help and to all our parents who helped with our visit. As always it was much appreciated.

Our week concluded at the fantastic Enterprise Town celebration this evening at the CBD Complex. This gave the wonderful Charlestown Community and its businesses the opportunity to showcase all that is good through the town and its hinterlands.

It also saw Ms.Henry’s Fourth Class receive their certificates for their Bizworld project (https://stattractasns.iefourth-class-enjoy-bizworld-workshops/) from Mickey Harte Tyrone GAA Manager and Keith Higgins.

We also had the great pleasure of enjoying Mickey Harte’s address to all assembled. An inspirational and encouraging speech which resonated with young and old alike. We are very grateful to Mr Gerard Scully Manager of Bank of ireland Charlestown who presented Ms.Henry with iPads in recognition of our participation and who also organised the Bizworld programme for us.

This was a special community evening which we were delighted to be part of. Finally well done all the local businesses and to everyone who supported this wonderful evening.

On Wednesday evening last 6th Class were delighted to attend the launch of ‘Clean Up Mayo Day’ at St.Joseph’s Community College in Charlestown.

As part of National Spring Clean/Mayo Day on April 30th we all will be encouraged to support voluntary litter clean up’s throughout the county.

Charlestown Foróige Group hosted this launch in recognition of their tremendous commitment to litter action and their great successes in recent times in ensuring that Charlestown is litter free. Also in attendance on this afternoon was Sharon Cameron Environmental Awareness Officer of Mayo County Council, Councillor Gerry Murray and Sarah McGovern National Spring Clean Ambassador.

Well done to all the Foróige club members and leaders on their wonderful achievements. We really enjoyed our afternoon!

Fourth Class were very lucky to be given the opportunity to take part in an initiative called BizWorld Ireland which is operated by Bank of Ireland. BizWorld is a not for profit organisation promoting entrepreneurial skills, while teaching key workforce and life skills such as creativity, collaboration, communication, teamwork and negotiation along with money management and enterprise in a fun and creative way.

This was a two day workshop delivered by Rebecca a trained BOI volunteer. The children were put into teams of 5/6 and had to learn and undertake tasks involved in setting up a business. They learned about the terminology of business, applying for a job in their companies and held company meetings to discuss the idea, name, logo and slogan of their company. When the groups came up with a company name and a product idea, they then had to do some market research. They came up with a poster, a TV advertisement dramatised by their company and a presentation to sell their product.

Today, day two of the workshop, the companies had to pitch their ideas to the Dragons, Keith Higgins and Gerard Scully. The Dragons, through negotiations, then bought shares in the companies and a certificate of shares was presented to the Dragon for Bizbucks (The currency used for the task). In the afternoon, the children then launched their companies and 3rd class came to look at their posters, TV ads and listened to their PowerPoint presentation. 3rd class were given 20 Bizbucks each to spend on the merchandise that each company had made to make revenue for their company idea. There was great merchandise to choose from: cookies, buns, snack packs, loam bands and friendship bracelets. It was a huge success and the children really enjoyed the experience and learned so much from it.

To top the day off Keith Higgins (Mayo footballer and Bank of ireland representative) kindly signed jerseys and had pictures taken with the students.

Keith also took time to visit all our classrooms where he again signed jerseys and answered the children’s many questions. We really appreciate his time, patience and interest in each of our students. It was a pleasure to welcome Keith to our school.

Finally we would like to thank Gerard Scully, the Branch Manager in Bank of Ireland Charlestown who organised this wonderful experience for us all.

A special word of thanks to all who helped us in so many ways of late particularly with our St.Patrick’s Day Parade entry based on the theme of the 1916 Centenary – Céad bliain ag fás ( One hundred years of growth of the state) and our Easter Sunday Bake Sale. Both were a great success and fun to be part of.

Thank you to all our Parents/Guardian’s and students who supported our parade entry in great numbers. Also a very special thank you to all who went to great trouble baking, helping with and to those who supported the wonderful Parent’s Association Bake Sale fundraiser. This was all very much appreciated.

Finally a huge thank you to our Parent’s Association for their fantastic work behind the scenes. We are so grateful for their continued hard work, effort and time invested on our behalf.
Míle buíochas!

As you are probably aware our school has been involved with Junior Entrepreneur Programme for the last 3 years. The Junior Entrepreneur Programme or JEP as it’s known, was created to allow primary school pupils in Ireland the opportunity to embrace entrepreneurship as part of their formative education. Children use their creativity to come up with individual business ideas, they come together as a class to choose one idea and then work to turn this idea into reality.

The path to entrepreneurial experience leads from:
• learning what it is to be an entrepreneur
• identifying the characteristics needed to be an entrepreneur
• researching key business terms such as market research, identifying gaps in the market, product or service development, sourcing suppliers, marketing, advertising, budgeting, managing and business expansion
• dealing with problems that may arise in company development
• delegating responsibilities within a team
• working effectively as a team
• enjoying the rewards of the experience!

In order to facilitate this journey, we have been lucky to have many exciting opportunities this year.

We have worked extensively in the classroom on learning about entrepreneurs, market research, company structure and business development.

Prior to our Easter break, we were delighted to welcome a local entrepreneur to our class to speak to us about the advantages and disadvantages of setting up a business. Mary Murphy, owner of Gymboree Mayo gave us great insight into her business journey. She has set up two businesses over the past few years and was very informative and enthusiastic in her delivery to the class.

Mary returned to participate in the Dragons Den activity, designed to choose the final business idea for the class to work on in the coming weeks. She was joined by Fr. Johnson, Mrs McDonagh and Ms. Heverin. The standard of business ideas, research and presentation skills of the students was reported by all of the “Dragons” as commendable. They found it very difficult to decide on an eventual winning team due to the potential of all of the children’s ideas.

We are so grateful to Mary for giving so willingly of her time and experience to help the children in their JEP preparation. We also thank Fr. Johnson for participating in this thrilling day with the students.

Finally please keep an eye out for our students who will launch their exciting projecr in the coming week!

On the 4th of March last, we celebrated World Book day by dressing up as a character from a book and doing some nice activities in class such as design an alternative book cover for a favourite book, some extra DEAR time, acting out a part from our favourite story or Teacher read aloud.

4th Class did something a little different prior to our Easter break and held a Readathon which lasted for two weeks. The idea of the Readathon was to encourage reading and to develop and promote it as a hobby in a fun way. Reading is something that must be encouraged and experienced by all children. It opens their minds to the world of adventure and action. It improves children’s literacy in all areas but in particular vocabulary, creative writing and reading fluency and is a wonderful hobby which can be taken around the world.

“The more that you read, the more things you will know. The more that you learn, the more places you’ll go.”
– Dr. Seuss

For the Readathon all students were to read as many books as they could that were appropriate to their reading level. There was great excitement and eagerness to read during the two weeks as the class library had been stocked with some lovely new books. All children took part and everyone made a wonderful effort to read as many books as they could. Ms. Henry was particularly proud of the children who find it hard to settle into reading a book or those who find reading difficult in general.
In total 130 books were read in the two weeks by the children in 4th class which is a fantastic achievement. Kate O’ Donahue came 1st place having read 23 books. In second place was Jessica Casey who read 16 books and in 3rd place was Gavin Honeyman who read 9 books. There were 3 prizes for best effort and they went to Emma Murphy, Adam Shryane and Klaudia Nowak. The lucky winners of the Readathon got Book vouchers and an Easter egg. It was a great success and the children should be very proud of themselves.

“Reading is to the mind what exercise is to the body” – Joseph Addison

The Charlestown Coderdojo club is starting up again on Saturday April 16th in St.Attracta’s N.S. ( 10 a.m. to 12 noon.)

We would like to remind parents that you MUST stay for the duration of the session if your child is under 10 years of age or has no experience using computers.

To find out more detailed information on the club please read our introduction for parents here: Codordojo Charlestown

To book your ticket please register and book using Eventbrite at the following location: http://bit.ly/ctowndojotix

What an honour it was for us all to be part of the ‘Proclamation Day 2016’ commemorating and remembering the events of Easter one hundred years before. This really was a once in a generation occasion for our school community; pupils, parents and teachers- where we all felt we were part of history.

This event was one of the major highlights of the Ireland 2016 Centenary Programme and followed the ‘Flags for Schools’ initiative which we all very much enjoyed earlier in our school year.

Our ceremony began with a special reading of the 1916 Proclamation before we read our school’s own Proclamation for a new generation. Our Senior students had worked very hard in the previous weeks exploring what they felt should be included in their vision for Ireland and can be very proud of the fruits of their labour.

We then played and sang ‘Amhrán na bhFiann’ before our tricolour was raised by Fr.Johnston, all to the moving sounds of Ms.Connaghan and her brother Kieran playing the pipes.

We really appreciate and thank all who helped with today’s ceremony. Míle buíochas to Fr.Johnston for his lovely words to all assembled, Ms.Connaghan and her brother Kieran who added so much to this special event, Ms.Henry for all her hard work behind the scenes and to all our Parents/Guardians who came to support us. We really appreciated your presence in such great numbers.

Finally thank you to all the boys and girls in our school. You each entered into the Centenary Programme’s events with great respect, interest and enthusiasm. This was a fitting tribute to our ancestors and those who have gone before and made Ireland the country it is today.