Let’s Get Started!                        January 5^th                                           Weeks 1 & 2

This programme is an entrepreneurial awareness and skills enhancement programme for primary school children. This programme aims to help children recognise enterprise and entrepreneurship and to foster an awareness and understanding of the entrepreneur’s role in the community therefore empowering the child to start to think and act with the initiative, creativity independence and ideas that are invaluable in the modern world.

• What is an entrepreneur?
• Do I know any? Is my parent really one!?
• Types of business and entrepreneurship?
• Characteristics? Expectations? Stereotypes? Challenges?
• Looking at case studies – what can we learn?
• Exploring new ideas?
• But what am I good at? What are my strengths? What talents can I see in my classmates?
• I have a solution to a problem…… What skills am I lacking to move this idea forward…
• Pause and pitch…

 

 Meet the Dragons                           15^th January 2015                               Week 3

The ‘Meet the Dragons’ process is a vital part of the Junior Entrepreneur Programme (JEP) and our groups prepared their presentations with some nervousness to meet the Dragons on a snowy, windy and  extremely wet Thursday afternoon, 15^th January last. Our chosen Dragons were Mr Barney Reilly, Entrepreneur and International businessman, Mr Patrick Twomey, Entrepreneur and International Human rights lawyer, Mrs Lorraine Smith, Deputy Principal with special interest in Child Psychology and Dr AnnNoelle Bennett, School Principal and Education Lecturer.

Led by their group leader(s), each group ( please click on photographs to see each group)  presented their Project Idea to the Dragons and a variety of probing questions helped to generate discussion and to challenge each group’s thinking and ideas. Each Dragon provided feedback to each group and then had the difficult task of choosing a ‘Big’ idea. The External Dragons complimented the class on their presentations – videos, power-points, prototypes, solutions to perceived problems, financial issues etc.  and were very impressed with their confidence and speaking skills. (Their teacher is really proud of them all too!!)

An enormous amount of work and thought was acknowledged and praised.

Perhaps some ideas just need more refinement and may certainly be millionaire-makers in the future!

Taking into account the recommendations from the Dragons and in consultation with a number of others, including the JEP co-ordinator in Head Office, it was decided that although there was much merit in many of the ideas, two ideas in particular were addressing a particular situation which has relevance in our community.

And so………….

We now have two ‘Big’ ideas and the class has chosen their roles in various teams – marketing and sales, production and design, storytelling and presenting, record keeping and finance etc. having discussed and identified their strengths through a number of games and honest conversations…

We look forward to building on and utilising our talents, growing and developing new ways of thinking and to solving problems which we are certain to encounter.

Very many thanks to Mr O’Reilly and Mr Twomey for giving us their time, attention and expertise. We will try to do you proud!

 

 

Business visitors to the classroom            22nd  January 2015                   Week 4

Many thanks to our business visitors and entrepreneurs, Mr Nally and Mr Mulcahy, both business and social entrepreneurs. They helped explain the roles of both types of entrepreneurship in communities and how we all benefit from both types of activities. We really appreciate their openness and honesty in explaining their business stories – it’s not always fabulous or 9-5 or instantly rewarding. They really helped us by giving us ideas as to how we can improve our business models. What we really learned was how important it is to be nice.  The customer may not always be right, but the right thing to do is to treat every customer nicely. Thank you so much to Mr. Nally and Mr. Mulcahy for giving us your time and attention; we really will try to take all your advice on board.

The annual Christmas Concert was held on Friday December 12th.

It’s a Baby was performed by the junior classes (Junior – 2nd). Christmas really does beginwith tea-towels and tinsel! The X-mas Factor was performed by 3rd-6th classes.           Well done to all involved – the children spoke and acted so well and really gave us their best. We are very proud of our pupils!                                                                                         This was our first play in the newly renovated hall and we really appreciate all the hard work undertaken by the Community Association; we again say a big thanks Seamus and the committee for the continued use of the hall on a regular basis.                                      Please enjoy some pictures of a great night!

The Christmas spirit has arrived at St. Fiach’s and there is great excitement around at this busy time of year. Each child designed their own Christmas card and parents had the opportunity to purchase the finished cards to send to their friends and family.

A big thanks to Claire who brought in the special post box so that the children could send their reminders to Santa!

Christmas Fair: The second annual Christmas Fair was held on December 6th and all credit due to the extremely dedicated Parents’ Association committee. It is a huge undertaking over many weeks and thanks to the families who had to manage without their parents who were busily occupied with St. Fiach’s stalls!

Well done to all our students for their great effort during our recent Maths Week. Each class were very busy all week participating in Maths Trails, Maths stations and shape spotting!

3rd-6th classes were also given online tasks during the week on www.Mangahigh.com. There were plenty of gold, silver and bronze medals achieved. Well done all!

5th and 6th classes had a visit from Tony Prunty who discussed the use of Maths in day-to-day life and also in sport. There was a focus on the GAA where Maths is highly evident from the lines on the pitch (13m, 21m, 45m, 65m etc) to the use of numbers on the score boards. We really appreciated your visit Tony!

Here are some snaps from our busy week!