Tesco Tokens

Ms. Brennan is co-ordinating our Tesco Tokens Campaign and wishes to thank all who have contributed to date. The school has benefited greatly in previous years and we hope that this year will see more IT equipment provided through your continued support. Please collect the Tokens over the Easter Holidays and bring them in on Monday the 24th of April.

Barcelona'06

Best of luck to all the Transition Year students and brave staff members on their Easter trip to Barcelona. We will have a feature on the trip in our summer newsletter.

SafeTY

Transition Year Students (TYPA) have launched a mini-company, SafeTY, selling First-Aid Kits for €6. This is a particularly useful product and we would encourage as many students as possible to purchase one for their homes.

Macbeth

On Wednesday March 8th "Fiasco Productions" presented "The Scottish Play" to a Fifth year audience. Wearing army fatigues and waving replica handguns they presented Macbeth as a modern warlord.

S.P.H.E. Plays

On Tuesday, March 21st a visiting Theatre Company "Class Act Productions" from Belfast presented two short plays in the P.E. Hall.The First years attended "Junk" a play about making healthy eating and exercise part of one's lifestyle.The Third years attended "Smashed" which focused on the consequences of binge drinking. Feed back from students suggests that both plays were very well received. Each performance was followed by "hot-seating", where the students had an opportunity to ask questions to the actors who were still "in character". There was a short drama workshop and a worksheet to allow further classroom work on both topics. The actors commented that the audience were obviously used to drama as they asked questions and partook in workshop activities without any hesitation

Many thanks to Ms. Dunne for organising these events.

Debating and Public Speaking

Mr Carmody and Mr. Deneher with the Debating team.

Thus far, 2005/06 has been a particularly successful year for debating and public speaking in St Aidan's. Pupils have been competing both internally and externally in various disciplines, and the school has now established a formidable reputation in this area. Hopefully, the following achievements can be used and built upon in the coming months and years.

JUNIOR CYCLE - One of the highlights of the year so far was the First Year Public Speaking competition. This involved all pupils from the four classes and culminated in an excellent final between Darragh Fleming, Darren Maher, Gavin Geraghty and Kevin Murtagh. The standard was extraordinary for such 'novices', and after much consultation Darragh Fleming became the inaugural winner of the Br Sweeney Memorial Cup. Earlier in the year, the Junior Debating Competition attracted 32 participants, with a high standard evident throughout, especially as many of the pupils were competing in such a manner for the first time. In the final, Andrew Lynn and Matthew Lacey narrowly defeated Scott Malone and Anthony Madden. Andrew Lynn and Luke Donegan represented the school in the Leinster Junior Debating competition in Wesley Secondary School, and Andrew was successful in progressing as a best speaker. He is a talented and forceful debater, and one who will certainly enjoy success in the coming years. Recently along with Anthony Madden, he competed in the AlB Leinster Schools competition and again qualified as a best speaker.

SENIOR CYCLE - An in-house debating competition is in progress at the moment, and it should be of a high quality judging by the performances put in by pupils outside the school this year. David E Doyle and Cathal Gavin have developed a formidable partnership, (even if they were unable to combat the might of Mr Carmody and Mr Deneher in a demonstration debate earlier in the year!) and had some outstanding successes in the UCD L&H competition in November. They also fared well in the Denny Leinster Schools competition, with David winning his way to the quarter-final stages, a remarkable feat for a young man in his maiden year of competitive debating. The pair are currently in the second round of the aforementioned AIB competition, qualifying as I st and 3rd best speakers respectively. In the same competition, Cathal Ormond and Cathal Gavin also qualified as a best team on what was the school's most successful outing to date. Cathal Gavin, Paul Blanchfield and Rob Ryan acquitted themselves well at the Mental Health Ireland public speaking competition, while Cathal Ormond seemed very at home in the plush offices of Gay Mitchell in January, debating the intricacies of an EU common defence policy.

Debating and public speaking is an invaluable extra-curricular activity to have in a school. It gives pupils a fantastic grounding in general knowledge, research and analytical skills and argument construction. More importantly however, it develops self-confidence in situations that will be crucial later in life, such as job interviews, presentations (and pub rows of course!). The debating society in St Aidan's has had a very successful year, and for this a large thank you is due to the many members of staff at the school who have given much spare time to the competitions, but mostly to the pupils who have dedicated hours in the cause of a'good argument'. Hopefully, this trend will continue, and the numbers of participants will increase along with the regularity of successes.

Special thanks to Mr. Deneher, Mr. O'Connor Mr. Carmody, and Ms. Dunne for their great commitment in this area.