All Ireland Senior Football Vocational A Final
We wish all the team and their mentors the very best of luck in their All Ireland bid next Saturday in Croke Park. At 1 o clock the lads will face Holy Trinity College Cookstown who will be aiming to oust our lads this year having beaten them in a close semi final in Cavan last year . While we in school have kept the lads busy at their studies over the last few weeks , in a show of support students and staff wore blue and navy last Friday . The student council assisted Mrs Finnegan and Mr Irwin in giving all students an ice-cream treat at break time . A convoy of cars and buses will travel from Ferbane and surrounding GAA clubs to support the lads on the day . School buses will leave at 10a.m .
BEST OF LUCK ADRIAN, FRAN AND ALL THE LADS FROM THE STAFF AND STUDENTS IN GALLEN COMMUNITY SCHOOL.
John Mighton visits Gallen Community School, Ferbane
Atlantic Corridor organised the visit last Monday of John Mighton, mathematician, author and playwright from Canada to our school as part of Midlands Maths camp, an outreach event of Dublin City of Science 2012. John is the founder of JUMP (Junior Undiscovered Math Prodigies), a charitable organization that works to educate students in mathematics
In the afternoon, John took all three classes of first years separately for a workshop. He taught a class about understanding Binary numbers and they were enthralled with his methods and his mind reading! John explained he was not always good at Maths in secondary school but he persisted with hard work and staying power. John is now professor of Maths in the University of Toronto. Some of you might have seen John Might in the film Good Will Hunting? His one major line is a reference to his main idea in one of his books The Myth of Ability, which is that most people never get a chance because a teacher doesn’t take the time to show them how to learn maths. He strongly believes that all of us are able to be good at maths if we are willing to invest the effort and time in doing so. John Mighton completed a Ph.D. in mathematics at the University of Toronto and also taught Maths there but most of his time now is working to promote JUMP maths in Canada and internationally.
We will post some photos of John with our first years soon. Coverage of visit also on Offaly Independent this week.
Junk Kouture
Well done to all our students who took part in the recent Regional final of Junk Kouture in the Hudson Bay hotel. This is our first year of involvement of the competition and it was great that the students had this opportunity to model, dance and mine for the judges. Thanks to Ms McKeogh for all her hard work over the past few week. Thanks also to all the teachers and students who were there on the night to support our students.
TY’s attend Atlantic Corridor Science Symposium
Last Thursday the Transition year students in Gallen C.S got to attend the Atlantic Conference 2012 in the Tullamore Court Hotel, accompanied by Ms. Sullivan head of maths in Gallen C.S and Mr Irwin, principal. Running since 2008, the Atlantic Conference has established itself as a key event for all those interested in science and technology issues in Ireland, both from an education and enterprise perspective
Speakers at the 2012 conference included Leena Gade, Chief Racing & Test Engineer with Audi Sports, Ward Van Duffel, Managing Director of LEGO® Education Europe Ltd, John Hennessy, Chairperson of the HEA and Tony Hill,Director of the Manchester Museum of Industry & Science. The keynote speaker was Carol Lynn Parente, Producer of Sesame Street. The winner of 11 Emmy Awards, Carol Lynn Parente talked about Sesame Street’s work to bring STEM education to its young audience.
In such prestigious company a number of our students presented some findings of a recent STEM initiative in our own school and had to take some questions from the floor. They were highly commended by all the speakers for their delivery, participation and attentiveness during the conference. With such interesting speakers on STEM careers, an Audi car to examine and tasks to complete, including making a small duck out of small Lego samples, the students realised it was they who were the lucky ones to be present.