Great maths and Irish visits

Great visits and visitors. Year 8 set off for a day of maths puzzles with Kjartan Poskitt. Then today, year 8 hosted a visitor from the St Patrick's Centre who entertained them with fantastic stuff as a lead up to St Patrick's Day.

Fundraising for Shimna with buy.at

First of all if you have been shopping through buy.at on our website, thanks a million. Many of the retailers are genuinely generous with the percentage they donate to the college on each purchase. However, we want to pass on a tip for maximising your fundraising. Amazon is one of the most popular retailers for on-line shopping. Unfortunately, Amazon has reduced its contribution to 1%. We would point out that there are other booksellers on the buy.at site. Waterstones is a good example, which gives the same offer of free postage with orders over £15.00. More retailers join the scheme every month, and there are now several charities to support while also making a bit for Shimna too. The Ethical Superstore, which won the Observer Award this year, is a really interesting site with lots of products that are hard to find locally.

Hip Hop Challenge

Ryan Shaw of year 9 organised the visit of Childline to present their fundraising Hip Hop Challenge for our students. Sixty students raised sponsorship for Childline and took part in the challenge. Eamonn McAnulty surprised himself with his star turn, and by the end of an hour's lesson, everyone was hip-hopping away. The money count starts now, and a great big cheque will be sent off to Childline. Everyone who took part was given a fridge magnet reminder of the Childline number, because no one knows when they or a friend might need it.

Bebo update

Students have been asking how to get rid of stuff they wrote on Bebo when they were younger and now regret. Anne Fitzpatrick went on a course last week run by CEOP, the people who provide the anti cyberbullying link on this website. At the course, which was excellent, she found out that Bebo has, just a few weeks ago, signed up to the CEOP guidelines. This means that students can expect Bebo to take them seriously if they ask to have nasty stuff removed. The upset caused by cyberbullying is so serious that we would recommend all students to have a look at the CEOP link on our website. Parents who want to understand texting, msn, Bebo etc. could do with taking a look as well. Free speech is extremely important, but so are privacy and peace of mind.

February half term

Week beginning 5.2.07 was a great week for the netball squads, who both beat Down High in their league matches. Week beginning 12.2.07 is a complicated week, with the ski trip away, the Hip Hop Challenge raising funds for Childline and A level students on work experience. Students are off Wednesday, Thursday and Friday. In case you want to sympathise with the staff, we are only off on the Friday, and have training days on Wednesday and Thursday getting ready for the new curriculum for next year. Everybody comes back on Monday 19th February.

French Students on Work Experience

Our French visitors and their Shimna host students enjoyed a farewell reception at the St Patrick's Centre after a week's hard work in the Centre, in the Slieve Donard Hotel and in Tesco's. We were delighted with the support from the employers and from Down District Council in launching our Euro work experience scheme. Our students then set off for their week in France, and the following week in Germany.

Mein Austausch nach Irland -Jelka Kuehne

hello everyone / hallo allemiteinander^^
ich bin Jelka Kuehne, ein 16 jaehriges Maedchen aus Hagen, eine Stadt im Westen Deutschlands. Ich komme von einer Rudolf Steiner Schule und gehe dort in die 10. Klasse.
Ich bin schon seit langem interessiert gewesen an einem Austausch in ein Land wo ich Englisch sprechen kann. Und jetzt bin ich hier. An dem Shimna Integrated College.
Und so hat alles begonnen: Eine gute Freundin, Nina, welche selbst schon Shimna besucht hat, hat mich an zwei Maedchen vermittelt und so bin ich jetzt hier fuer drei Monate und lerne English.
Mir gefaellt es hier sehr gut, auch wenn es am Anfang alles ein bisschen durcheinander war und ich noch immer mit dem Plan des Schulgebaudes durch die Gegend renne, da ich mich ohne Hilfe nicht zu recht finde. :)
Ich finde das die Leute in meinem Unterricht sehr nett sind, (netter als manch Deutsche) und am liebsten esse ich die Chips (man is das schwer, chips sind ja hier pommes^^- also crips!) aber nur die in der gruenen Packung.
Ich mag den Musikunterricht, da man seine Instrumente mitnehmen kann und selbst Stuecke komponieren kann. (wir sind noch nicht mal annaehernd so weit, in unsrem Musikunterricht in Deutschland, wie die hier in Irland.)
Ich bin froh, dass ich die Gelegenheit gekommen habe einen Austausch zu machen und empfehle jedem, der interressiert ist an Sprachen und etwas neues auszuprobieren, einmal einen Austausch zu machen. Es ist das Beste um eine Sprache zu lernen.
(auch wenn es am Anfang schwer ist und man sich fuehlt als ob der Kopf gleich platzen wuerde, da man so viel auf einmal an neuen Sachen mitbekommt und ausgesetzt ist)
liebe Gruesse aus Irland / - Jelka Kuehne - / greetings from Ireland :)

Visitor from Germany

Jelka Kuehne has just joined us from Germany and has made a very cheerful addition. I'll get her to blog about what she's up to. Our A level French students are visitors themselves, off to France on their work experience. The French students who came to Newcastle for their work experience last week had a great time and worked hard at their placements in the Slieve Donard, Tesco's and the St Patrick's Centre in Downpatrick. Watch out for the photo in this week's papers of the glamorous farewell do.

Rejuvenated pitch

A Saturday visit found tractors and sand and new posts all out on the pitch, great work from our partners, Newcastle Football Club. This has been one of our hardest winters on the pitch, with all the warmth and damp, and the surface had been horribly churned up. It will be worth all the student pain of staying off the pitch at break and dinnertime when the sand settles and the grass grows back strongly. Lets hope both the Shimna and the Newcastle teams produce playing form to match.

Election time

Interesting occurence - representatives of our Students' Council were due to go to the NICCY conference on 6th February to meet up with representatives of local political parties and to hear what they had to say about the rights of young people. The conference has been postponed until June. Let's hope that means that the politicians are too busy getting ready to integrate and move on. Our representatives, Iana, Fionnuala, Cormac and Chris are disappointed, but hope that the recovened conference will be all the more interesting if the Assembly is up and running.

This picture was taken on Open Day in the music room.