“Being active, staying fit, Gortskehy always does its bit!”, Cathal Tierney, 5th Class

We have been very active in Gortskehy recently for our @activeflag.

We held a competition during November for the children to come up with our active school slogan. The children came up with fantastic ideas. Congratulations to Cathal Tierney, fifth class for coming up with the winning catchy slogan! We had a competition for the infants to draw and colour an active picture. They really enjoyed it and had great pictures!

Great slogan Cathal – WELL DONE from @activeflag👍

— Active School Flag (@ActiveFlag) January 8, 2019

On November 19th we started taking part in the ‘Active Break Every Day Challenge’. Each class had an active break every day. We had a running break, a dance break or an exercise break each day. It really helped us to energise ourselves and concentrate and focus better on our work. We had so much fun during these breaks that we have an active break every day at school now. It helps us to stay healthy!

On the day of our Christmas Holidays we had a Christmas Disco. Each class got to perform a dance in the dance off! It was a really active way to end the term at school and we had a fantastic time dressed up in our Christmas jumpers.

We are going to be taking part in the Operation Transformation 10@10 initiative in January at school and we are looking forward to the challenge!

As part of our @ActiveFlag initiative we have introduced playground leaders to our yard at break time.

Children from the senior room are taking turns and working as the leaders and play games with each of the younger classes. The leaders had a meeting and they came up with the games and rota.

The children are really enjoying playing yard games such as tag, chocolate chip cookie, stuck in the mud, relays etc. It gives each child an opportunity to get involved in a game and helps to keep break times active and fun!

Third Class (2018/19)

(F) Ben, Isabel, Seán, James, Katie (B) Gabriel, Molly, Shane, Ryan, Alyssa, Corbijn

Well done to everyone who kindly contributed to the Team Hope Shoebox Appeal. Such a kind and generous act, this will bring so much joy to the children who open their special delivery from the boys and girls of Gortskehy this Christmas. This appeal is such a worthy cause as Team Hope give your Christmas Shoebox gifts right into the hands of some of the world’s most vulnerable children – many of whom will receive no other gift this Christmas. For some it’s the first gift they’ve ever received. Thanks also to Veronica for distributing the pamphlets and collecting the shoeboxes from our school.

“It’s not how much we give but how much love we put into giving” Mother Teresa

We had a great week celebrating Maths Week in first, second and third class. We played maths games everyday at school. We learned lots of new games!

We went outside on Thursday to explore maths in the world around us. We worked in teams and completed a maths trail. The maths trail helped us to explore shapes, lines, numbers and length.

We had great fun!

Enjoying Maths Week!

Here in Gortskehy N.S., we are delighted to announce our involvement with the Digital Schools Excellence programme. We are part of a three school cluster which includes St. Pats BNS, Castlebar and Meelickmore N.S.. We made an application to be involved in this project to the Department of Education and Skills last year and were successful. We will be working as a team over the next 3 years to enhance our teaching and your children’s learning using digital technologies. Each family will receive a copy of our first newsletter below. We are in the process of developing our own website where you will be able to view our ongoing progress throughout the year.

The middle room visited the Pure Skill Sports Centre in Galway last Friday the 15^th of June for their annual school tour. The children took part in many activities including hurling, soccer, golf, rugby, basketball, Gaelic football, cricket and tennis.   We had a great day out followed by some lovely lunch.

In addition to our tour we have really enjoyed the summer weather over the last few weeks. We raised four little caterpillars to help them become beautiful butterflies. We observed them closely each day, and made sure they had enough food. When they were strong enough we released them beside our bug hotel. This was a really interesting process to see and helped us fully understand the life-cycle of the butterfly. Seeing this come to life was a really fun experience. We also made time to take in a local nature walk. Here we spotted many plants and animals.

Thank you everyone for a great year. We hope you all have a brilliant summer!

A sincere thank you to all who supported our Pupil Art Exhibition which took place on Thursday 24th May.  It was a great success!

Congratulations to 2nd class who received their First Holy Communion on Sunday 6^th May 2018. We would like to say a massive thanks to Fr. Murphy, the choir, the 1st class parents for the lovely refreshments following the mass and a special thanks to all the families. Well done to all our 2nd class. We are very thankful for this memorable day.

Over the last few months the middle room have learned all about the season of spring. The kids are aware that this is a season of new life each year. New grass, new flowers and trees coming alive with the leaves turning green once again. We have gained lots of information on the life cycle of the frog and butterfly, creating some beautiful art to accompany this.

Some very exciting news is that we have adopted some caterpillars. We will look after these very well until they become beautiful butterflies. When they are strong enough they will head off to enjoy all that spring and summer have to offer. We’ll keep you all posted, but for now here is a little snippet of some of our spring art and our new caterpillars.