During December, 2015, we had a bake sale to raise funds for the French charity AFM- Téléthon as well as for the Irish Wheelchairs Association. The aim was for every school in Ireland on the fourth of December to sell 3,637 slices of cake for funds to cure genetic diseases. We were asked by our French teacher, Coraline, to bake French recipes, such as a clafoutis and tarte au citron. The recipes were fun to do and everyone made an effort to bring something in or to sell the cakes at break or lunch. At the end of the day, we had raised just over €300, which we split between to two charities.
AFM Téléthon
Irish Wheelchair Association
For the next few weeks all the girls in the school will be practicing a dance routine that we will then all dance and have it videoed for Operation Transformation. All Tys do the routine on a Tuesday afternoon when we have PE. Rhianne, Rachel and Evie have been teaching us the routine and we only learn a small part each week that the programme sends us. The routine is quite easy and quick to learn but it is fun to do and is good exercise.
For English, we are reading the book “The Kite Runner” by Khaled Housseini. The book follows the life of a young Afghan boy called Amir and how he learns about the social divides in life between Sunni and Shi’a as well as between Pashtun and Hazara. He is friends with his servant Hassan, yet when Hassan is assaulted and Amir does nothing to help, they quickly become divided from each other. When the Russians invade Afghanistan, Amir and his father, Baba, flee to America. There, they live a content life selling things every weekend at the local flea market. Amir meets his future wife there, Soraya, the daughter of a former Afghanistan general. Amir gains his career in America as a writer. One day, he gets a call from Rahim Khan, his father’s former business partner to come back to Afghanistan to help Hassan’s son, Sohrab. He eventually finds him and learns some horrible truths and facts along the way. He meets people that he never thought he’d see again and learn what happened to Kabul, his home place, as well as the people there after he left and the Taliban arrived. I really enjoyed this book as I thought it held suspense as well as telling the story of life in Afghanistan before the Taliban arrived. The book is great for people who enjoy reading about history and conflict. I would recommend this book to anyone older than around thirteen as there is some more violent and upsetting imagery. We also watched the film which was great as it really depicted what the book described and all the characters were as I imagined them.
In our Irish classes, we have been preparing for the sort of work that we will be doing for our Leaving Cert. We have been looking at the oral exams that we will have to do and practicing them. So far, we have done three pictures; “Cóisir gan chead”,”Filleann an fón” agus “Ná húsáid an cárta creidmheasa gan chead!” The pictures are difficult to work out sentences that make sense at first, but Ms. McElwaine gives us notes and helps us work out good points. The orals that she gives are difficult too as you can sometimes forget what you are meant to say because of nerves. It is easier writing down the Irish than saying it out! The orals aren’t easy but I can see the practice we do now is really going to help in leaving cert.
On Thursday, 14th January, we had a talk about road safety. Micháel, the speaker, showed us how to put our seat belt on properly; Over the shoulder and across the chest, and that the driver of the car should be around 11 inches from the steering wheel. He also told us that the head support has to be level with your head so that you will not break your neck if the car crashes. He gave us a synopsis of the first second of a car crashing into a solid wall at 55mph. It showed that if you do not wear your seat belt, ankles will break and you will be thrown around at 55mph. He also gave us case studys of people who had been involved in crashes. There was one person, Sean, who had been driving three friends to the same college for two years. Sean drove them home one evening after they had been to a party and he had drank at it. He crashed the car and was left paralysed yet only one of his friends visited him. Micháel, who knew Sean told us that the only person in charge of our fate was ourselves and that if you do not trust someone to drive you home or if you know that they have been drinking, do not get into the car with them. This was a good talk as he gave us lots of examples of accidents and driving safely as well as the ways to minimise damage to yourselves or others in an accident.
At the moment in Physics, we are talking about the speed of sound in air and, on Monday 11th January, we did an experiment to prove the speed of sound in air is around 340m/s. The experiment meant that we had to use a graduated cylinder part- filled with water and with a resonance tube and tuning forks, find 1/4 of the wavelength of sound. We hit each tuning fork off a block of wood, then placing it above the graduated cylinder, we moved the tuning fork up and down until it gave the loudest noise. We then recorded this height from the top of the water. We then had to multiply using the formula; λ= 4(l+0.3d). After we had found the length of the wavelength, we then had to find the speed of the wavelength using the formula; c=fa. It was an interesting experiment and although our result average was 402m/s we still found how to prove the speed of sound.
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