Author: Staff

Local GAA Visitors

Staff

Hospital/Herbertstown & St. Brigid’s visit Herbertstown NS

 

On Monday, Pádraig O’Dea and Shane Markham of Hospital/Herbertstown Bord na N-Óg called to the school to promote the local GAA club. Of course, there are many of our pupils already playing GAA with Hospital/Herbertstown, and also Kilteely/Dromkeen, but Padraig and Shane both wished to tell the children that any new players would be most welcome. As part of their visit, Pádraig and Shane also made a presentation of sports equipment to the school.

 

 

On Tuesday, Orlaith O’Donoghue and Niamh Holland, two key members of the St Brigid’s Ladies Football team which won the County Intermediate title recently called into the school with the cup. St. Brigid’s have a vibrant underage system in place with many of our girls playing with them at various grades. It was great for our pupils to see the local club having success and the winning panel contained five past pupils of the school, Gráinne & Niamh Kennedy, Nina Winship, Keeley Baggott and Eimear Daly. Orlaith and Niamh spoke to the whole school and outlined the benefits of playing sport and how playing with St. Brigid’s has helped them form great friendships with team mates off the field.

Primary Schools Handball

Staff

Congratulations to our pupils who collected medals today at the South Primary Schools Handball Blitz in John the Baptist CS.

 

The boys started playing handball following a visit to the school from local handball player Paudí Quish. A multiple All Ireland champion, Paudí then became their coach at Hospital Handball club and today was the first opportunity the boys had to represent their school in the game. They can be very proud of their performances as we had players in both the A & B U11 finals with the U11 A title coming back to the school. It’s great to see our pupils playing one of our national games and hopefully we will have more boys and girls taking up the sport in the coming months.

 

Futsal

Staff

Our fourth class boys and girls represented the school at the FAI Primary Schools Futsal event in Cappamore on Friday.

The children had been receiving coaching from FAI Development Officer Barry McGann in recent weeks and this was an opportunity to showcase what they had picked up. Both our boys and girls performed very well. The girls finished second in their competition and the boys finished top of their category following a penalty shoot-out with Cappamore. Well done to everyone that took part.

Space Week 2017

Staff

Space Week 2017 was marked in Herbertstown NS with the launch of six bottle rockets.

 

The pupils of third and fourth class designed and constructed the rockets using a variety of materials. Their designs were inspired by prior study of The Space Race and the International Space Station.  Each rocket was graded in terms of appearance/design and its performance in flight. These scores were provided by the pupils of fifth and six class. The winning group was group 3!

 

 

Chess With John

Staff

Today we came into school like normal. When everyone was in, Mrs. Heelan told us to clean off our tables. We had no idea why but she just said it was a surprise. After we cleared up everything she announced we were having a visitor. We’ve had all sports people coming to us but today we were having someone teach us chess. His name was John Alfred and he knew quite a lot about it. Some people knew how to play chess but some people had no idea how to do it.

 

He hd a big leather board which he hung on the wall and he also had some plastic chess pieces which he slotted onto the board. He taught us some history about the game. He then took some flat boards and pieces out of his bag. We were sorted into pairs and told how the pieces worked and what we could do with them. First we learned about the pawns. The pawns could only move forward and take diagonally. If they made it to the other side of the board it could turn into any other piece apart from the King. Then we learned about the Queen. This piece can be moved in any direction as far as it wants. We learned about the Rook and Bishop next. The rook can only be moved forwards, backwards and sideways. The bishop is a completely different story and can only be moved diagonally. Next we learned about the most complicated piece on the board, the Knight. The knight is unusual because it moves in L shapes. It is also the only piece that can jump other pieces. Last but not least the King. The king can only move one space at a time in any direction. It also can’t be captured. You must checkmate it to win. All the pieces have different points and probabilities:

Pawn =1 point

Bishop = 3 points

Knight = 3 points

Rook = 5 points

Queen = 9 points

King = The Game

 

We played a couple of games after this against each other. He stayed with us until 12 o’clock. And overall I found it quite fun and I’m sure everyone else did. We all said thanks to John and left. After this day we’re ordering a couple of own chess sets to play with in school. Chess is a great, unique game that I love and I hope you like it too.

 

Darragh Connaughton, Sixth Class

Star Awards – September

Staff

Congratulations and well done to our Star Award winners for September!

One pupil from each classroom was selected by their class teacher and the award winners were presented with certificates at today’s assembly. They were also given a night off homework for their efforts!