Hello everyone
April has been a busy and beautiful month with plenty of sun shine and warm weather to keep our spirits high. The Drama club put on a fantastic performance of Appropriate Audience Behaviour, a play where the performers are the audience. The acting was mesmerising and hilarious and the “actual” audience were blown away by the talent. Many months of crochet work literally came together as students who had been working on individual patchwork squares started to put the gorgeous colourful sections together to create a magnificent blanket. Coding club continued their fun work and showcased their games by teaching staff members how to make their own characters and games in Scratch. Cooking club was ever popular with a special addition this month from one of our parents who showed us how to make incredible spring rolls. Students chose to plan their days and school activities through working on creating weekly schedules together with the help of staff and mentors. A group enjoyed an outing to the Hawkswell to watch a beautiful performance of Gepetto and girls football sessions began in earnest with expert coaching from two enthusiastic parent volunteers.
As always, there were plenty of fun and games at school with face painting, making mix tapes, designing album covers, hanging out, playing music and playing 4 square on our newly marked grid. Students created their own allotments within our polytunnel, choosing what to sow, plant out and making creative labels for their very own flower and veggie patches. Our thriving Drama club saw the completion of one play, continued rehearsals of two others; Othello, and the student scripted side story to our very popular Elsie and the Magical Land Series; and the beginning of a new comedy, High-Rise High Jinks. We look forward to these three performances at the end of the school year in June. Some of our students who are due to graduate this year have completed their graduate portfolios. These portfolios are a record of their achievements and their plans for the future, and can be used to showcase their strengths and provide evidence of their learning. Some students continued their studies and sat A level exams, others continued to make plans for further education and work placements. They are all working together on designing and making arrangements for their graduation ceremony. One of the major highlights for the whole community this month (year!) was the new trampoline. We are so grateful to the donors of this fantastic resource to our school. Students and staff came up with a list of agreements and built it together just in time for last week’s sunny weather.
The Microsoft Dreamspace coders held a staff coding clinic as part of their Dreamspace Ambassador Programme. The Junior and Senior coders taught staff basic coding skills using Scratch Junior where they could move “sprites”, animate characters, create music, and use block coding to create loops. The students and staff really enjoyed this clinic, especially as the students could share some of the knowledge they have acquired over the past few months. The Dreamspace Ambassadors will celebrate their graduation at Microsoft in Dublin on May 15th. We wish them all the best.
Our Summer Camp will run as usual during the first two weeks of July. We will announce registration and booking options soon. Save the Dates!
Drama group performed a very funny rendition of this hilarious play where roles are reversed and audience behaviour is abysmal, a comedic display of “humanity at its worst!” This time the performance was exclusively for students and their families but watch this space … these budding thespians will certainly take their talent further afield soon.
Read the complete April Newsletter here!