Christmas Cards

All the children in Loch an Iúir school have been busy designing their own Christmas Cards. The children were asked to draw an image of Christmas and these images were used to make their own personalized cards. We are now going to sell the cards and raise money for the school.
Here are some of the pictures. Nollaig Shona means Happy Christmas in the Irish Language.

Ireland win Poll!!

Hopefully the prediction will come true...according to our latest poll Ireland are to win the European Championship!! Thanks for voting. Keep an eye out for our next poll.

Getting Ready for Christmas

Next week will be the start of December an in Loch an Iúir we are getting ready for Christmas. All the classes are busy doing something in preparation for a Christmas concert which will be good. The children in Rang 5/6, 5th and 6th class are rehearsing for Goldie agus na 3 Béar. This is our version of the traditional story of Goldilocks and the 3 Bears...the pupils helped to write the script and put in their own slant of the story...watch this space in the future for photo's etc.
So how do our partner schools in Europe prepare for Christmas?
We would be interested to find out. Why not post something to let us know?
We look forward to seeing your stories.
Also look out for some of our Christmas Cards...to be posted soon.

Poll Winner

Congratulations to Athletico Bilbao, the winners of our first poll.
Thank you for voting and please vote in our next poll, which again is football  related.
Well done to all our partner countries for qualifying for the European Finals.
 There will be some fun next month when we see the group draw.
Who will be in Ireland's group??!!

Halloween in Loch an Iúir

We enjoy Halloween in our school. Like everyone else we dress up and go around 'trick or treating'
This year it was a bit different.
We went' Mumming' In Ireland Mummers dressed up in  fancy dress, wore masks and went from house to house singing and dancing, telling stories or maybe acting out a short play.
This year we had a visit from The Armagh Rhymers and we took part in a workshop. After that we had a parade through Loch An Iúir and visited some peoples houses...we certainly stopped the traffic that day. Everyone had great fun.
Before Halloween, we had groups of children taking part in Mumming-far better crack than just going trick or treating!!

 We had great fun dressing up!

Our School

Scoil Eoin Pól, Loch an Iúir

Our school is situated in North West |Donegal, the most northernly county in Ireland. We have just over 50 pupils and 3 class teachers. We also have a Resource Teacher who is shared with another school on Aranmore Island, so he has to get a boat to school some days.How many teachers can say they take a boat to school!?
Our school is a Gaeltacht School which means we learn through the medium of Irish.
We hope that over the life of our project that you will learn some words in Irish. After Christmas you will see our Powerpoint Presentation of words in Irish. We are also looking forward to learning a few words in our other schools' languages-Basque, Polish and Czech.
Our school was renamed a few years ago after Pope John Paul. The origional school on the site had been built in 1929 and was reopened in 2006. We thought it would be appropriate to name it after him.

Blbao Meeting

A total of 9 visiting teachers made the journey to Bilbao for the first meeting of the Comenius group. We were joined by Roel Rohner from Dalton International who gave us a valuable insight into the concept of a Dalton School. We also had training in Blog Building. It was a very busy schedule but we survived, just!
Teachers from our partner school Begonazpi Ikastola, joined us in the training and it was good to get to know all our partners for the project.

We are all home!

It is good to hear that all the teachers are home after their stay in Bilbao. Everyone had a good time in that beautiful city...now to start the work. Hope everyone is beginning their Logo...let's see just how creative the children can be!!...probably more creative than us

Ag cur tús le Bloggail sa Scoil-Comenius

As part of our Comenius project I am in Bilbao,in the Basque Country along with our fellow partners in the project. There are 4 countries involved in the project, Ireland, Spain, Poland and The Czech Republic. Over the next 2 years we will be blogging regularly keeping you updated on the progress of the project. At the minute we are learning from our partners in Bilbao, how to build a blog. I am sure that in the future the blogs will be more interesting! But as we say in Irish, Tús maith leath na hoibre (a good start is half the battle).