10 March 2017
Justice and Peace Group
By Alannah Corcoran (5th year student)
You might not know it but ……
We are the Loreto Secondary School Wexford’s Justice and Peace Group! We tackle issues not only relating to our school community but also worldwide. Be it school-related, such as Glenda’s mugs going missing, to raising awareness about the lack of sanitation in the developing world – we meet every Tuesday to discuss these problems. This month we aim to raise awareness about the difficulties girls our age in Africa must go through in order to obtain water for their families by participating in the Aidlink Walk for Water Campaign. This will include a guest speaker. Junior students will also receive a talk on the importance of internet safety in the next few weeks. We hope to have a noticeboard up and running soon, so keep an eye out!
Awareness day for ‘One Good Idea’, Sustainable Energy Authority Ireland (SEAI)
Teacher: K. Johns
Year Group involved: 1.4
Students in Loreto Secondary School study Stewardship as part of their course in CSPE. As part of their lessons, students were encouraged to get involved in the ‘One Good Idea’ campaign, run by SEAI . As a result of this, four students: Muireann O’ Gara, Jessica Ruane ,Amber Wright and Ella Wright were successfully chosen as one of the top 15 Junior teams in Ireland to go on and compete nationally.
The aim of their project is to investigate how far fruit has travelled to reach our supermarket shelves. They are trying to encourage people to reduce the size of their carbon footprint by making informed choices when it comes to purchasing fruit. They want to encourage people to sign a pledge to replace just one fruit in their shopping basket/ trolley with any other fruit that has travelled a shorter distance to reach our supermarket shelves. This will in turn reduce the size of each individual’s carbon footprint, encourage us to be more fuel efficient and make us aware of the impact we can have on our environment and climate change.
Their slogan is: ‘Foster fruitful decisions- reduce the route of your fruit!’
To promote their campaign the students held a massively successful and colourful awareness day in school on 2 March 2017. On the day, apples were distributed to students courtesy of Ballycross Apple Farm to try and highlight and promote locally produced produce. The students ran a number of competitions throughout the day such as, guess how many miles the bowl of fruit salad has travelled (54,119km!). They organised a cake design competition to demonstrate the problems caused by the carbon footprint and climate change. Poster competitions were also held. Maps of the world were put on display to show students how far their fruit had travelled. They had a fundraiser so they could afford prizes for the competitions that took place and they were also presented with a hamper from Sam McCauley’s to use as a main prize – we are extremely grateful for their help and support. They enrolled the help of Molly Kielty in 4th year to design a carbon fruitprint logo which they got enlarged to 9ft tall as a pledge for people to sign to ‘Reduce the route of your fruit’. The logo is incredibly impressive and certainly eye catching.
During the awareness day each year group represented one fruit and their nails were painted the same colour as the fruit. Fruit stickers were also distributed to generate awareness around this subject.
They also involved English classes as they got them to write letters to local supermarkets to enquire about costs and quality of fruits coming from abroad . Geography classes got involved by plotting where each fruit found each supermarket travelled from and they calculated the fruit miles. The maps were then put on display.
The highlight of the awareness day was when the girls delivered a presentation in the foyer about their project. This was delivered in an unusual manner to get people’s attention, and it certainly worked! The girls were dressed up as air hostesses and instead of going through the usual safety procedures that you would expect to hear on a plane, they delivered a hazard procedure. A recorded voice over played on a loop from loudspeakers in the foyer while the girls acted and this recording warned the passengers of the problems caused by excessive fuel consumption. Passengers were warned that their oxygen masks needed to be worn because of the toxic gases being created and they were also told to put on their life jackets as climate change was imminent , sea level was on the rise and floods were coming! The 4th year students got involved and helped to make a video of all the events that took place on the day. They hope to play this video in assemblies at a later date. This video will also be entered into the competition .
The priority of their campaign is to get people informed and to make them think about the amount of fuel that is consumed by the transportation of goods but also through the refrigeration of fruit that comes from abroad and the discarding of waste packaging afterwards.
If everyone made one small, positive change to their shopping habits then this could create a long lasting positive impact on our environment for future generations.
U14 Camogie Match Report
by Lettie Whelan (Transition Year student)
Loreto Wexford’s U14 camogie team began their season with a game against Presentation Kilkenny. The Kilkenny girls were well up for the task and were quick to get off the mark and were 2-2 to 0-0 up after ten minutes. They never looked back after this and the Loreto girls were not able to get the scores at the other end. The Presentation added 2-4 before the break to leave the score at 4-6 to 0-0 at half time.
The Loreto girls defended better in the second half but scores were hard to come by. They only conceded four points in the second half but were unable to convert any chances of their own.
Amy Whelan and Aoife O’ Connor defended brilliantly for the Loreto girls on the day.
For Presentation Kilkenny, it was an all round excellent team performance.
Loreto now await their second match which will be a “must win” if they want to progress this year.
Loreto Wexford: Katie Feeny, Sinead Mythen, Amy whelan, Danielle O’Leary, Molly Redican, Aoife O’Connor, Kate O’Reilly, Ciara Banville, Carla Howlin, Caoimhe Porter, Ciara Butler, Aoibhe Murphy, Grace Roche, Niamh Cullen, Grace Cousins
News round up
- All parents are invited into the school on Monday evening next, 13 March at 5.30 p.m. for a general information meeting with Mr. O’ Shea and Ms. O’ Reilly.
Agenda
- Welcome
- Purpose of meeting
- Our new school building – update, planning for the move
- Junior Certificate reform – update, impediments to full implementation
- ASTI industrial action – update, effects on the school
- School Plan 2016-2010 – update, implementation
- Assessment for Learning – explanation, benefits
- Mobile phones – review of existing policy
- Parental involvement in our school – current situation, possible future model
- Questions and answers
- The Irish Department will be organising a number of events in the school next week to mark Seachtain na Gaeilge.
