May in the Middle Room

Swimming: We have been making wonderful progress in our swimming each Friday. We are perfecting our swimming strokes and becoming more efficient at changing in and out of swimsuits and showering. Our instructors are kind and pleased with our improvement. We love the bus trip with Joe, up Kilcornan Avenue, under the tree branches. We are ravenous when we get back!

Holy Communion: Our main event this month, among many important events, was our Holy Communion. Fourteen children, twelve boys and two girls came to receive their first Communion in all their finery on the 10^th of May. Everyone had a special role in the ceremony and performed their task impressively. We had lovely comments from visitors about how well it went and how kind and warm our class were with each other. It was a very special day and we are so thankful to our parents, to Martina Glynn and Martina Carr on the Parents’ Parish Team and of course Fr. Roche for helping us prepare for our big day.

Well-earned Breaks We have had two lovely breaks, one Bank Holiday and one day when our school closed for the Local and European Elections. Our school is a polling station. We talked about the candidates in the election and the work our councillors do on the County Council. Ben and Alannah from 6^th Class showed us a PowerPoint about the candidates and the electoral regions. We were very impressed!

Testing Time! We have begun our Drumcondra Tests, starting with English. It was a big step for First Class as it was their first experience of the challenge of this type of standardised test. So we recommended an early night, a sharp pencil and an eraser and a cool head! Every year we hope children will achieve their own personal best in each test and we are delighted to say this has happened so far.

College Links: Anne Dolan, lecturer from Mary Immaculate Teacher Training College visited us to view our PowerPoints on the trips we took over Easter. We used Google Earth and AA mapping tools to illustrate our journeys from home to the various destinations from Galway to Cavan to Dublin to Clare to London! She told us she was really impressed with our IT skills and a bit jealous of our Easter holidays! She will be publishing a book in 2015 to assist primary teachers to teach the primary geography curriculum. Below is Ava’s PowerPoint Presentation about her visit to Connemara!