Scoil Mhuire Gan Smál - Student TY Newsletter
October 2023
Pictured: MMA (Mixed Martial Arts)
Welcome to the 2023/24 newsletter. This year's newsletter is being run by the Transition year students. The students involved are Laoghaire Butt and Kaci Egan who are the writers, Seán Byrne and Evan Healy who are the editors and Sally Bullman who is the photographer. We are looking forward to documenting the trips, activities and events during Transition Year as well as outside school events and stories.
Transition Year in SMGS encourages us students to participate in activities we wouldn’t have liked before and go on trips and activities to bond with classmates we may not have known before, for example the newsletter is one of those many opportunities for me to bond with my peers. TY includes many fun activities for example MMA (Mixed Martial Arts) to help with self defence and The Kabin Studio is in helping our base classes make raps together. Another activity many students attended was Barista Training on the 21st of October, where people learned how to make good coffee. Taster blocks are a great idea to get us thinking about what subjects we may want to do for the leaving cert. I am personally very happy I chose to do Transition Year. The trips so far have been great, we have been to Fota Bootcamp and the Ploughing Championships, as an optional trip that most students attended. I attended both of them and enjoyed them vastly.
Pictured: Barista Training
Pictured: Ploughing Championships 2023
One of the trips the Transition years have been on this year, is a trip to the Ploughing Championships in Laois. We had to be at the school for 6am, the bus journey took around 3 hours. When we eventually got to the Ploughing, it was so muddy and wet. We were told to bring jackets and wellies, which were definitely needed. There were so many stalls and tents. The most popular places were the Aldi tent, the TikTok tent and Funderland. There was many free stuff being given out as well, for example, Pink Lady apples, Keogh's crisps, lanyards, food samples and pens. Although the weather was bad, the day was enjoyable and I would really recommend taking a trip to the Ploughing Championships in the future.
Pictured: Fota Bootcamp
The other trip we have gone to so far in TY is the Fota Bootcamp. I enjoyed this trip immensely although it was very challenging, physically, it was a great experience for us to bond with our classmates. At the beginning we all had to line up and we got silly code names that we had to remember or the group was made to do push ups. We did team building exercises at the start, which is creating a fire and a camp in the woods, in a group picked at random. This helped us put in team effort and work together with the group. We also did archery which was really enjoyable. The group of us were split in two and we used soft arrows to shoot the other team. Lastly, we did the obstacle course. It was very challenging but so fun because at the end we had to crawl on our elbows through mud and it was really funny. The workers there were acting very aggressive but they're actually lovely people and added the sense of actually being in the army to the bootcamp. Although this isn't something I'd normally enjoy, I had a great time.
To conclude the first 2023/24 newsletter, I would like to say thank you so much for reading. We would be honoured if you read the next one, stay tuned!!
Newsletter crew
PS: If you are in one of these pictures and would like to be removed, please email me at ehealy2020@smgsblarney.ie