During the school year 2014/2015 the children in Ms. Houston’s class participated in the Blue Star Programme. The aim of this programme is to foster better knowledge and understanding of the European Union and how it affects our lives amongst Irish primary pupils through classroom projects and activities. The Blue Star Programme introduces participants to the EU, what it means and how it works. The goal of the Programme is to foster a strong sense of citizenship and leadership among participants that goes far beyond the school walls and into the wider community.There are four different strands to the programme: Historical, Geographical, Institutional, Cultural and Creative.
For the historical strand the children in 3rd and 4th class studied three famous Europeans; Tom Crean, Helen of Troy and Christopher Columbus. The 5th and 6th class children studied World War One and World War two, this included pretending to be soldiers in the trenches writing letter home to loved ones and studying the Michael Morpurgo novel -War Horse. For the geographical strand each child studied a different European country, learning about the language, food, culture, demographics etc of each and then compiled a fact file in the form of a poster. We made contact with a school in Berlin and the children exchanged letters. For the institutional part of the programme we invited a former M.E.P, Mr. Pat ‘The Cope’ Gallagher to our school to explain how the European Parliament works. Pat spent an afternoon talking to the children and answering their questions, he was very impressed with their level of knowledge and interest in all things European. For the cultural and creative side of the programme the students looked at the lives and work of the artists, Vincent Van Gogh and Pablo Picasso and even had a go at recreating some of their masterpieces. The children were taught a few phrases in French and we had ‘European Day’ in the school when the children were asked to dress in traditional European costumes and tasted a variety of different foods.
When we had all of our projects completed we had to submit a report to the Blue Star Programme co-ordinators who subsequently awarded us with our Blue Star Certificate and EU Flag.
On Friday 2nd of October we invited Pat ‘The Cope’ Gallagher back to the school to officially raise the EU Flag. We invited parents to join us for the occasion and we were especially pleased to welcome back the students who have progressed to secondary school since the completion of the project but who were very much part of it’s success.
As Ireland are currently involved in the Rugby World Cup, we took the opportunity to entertain our guests with a version of the Haka (as Gaeilge) and a rousing rendition of Ireland’s Call. We rounded off our celebration with refreshments, which included some lovely home baking provided by students and parents.
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