ST. COLMCILLE’S COMMUNITY SCHOOL NEWS

The L.C.A. Art Exhibition
On the 16th of December 2004 the class of 5L prepared and displayed an art exhibition for all their teachers and parents in the school. This exhibition is the first task that the class has completed as part of their Leaving Certificate Applied Programme.

In preparation for this task the group went to the Hell Fire Club accompanied by Ms Walsh and Ms Loughman, and took pictures of the area. In art class each student painted an individual picture for the art exhibition. They also did research in the library about the Hell Fire Club and its surrounding areas.

As part of the task students must prepare the food for the guests invited to the art exhibition. The students prepared and served chocolate Yule logs, mince pies, flans, tea and coffee and mulled wine. Every student had an individual task to do on the night such as cameraman, serving the food, music, frames for the pictures, host, etc.

After spending all day setting up the conference room, guests began to arrive at 7.30 p.m. where they were welcomed by Ciaran Murphy. After Ciaran opened the exhibition parents, teachers, family and friends were then given time to view all the paintings and talk to the students involved. Ms Gilmer, the group's tutor, said a few words about all the hard work that went into this task and the evening was brought to an end. "It was a wonderful experience to host something in our school and we would like to thank all our teachers for all their work and especially Ms Gilmer for being so supportive."
- Mark Leavy, 5L

Extra Curricular News
U-16 Gaelic Football: The U-16 footballers produced a remarkable comeback in their last league match to win by the narrowest of margins. The team beat St. Marks, Rathcoole, during the early stages of the league and are now awaiting the quarter-final. Brian Duffy, Paul Coghlan, Eoin O'Reilly, Gerry "The Legend" Lynch and David Kennedy have all performed heroically.

Girls U-16 and first year Gaelic Football: Both teams are training hard for the coming season. The league matches will commence this term.

Camogie: The junior camogie team reached the league semi-final but unfortunately was beaten. The team performed very well all season topping their group Lisa Watson produced excellent performing. Both the senior and junior teams are anxiously awaiting the Championship this term.

Volleyball: The junior Leinster league will commence in January 2005. The school currently has two female cadette teams participating. Good luck to them.

Table Tennis: Congratulations to the girls U-13 Table Tennis who won their match against Our Lady's Grove, Goatstown 6-0. There will be more matches this term for both the U-13 boys and girls teams. Team training takes place on Thursdays.

Badminton: We have entered a Boys and Girls under 14 Badminton team into this year's Dublin Championship. The team are training very hard every Thursday and matches begin in January. Here's to another successful year in the Dublin finals.

Weather Station: Readings are still been recorded and sent to Met Eireann from our school rain gauge.

Transition Year
The second term began with highlights including a film workshop for each group, a trip to Smithfield on Ice and the Morning Crib, the end of term Mass and the Mini Company market days. This month 4W will be doing a two day workshop in Glencree Peace and Reconciliation Centre and the whole TY group will visit Delphi Adventure Centre. This was one of last year's highlights so we are all looking forward to another great trip. Since the New Year Ms Gilroy has organised a group of TV's to work with the 6th Classes in St. Colmcille's in completing a 5 week 'Faith Friends' programme in preparation for their Confirmation. There are also presentations organised from 'Aware' and the Garda Traffic Unit.

Debating
On the week of December 13th the St. Colmcille's debating team prepared for another challenging debate. There was a little last minute tension when a change of date involved a team reshuffle. Luckily, one of our 3rd Years, Fiona Byrne, and 6th Year

Garvin McEvoy, stepped in and with Colum Walsh and Liam Devine they set off to Rosemount College to debate the motion "The West are failing to take the AIDS pandemic seriously".
The team succeeded again in presenting a strong enthusiastic speech to the crowd. The Rosemount girls were a difficult opponent. Each side had distinct compelling arguments and the schools were neck and neck for the night. But the lunchtime practices and hard work with Ms Burke paid off and St. Colmcille's defeated the motion. Well done to all the students involved.
- Cassie Delaney, 3K and Ciaran Boyle, 3K

TY Fundraising
Every year at Christmas hampers are collected by the St. Vincent de Paul. Each tutor class was given a list of foods to bring in. The hampers turned out to be a great success and the St. Vincent de Paul was very happy with our donation. Thank you to all who supported the initiative.

On the 20th and 21st of December the Transition Year Fundraising Committee went into town to help raise money for the ISPCC. The organisation helps children. For hours the students stood in the freezing cold selling badges and collecting as much money as possible. We succeeded, as in just the first 2 hours of selling badges we broke the record and collected €1,500. After two days we had collected €2,332 for the ISPCC.

The Tsunami tragedy has raised concern and the students and teachers are willing to help in raising money for the Tsunami appeal. As this is a very worthy cause we expect everyone to contribute. In order to do this we have organised all the classes to run afternoon events in order to raise as much money as possible. This has already begun as a number of events have taken place. We hope to have all the money collected in 2 weeks.

For the first time in our school, Christmas cards were designed. The idea of the cards was to raise money for the St. Vincent de Paul. It was a great success and the cards raised a lot of money. A big thank you to Mr. Tony Fleming who donated the paper and envelopes.