Orchestra in the National Concert Hall

Congratulations to all of the members of the orchestra and to its conductor, Ms M. White, on a magnificent, confident performance in the NCH on Saturday evening.
Their performances of Mendelssohn's "Hebrides Overture", a medley from Gershwin's "Porgy and Bess", and Dvorak's "Slavonic Dance" were assured and obviously very well rehearsed.
The orchestra was invited to appear in the NCH as part of the 14th Irish Aviation Authority Festival of Youth Orchestras. Eight orchestras from around the country performed. Well done also to James Harding, Gavin Rothwell and Mark Horgan who were interviewed on stage!

Swimming

The High School was represented at last weekend's Irish Senior Schools swimming championships by Niamh Murphy (Form 3) & Dayna Clegg (Form 2). Niamh was awarded a bronze medal in the Intermediate age 100m Breaststroke and Dayna achieved silver medal postion in an open age group 400m freestyle. Well done to both swimmers.

Top in Ireland!

Well done to Graham Field (right) who was placed first in Ireland in the Leaving Certificate Technical Drawing exam, 2008. Graham was taught by Mr C. Cryan.

Debating

The Senior Debating Team (below right) worked very hard once again this year in the Concern Debates. The team, consisting of Sadhbh  (Captain), Aoife , Guy , Nicole and Lorcan , had to do lots of research and each prepare a 4 minute 30 second speech for each of our 3 debates on three different motions. Unfortunately, we lost to St Paul's and The Institute of Education, 2 well known debating schools, but we did very well in our final debate and defeated the motion “the western media has a red-top attitude to the developing world” proposed by Holy Family Community School. We would like to thank Ms Hutchinson Edgar for organising it all and Stephen Shaw for chairing the debates.

Habitat for Humanity

Pictured below right are Hugh, Aoife,  Nicole, Simon and Lorcan who were bag packing recently to raise funds for the Habitat trip to build houses abroad during the Easter holidays, for families in need. Over €2,000 was raised on this occasion - well done!

Concern Fast -fantastic total!

Congratulations to everyone who took part in and supported the Concern Christmas Fast. A whopping €5,620.03 was raised.
Students of 3P (organisers)

SMS Text system

The school is currently finalising a bulk text system so that parents may be contacted during an emergency and about pupil absence. Texts will be sent to the mobiles of both parents, so parents will need to liaise with each other about who contacts the school office to explain pupil absence. You will not be able to reply to the texts. A text will be sent to you when the system is fully operational, probably in late February. This does not alter our request that you notify us on the first morning of a pupil's absence. The text will only be sent if we do not hear from you. The school will accept no responsibility for misdelivery.

Fixtures and training this week

Girls hockey
Min C (Q-F) Rathdown Tues 10 Home 11.00
Senior 3/4, Jun B St Columba's Wed 11 Away 2.00
Jun C, Min B St Columba's Wed 11 Away 3.00 1st Yr A St Columba's Wed 11 Home 3.00
1st Yr B St Columba's Wed 11 Home 2.00
Boys hockey
Senior St Andrew's Wed 11 St Andrew's 3.15
Junior (C 1/4 Final) Wesley Mon 23 Wesley 4.30

Pictures above were taken by Mr T. Gill during rehearsals as photography is not allowed during performances.

Snow days

Above picture taken by Mr R. Davies during the recent snow falls.