On the 9th of January 2013 the BT young scientist began in the RDS in Dublin where three fourth year girls Aoibhe Richardson, Margaret Caldbeck and Nicola Murphy were competing in this competition. The second years also went to support the girls. The title of their project was “Dancing your way to fitness”. They wanted to see whether dancing at discos was good exercise and how activity teenage girls do during the rest of the week. They got 13 of their classmates to wear accelerometers to a disco and for the following five days. Their results were very interesting and they found that disco dancing is in fact an excellent form of exercise and tat teenage girls do very little activity in their spare time. The three girls thoroughly enjoyed the experience and hope to enter the competition again next year.

Loreto offers a wide range of sporting and non-sporting extra-curricular activities. See sub-menus for further details.

Recently my classmate Anne-Marie Byrne and I thought Ms. Fitzpatricks 1st year History class. We took them for two classes and filled the time teaching them about Celtic farming and food from their first year course. In preparation for the class we put together a power point as well as a 40 minute class plan. The power point consisted of facts and photographs and was a great way of improving our computer skills. We went through this with them as well as getting them to read, asking them questions at random and giving out homework. For the second class we put together a quick test on what we had thought them. We started that class by correcting homework then giving out the test. The next week after we corrected the tests we gave them to Ms. Fitzpatrick to hand back to them. This experience was great chance to work on, and improve some of our skills. We took the opportunity in 4th year to get some experience in the teaching field and to see if we would have a future interest.

The transition years got a talk about 4-2-1 Drugs Awareness programme from Ossory Youth staff Jane Furey and Mel Bay. They went through the training programme that they do with select number of Loreto and CBS students. They have been working with Loreto for 8 years and this is the first year CBS have gotten involved. 4-2-1 is very popular and lots of applications are received. The best 30 go on to do an interview with Mel and Jane. After being shortlisted for an interview being disappointed not to get in is only natural. However the interviews were fair and consisted of a set of standard questions then handed over to you for a two minute presentation on the topic of your choice. 20 girls were picked from Loreto and 14 boys from CBS.

The 4-2-1 training takes place over 4 school days in Ossory Youth, Desert Hall, New Street. We are thought about Drugs and Alcohol use in today’s society, the effects of using them and also peer pressure and how in reality it’s not so easy to say “no”. Our skills improve also through this training by the many role plays that involve teamwork and presentations that involve organisation and confidence. The days are spent learning new ways of controlling the class room and practising scenarios. We learn useful ice-breakers and methods to breaking tension or simply separate two noisy friends. Splitting into groups and teams helps us to teach other what we know about drugs, alcohol and peer pressure. It’s not focused on negatives either, we’re reminded that there is good peer pressure too. We’ve spent time making our 40 minute class plans so in January we can start our 6 week programme where we teach what we learned to the 1st year S.P.H.E. classes.

After competing in the All Ireland Chess Finals in Limerick last year, all school chess players are called to the opportunity to represent the school at the same tournament of March this year. Loretos chess co-ordinator, Ms Delaney, hopes to enter a team of four adroit chess players to Marches tournament, and possibly an extra team if demand prevails and an exceptional number of students wish to represent the school in this game of intense mental focus snd effort, flawless strategies and mathematical appeal. Practise is held in the first year social areas room five, and is open to all captivated students.