On Monday 7th April we were delighted to facilitate a visit to the school by two authors; Patrick Ryan and Alan Early. Patrick has published folk tales from Shakespearian times for children and teenagers. He is also an accomplished story teller. Alan is the Irish author of the popular Arthur Quinn series of books. Patrick began the day with a storytelling session with 4 Darwin and thirty fifth year students who volunteered to attend. Patrick then conducted an inspiring creative writing workshop with the fifth year group.
Alan held two workshops, one with class Kestrel and another with class Lark. These workshops included a game show based on the Arthur Quinn books, a reading and a creative writing exercise. Thanks to their English teachers, both first year groups were very well prepared, knew the series background and had read part of the books. Some eager students had even read all three books! The authors were very impressed with St. Mary’s students. The day was a great success and all students really enjoyed it. Many thanks to all involved.
Our new computerised system has been purchased and we have already uploaded over two thousand books onto the system! We hope to have all our fiction books uploaded by the end of the school year. Once all the fiction books have been uploaded we can begin using the new system to check out books. This means that students can also search our catalogue and renew books from home.
