St Colmcille’s NS pupils enjoy day trip to St Joseph’s, Rochfortbridge

Pupils from St Colmcille’s NS, Gainstown enjoyed a day trip to St Joseph’s Secondary School, Rochfortbridge. Here two of them have written about their experiences.

By Aisling Dacaymat, fifth class

It was a bright and sunny morning as we left our school for Rochfortbridge. We left at 8:50 “on the noggin” and arrived at 9 o’clock(ish). As we arrived we were guided to our ‘home room’, where we met our tour guides for the day; Ms Duffy, Mr Cocoman, Alana and Kelly Burke (Katie Burke’s sister!) and that we started our Rochfortbridge tour.

Throughout the day we did many fun activities like art, woodwork and metalwork, science and PE. We also spent time outside playing tug-o-war, penalties and co-operative races with inflatables.

Inside the school, we were escorted around the classrooms – one of which was a kitchen which had the most delicious smell of buns baking wafting out the door and down the corridors!

Speaking of food, at around 1:30 all the fifth classes present enjoyed a scrumptious meal – a BBQ box containing a burger, sausages and chicken wings. The canteen staff were all lovely and overall I’d rate the food an impressive 9/10!

Sadly, after lunch it was time to go. I loved the visit to all the classrooms and met many helpful teachers. The activities were interesting and fun, and we had amusing moments like when Oliver Keane’s hands were momentarily set on fire in the science lab! and meeting Mr Maloney’s robot ‘Robo’.

Overall, I’d definitely recommend the school and I hope to attend it when the time comes to move on to secondary school.

By Matthew Tully, fifth class

On Thursday May 26, we went on a fun day to St Joseph’s Secondary School, Rochfortbridge. On arrival, we were brought to our base room, where we left our belongings. After that we had some fun soccer activities: football pool, football darts and football target practice. We were also shown around by two helpful TY students, one being a past pupil of this school.

After that we were shown to the astroturf soccer pitch (it was huge!) and we took penalties on each other. The green team won (my team). I would also like to proudly say I scored and saved my two penalties. It was also topped off with a tug-o-war game which everyone enjoyed.

We then went to the science lab, where we saw and conducted some science experiments. We discovered what happens when you mix fairy liquid with methane gas and then set it on fire! My friend Oliver was the volunteer in our group… he was panicked but just shook his hands, but it didn’t do any harm, thank God!

Subsequently we went to a classroom to watch a virtual tour of the school which was quite impressive.

Next up was woodwork, and that was really cool because we saw some of the students’ creations and all the time and effort that had been put into them.

In Mr Maloney’s room we sanded down plastic and played with ‘Robo the robot. Robo could dance, high five, move left and right and even reverse or go forward. It was a sight to be seen.

We then went to the PE hall, where we played multiple sports including soccer, basketball and uni-hoc. It was really well set up and everyone got at least two games each.

We were then entertained with inflatable games and had our lunch at 1:30 – burgers, sausages, chicken-wings and drinks. It was so tasty!

Sadly, after lunch our day came to an end. We packed up our things and made our way to the bus and back to school.

I think I can speak for everyone here when I say that we all thoroughly enjoyed our day at St Joseph’s, Rochfortbridge and many of us will be hoping to attend this great school in the future.