Last week, we celebrate Creative Schools Week (4th – 8th November).  This was an opportunity to showcase, celebrate and share our creative work that is being undertaken in the school this year to date.  Our key focus within Creative Schools is Music.

This year, our 4th, 5th and 6th classes are taking part in the “Ceilí Ukulele” programme which is run by Music Generation Mayo.

Céilí Ukulele is designed as a 28-week programme over the academic year, with weekly lessons of 60 minutes’ duration.  Over the course of a full academic year, students will aim to learn 15+ songs &  20+ melodies on the ukulele, as well as honing their performance skills through regular group practice and performance.  Each week, our specialist Music Generation Mayo musician-tutor, Keif, visits the school to provide whole-class tuition designed to engage and excite students about playing the ukulele and singing accompanying songs.

We have completed 8 weeks and have learnt so much already.

Here is a video of our talented pupils performing a song accompanied by the ukulele:

Link

As a participating Creative School with our focus on “Music”,  Junior and Senior Infants went to the Linenhall Arts Centre in Castlebar today to see the musical show, Rockin’Rhymes. This performance is part of the RoolaBoola Festival and was presented by Branar Téatar do Pháistí. Original songs based on the well-loved nursery rhymes will be performed by a live 5-piece band, accompanied by animated illustrations by artist Maeve Clancy and directed by Marc Mac Lochlainn. The children really enjoyed this performance, joining in singing, clapping to the rhymes and wriggle dancing in their seats!

This year, we undertook a whole-school project to bring our pupil artistic talents outside.  The goal was to enhance our outdoor space with impactful art- one which promotes our schools values, our vision and raise a smile!

We are proud of our school and all it represents and we wanted to communicate, through art, everything that’s positive and important to our school. Using our name GORT SCEICHE,  we picked a theme for each letter. Every class designed the artwork representing the theme as follows for each letter:

G – Animals in our Environment

O – Friendship

R – Learning at school

T – Religion

S – Place Names

C – Our School 

E – GAA

I – Music

C – Sport 

H – Digital/IT

E – Music

Here are some photos of our pupils designing & creating their art earlier this year:

A special thank you to Melissa Walsh, MW Design, Print & Signs for making the letters and adding our pupil’s art to each letter. Her enthusiasm and creativity brought this project from 70 A4 sheets of themed artwork to what’s now proudly displayed on our school wall.

The finished letters –

We are so happy with the finished art!  Thank you to our amazingly talented pupils at Gortskehy who have brought this art to life with their creativity and artistic flair. We hope it makes you smile!

@BioDataCentre  @GreenSchoolsIre

Today we celebrate World Bee Day – 20th May 2019 

Did You Know?

• Irish Bumblebee populations are in decline.
• One third of our 99 bee species are threatened with extinction from Ireland. This is because we have drastically reduced the amount of food (flowers) and safe nesting sites in our landscapes.
• In response this decline and threat of extinction, the National Biodiversity Data Centre coordinated the implementation of the an All Ireland Pollinator Plan( 2015-2020) along with 68 other government and non-government organisations as partners to support the plan.

The All-Ireland Pollinator Plan is about all of us, from farmers to local authorities, to schools, gardeners and businesses, coming together to try to create an Ireland where pollinators can survive and thrive.  Here at Gortskehy, we are committed to playing our part and making our school bee-friendly.

The middle room studied the Junior Pollinator Plan with their teacher, Ms. Thomas. They learnt all about bees and their important role as pollinators.  They also learnt about the life cycle of the bumble bee & what we can do to help our bees survive and thrive.

  

Our school Pollinator & Green School Teams drew maps of the current school grounds.  This was done to identify areas where we can take action to help pollinators. Lots of good ideas that we hope to put into action were noted by our pupils on the walkabout:

• Plant bee-friendly plants in our garden beds.
• Leave narrow strips around our pitch for wildflowers
• Mow our lawn/pitch less frequently – to allow dandelions and clover to grow – food sources for our bees.
• Reduce pesticides – only use it for clearing slippery areas/paths.  Only weed by hand.
• Plant a herb bed – they are an excellent source of food for pollinators.

These maps will be updated to include all the pollinator areas we will develop around our school.  We will monitor and report on bee activity and update our plans annually.

Here are some photos of our pupils planting bee-friendly plants, flowers and herbs in our new Sensory & Biodiversity garden.

   

    

 

 

For more information on what you can do to help the bees – please visit http://pollinators.ie/

@creativeirl @artscouncil_ie  @mus_gen

We were delighted to welcome Zane Kazotniece-Joyce,  a tutor/facilitator working with Music Generation, to our school.  Zane provided a number of workshops on Recycled Music/Wild About Music to pupils in the Junior and Middle rooms.

Within these workshops, the pupils were actively involved in making musical instruments from recycled materials.  They explored sound and rhythms with different musical instruments and natural materials.

As you will see from the photos below, the pupils thoroughly enjoyed these workshops.  Thank you Zane!