Careers Fair in St. Columb’s College, Derry!

Some of the brochures received at the Careers Fair

Today Transition Year students got the chance to attend a careers fair in St. Columb’s College in Derry, accompanied by two teachers – Mrs Galbraith and Mrs Keogh. We got on the bus at a quarter to ten and headed for Derry. We arrived at the school at about twenty past ten, where we were lead to the door by a student, before being taken to a hall where many different companies, universities, colleges and IT’s had set up stands about their respective courses and careers on offer.

The stands in the hall ranged from Chemical Engineering at Queen’s University to an airplane design company! Many of the large educational institutions in Ireland and the UK had sent representatives. These included Trinity College Dublin, Dublin City University (DCU), NUI Galway, Sligo IT, Leterkenny Institute of Technology (LYIT), University of Ulster (Magee, Jordanstown & Coleraine Campuses), Queen’s University Belfast and Liverpool – John Moore University, among many many others!

We had also been given a timetable of different talks that were during three different periods throughout the day. The first talk that I attended, was a talk from Trinity College Dublin, which touched on the subjects which they offer, their entry requirementnts, examination and fees, as well as student life. 

I also went to a talk on medicine, and how you can peruse it as a career. A local Derry Doctor – Dr. O’Hagan, gave a very inspiring and insightful talk, where he talked about the challenges that he had faced when trying to peruse a career in medicine. I felt that this talk was very inspirational and his determination was admirable.

The third, and final talk that I attended was a talk on Modern Languages in Queen’s University Belfast. This talk and subject was right up my street and really appealed to me, as I would say  that two of my favourite subjects would have to be Irish and Spanish. I felt that this was a possible course that I may enroll in someday, as the course itself is to versatile and student friendly! I really liked that you could get the chance to either sit a joint honours course, in which you could study two languages – where I could study both Irish and Spanish, or sit a singe honours course where  you would study only one language –  where I could study Spahish or Irish. There is also an option to study for one year of your course  abroad. This talk has really appealed to me and I am seriously considering it as a possible course that I will study after my Leaving Certificate in 2018. 

I was extremely happy that I attended the careers fair today, as it had given me a great insight into what I may study before I even chose my subjects for my Leaving Cert –  a chance that I have only received as I am lucky enough to be in Transition Year!

  

“Las Fiestas Españolas” – The Spanish Holidays & Festivals – Spanish Presentation

Spanish Holidays & Festivals

On Thursday, 8th of October, I had to present my first ever project in my Spanish class. In this project I was working with Jack & Tomás, and our project was on the ‘Fiestas Españolas’ or the Spanish Holidays and Festivals.

In our class, we were split up into six groups of three people, where we had to work on a project based around the Spanish Culture and Lifestyle. The projects were based on various topics, like Spanish Food & Drink, The Spanish Political System, Famous Spanish People, Spanish Sports People, Spanish Holidays & Festivals and The Spanish Royal Family.

As mentioned before, my project was based on the Spanish Holidays & Festivals. This topic had really interested me, as I had slightly touched on these festivals before, while reading comprehensions when studying Junior Cert. Spanish, however the Junior Cert. Curriculum had covered festivals of both Spain and South American Spanish Speaking Nations.

My project was based on only Spanish Holidays and Festivals, and the two holidays  that I had looked at were ‘La Nochevieja’ or New Years Eve and ‘El Noche de San Juan’ or Bonfire Night. This was really interesting, as many of the Spanish customs were very unfamiliar to me. On New Years Eve in Spain at midnight, there is a custom where each person will eat 12 grapes – one for each chime of the clock. This custom originated when a group of vineyard owners from Alicante had grown too many grapes, and they had to come up with a way of getting  rid of them. During Bonfire Night in Spain, especially in the Catalan-Speaking areas of Spain -(Catalonia, Valencia & the Baleric Islands)  there is a custom known as ‘Fire Jumping’ by which people will jump on the extinguished bonfires or ‘Hogueras’ as a ritual to keep them free from illness for the rest of the year.

Some other festivals that were included in our presentation included ‘La Semana Santa’ or Easter Week, The Pamplona Bull Running Festival, La Tomatina Food Fighting Festival and The Festival of Las Fallas. This project was of gret interest to me as each it opened up various aspects of the Spanish Culture & Lifestyle, that I had never knew about before and had never learned about inside normal Spanish classes.

  

Receiving the iPads!

On Tuesday, 29th of September TY1 finally received the iPads. When we went to our last class of the day, where we were given the iPads. The class that we were in was Media Studies. In this class we have been getting the chance to work and prepare this very blog. Over the past three weeks I had been writing blog posts on my laptop or on my WordPress App on my phone. These devices did help me to produce blogs, however with the iPad it is now a lot more accessible. With the WordPress App I can upload blogs quicker and hopefully a lot more frequently. The iPad will also give me the chance to capture moments of my Transition Year a lot easier. The camera can be used, under the instruction of a teacher, to take photos of projects and workshops etc.

The iPads are an essential part of the Transition Year Programme, assisting in everything from blogging, to research, to projects, to photo taking. Many subjects inside the TY programme rely heavily on the use of technology. For example, right now we have at least two projects that require the iPads for research and documentation. In Geography I am researching about Zambia, a country that Ireand gives aid to. In Spanish we are also researching about the different ‘Fiestas’ or Festivals in Spain.

So far the iPads are proving a success! Hopefully I will be able to get great use out of mines throughout the year!

  

European Day Of Languages Quiz! #coeEDL

European Day Of Languages

The European Day Of Languages has been held every 26th of September since 2001, and has been celebrated throughout schools of member countries of the Council Of Europe since! The initiative has been promoting the inclusion and diversification of various European languages, that have originated from various different language groups such as Celtic – (Gaeilge, Welsh, Scottish Gaelic, etc.) , Gernanic – (English, German, Swedish,etc) , Romantic -(Spanish, French, Italian, etc.) , among many others!
Across member states of the Council Of Europe, various activities to celebrate and revive the use of European languages have been set up.
In Crana College, we have also been celebrating European Day Of Languages, however we have had to celebrate the school events on Friday as the actual day falls on a Saturday this year. In Crana College, and in TY we study three European languages – Irish, Spanish and English, and we wanted to incorporate them into our language day celebrations!
In our Spanish class, along with the supervision of our teacher, we got the chance to organize a quiz for 1st year students, in honor of the event. I had to work in a group along with six other students – Sonia, Ciara, Jack, Thomas, Chloe and Ritik. We worked together,  and on Friday morning we went into a 1st year Business Studies class where we hosted the quiz. We split the class up into six groups of four students and quizzed them on four rounds of questions on numerous about Europe. I had the job of keeping track of the scores on a scoreboard. It was a very close game, and all of the teams ended up with really good scores! In the end it was Group Four, who won with 25 points!
Congratulations to all teams who had participated, and especially to Group Four who won the quiz!

European Day Of Languages Homepage; http://edl.ecml.at/

The Quiz Scoreboard; European Day Of Languages – Quiz Scoreboard