Transition Year Activities
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Match Reports
We have recently been sending reporters out with our school teams to report on their games. Each week their reports will be uploaded here.
Drimnagh Castle v's Naas - U-16 Football Quarter Final
Network For Teaching Entrepreneurship (NFTE)
Each year Drimnagh Castle enter the national NFTE competition. The competition encourages Transition Year students to set up a mini-company. All together there was eight businesses set up in the school. At the begining we were all given €45 as start up money. This was used to buy stock, licences and other necessary components for our companies. we had to complete business plans, sales projections, income and expenditure acoounts and gross profit/loss margins. One group from each participating school go forward to the All Ireland stage of NFTE, held in the Helix in April.
Events4U
Events 4 U is an events management company. We organize sporting events for students during lunchtime. Our price to enter an event is within students price range. Our events are held conveniently in the school. Our idea came from recent experiences at lunchtime that were very boring. First of all we went and introduced 
the sporting events to 1st year students, which got a positive response from them. Then we went around to 2nd years and the idea got another positive response. We then decided to run a competition for the teachers because they were really excited with our plans.
We also ran a table tennis competition for the 1st year students it was a big success. We also surveyed the students around the school and asked them if they enjoyed Sports Day and we got a very negative response. We then set about ways to improve Sports Day. We had a lot of positive responses from our principal and vice principal, about the Sports Day because they believed that Sports Day needed to be improved. We decided that there was a market for this so we decided to bring a fun aspect to it.
We intend to rent rodeo bulls and sumo wrestling as well; we also intend to have a crossbar challenge as well. The students in our school will require money to take part in these events. They are a very reasonable price at 3 a go. We will also be running a sumo wrestling competition on Sports Day and a crossbar challenge competition as well.
We won N.F.T.E in our school, it was a great achievement for us and again we got a brilliant response from our interviewers. My business partners and I plan to keep our business running for years to come and if we didn’t do transition year we wouldn’t have got this brilliant opportunity. We are really looking forward to running this and are really thankful for the support of the students and our teachers.
Netbusters
Net busters are a Football based company. We will offer a friendly service for the first year community in our school. The main idea of our 
group is to offer an entertaining and fun way of being in school. Usually lunch times in our school are boring and can be a same-old, same-old situation in school with no variation or activities to keep students occupied. Netbusters will offer two main services in our company. Fisrtly, a PS3 FIFA 11 competition which as our surveys suggested is a very popular video game for young people. Secondly, we will also be running a crossbar challenge for 1st and 2nd years in our school. We may also be running a penalty competion for 1st, 2nd and 3rd years in or school. The price for our competition is 3 euro but our prize money can reach 30 euro. We hope that our customers will have a fun filled and exciting time during lunch time in our school.
Green Schools Committee
In 2008 Drimnagh Castle was first awarded their green flag. The Minister for the Environment John Gormley came and unveiled the flag at the front of the school. Each year since then we have been awarded a green flag, with TY students implementing plans and campaigns to improve school performance.
We had a ‘Green Day’ on the 3rd November 2010 which was a day when the students of our school could come into the school without a uniform but they had to be wearing something green. The cost of this day was €2 per student. All to raise awareness on green issues in the school .The money that was collected went to the aid of Crumlin Children’s Hospital. The reaction from the students and the teachers was very good regarding the green day and was widely received by all.
Students and the teachers enjoyed wearing green and promoting a greener life.
On the day, we gathered the students and took photographs of the students in their green. We bought new, stronger green bins for every classroom in the school. We got the whole school involved in picking up litter in the local community which benefited the community and was enjoyed by the students. Also this year a newly designed green schools board was designed and this raises awareness in the school on important issues such as recycling and saving energy.
Trip to Delphi
Delphi. What a weekend. We started are journey at 7:00 am that morning at Heuston Station. The journey took us a good 3-4 hours by train. During that time we amused ourselves by playing cards, listening to music and wondering what the first activity would be when we got there. When we got off the train we were told that we had to get a bus from the station to the hotel. 
Finally we got to the hotel. There they told us about the rules and everyone scrambled to get a room with their friends accommodation. Then we were told to get ready for our first activity which was surfing. We roared with excited but it was short lived and they told us that it was too rough for surfing and we would be playing football on the beach as well as team races around the beach and in the sea. After a great day on the beach we went back to the hotel and after a quick dinner we were told to get ready for our evening activity which was sports in the hall. That night we fell as our heads hit the pillow because of the fun day we had.
The next morning after an average breakfast we got ready for canoeing. When we got there we changed into our wet suits and were given a brief talk and what to do and what not to do. When we got in the water with the canoes no one wanted to be the first to fall in, Donald was the first one to fall into the water and by how much he was shacking
we could tell it was freezing. After that we walked down the road to the pier and without anyone having to say anything we knew what to do and we all instinctively jumped in. After we all jumped in they brought us to the deeper end and no one expected how far we had to swim to get back to shore, it was a long icy swim back. When we got back we had lunch and just lounged around until our next activity in the evening. That evening we were told to put on old clothes and welly’s if we had them. We then went on a hike up the mountains and through bog, as we walked on it got darker and darker to the point where we wouldn’t have been able to see our hand in front of our faces without our torches, and as we were walking they gave us advice on our Gaisce walk for tomorrow. It was a long tiring walk through rocky trails and drenching bogs. When we got to the top we seen a small trail leading down to the bottom and they gave us blind folds and told us to walk down the small trail with the blind folds on and to hold the rope all the way down. We only got down to the start when we heard the screams of the group a head of us and we knew we were in for an eventful night.
As we went down we then know what the other group was screaming at and we all sunk into waist deep bog. It felt like swimming in porridge all night long. During the long, slow and gorge like walk many people cried out as they sank into the sludge. During this chaos one unfortunate little boy lost his shoe. When we finally got to the end we were humiliated by being hosed down outside the hotel. When we got in there was a long line outside the bathroom in each group’s bedroom. The next morning we had a good breakfast to prepare ourselves for the long walk that lay a head of us. After we stocked up bottles of water and anything we could get our hands on. Then we got on the bus and it drove us to the middle of no where and left us for good
. During the walk a few people walked a head of the group and after some time the guide told us we were of the trail and we had to go back and every one blamed John even though he protested it wasn’t his fault. During the walk we went through beautiful woodland, lumber mills and rivers. At the end of it we came to a small village where the bus was waiting for our arrival. We all shouted with excitement at the thought of relaxing as we got to the hotel. That night we watched Avatar and ate sweets. When we went to bed that night we talked about what a great week it had been and what we will do for our final activity in the morning. After that we fell into a coma. The next morning we packed our stuff and got ready to go. Then we went on our final activity which was zip wire and rock climbing. After that we slowly marched back to the hotel to collect our stuff and got on the bus to go to the train station on the way home we thought about what a great week we had.
Waste Electrical and Electronic Equipment (WEEE) Ireland
WEEE Ireland is a not for profit organisation, founded by producers of electrical and electronic app
liances in order to comply with the legal obligations imposed by the WEEE Directive 2002/96/EC.
WEEE Ireland will organise for the treatment and recycling of waste electrical and electronic equipment and batteries and accumulators from authorised collection points, on behalf of its producer members.
Each year WEEE organise a competion for Transition Year students. Participating students are tasked with assessing the current awareness level of battery recycling in their school, neighbouring primary school(s), battery retailers and local community.Click on the WEEE logo for a link to their site.
Students are also encouraged to collect batteries in the school for recycling and to help raise money for charity. The picture above shows out most recent collection of batteries in the school.
We are now selling WEEE reusable shopping bags in the school. These environmentally friendly bags are on sale for €2, with €1 going to the school and €1 going to raise funds for Special Olympics Ireland.
Eco- Unesco Peer Education Programme
Recently Transition year students of Drimnagh Castle have been taking part in peer education courses via Eco-Unesco in the city centre at the Greenhouse. Many past T.Y students have already been accredited with this certificate and qualification. It works on young people’s confidence skills, presentational skills, how to run a workshop with children on sustainability topics and also improving social and interactive skills with other young 
people.
Students get a unique chance to teach a class and see exactly what it’s like for teacher’s day in and day out. Over a period of three months groups of transition year students in the school went about teaching the class of 1.1 each Wednesday morning during a double class, the lads were very well received and each class focused on a different topic. Ranging from Recycling, to Global Development.
Furthermore students who want to push the boundaries can volunteer at Eco itself, take part in other workshops on topics such as conservation, Democracy, Empowerment, Advertising and Fair Trade. An excellent programme, that all involved enjoy thoroughly. On Wednesday the 30th of March a group of TY's participated in a Act Global workshop , many nationalities were present and was a good learning curve.