On Wednesday 1st February 2023, the children from the Senior Room travelled to the Sacred Heart in Tullamore for the VEX Robotics Competition. The children have spent the last few weeks preparing for the competition. 

This years game was called "Slapshot" and the children have to build a robot that could empty discs from a number of dispensers and then try to get as many of the orange discs across the barrier to the other side of the arena. The children spent some time building two robots - the prototype for the game which could shoot discs and reach over the barrier with its arm. However, we found that this robot was not great and wouldn't work for us. We then built a second robot that could tip the dispensers and from there decided that pushing the discs across the barrier would be great. 

For the coding part of the competition it was great to see the children working together to code the robot to play the game. They developed their problem solving skills and mathematical skills so much. They had so many ideas that at one point I thought some of the children would fall out over it! 

During the competition there were three parts to the competition:
(1) The teamwork challenges where our team played the game with another school to score as high as possible. 
(2) The coding part where we coded the robot to play the game
(3) Driver skills where we played the full game on our own. 
The children played so well in all areas of the competition. 

It was such an enjoyable day for everyone and the children performed so well and represented the school so well. I can't say how proud we are of each and everyone of you. We would like to say a big thank you to Ray Bell from Offaly County Council for organising the day, Dean and David Hodge for all their support throughout the competition and to the Sacred Heart for hosting the competition. 
We are already looking forward to what next years competition will be! 

We want to thank past pupil Cathal Donoghue for facilitating GAA lessons with all the classes in the school. The children enjoyed every minute of the GAA lessons and have learned lots from Cathal. ​

As Coolanarney N.S. is a green schools, we always ensure that our school is clean. The boys and girls in 5th Class did a spring clean up of the yard, the laneway beside the school and the front of school too picking up any litter we found in bushes or lying on the ground. 

On Wednesday 4th May 2022, 6th Class made their Confirmation in Mount Bolus Church. The children have worked very hard this past year in preparation for the big day. Learning their prayers and understanding what it means to receive the Sacrament of Confirmation. 
A special thank you to Fr. Meade, class teacher, Ms. Flynn and all teachers and parents who helped the boys and girls in preparing for this special occasion. 

On Friday 6th May 2022, the children from 5th and 6th class participated in the Offaly VEX Robotics competition in O'Connor Park, Tullamore. 50 Primary school from across Offaly participated in the competition. The children put in so much work over the past number of weeks. From building the robot, making changes to the robot, driving the robot to try to score as many points as possible, coding the robot and developing their mathematical and ICT skills even further. 
The children really enjoyed the day and didn't let the rain spoil their enjoyment of it. They performed so well and they applied their knowledge from practising the past few weeks into action. There were many other STEM activities there on the day - from Minecraft, microbits, Microsoft Dreamscape and StarDome Planetarium. The children also go the opportunity to see the Secondary Schools Robotics competition in action. 
This was a super opportunity for the children and the school and  will continue to participate in the competition in years to come! 

Over the past few weeks we have been making a lot of progress with the Robotics Competition! 
We built two robots and began practising driving them and having a bit of fun trying to get the balls into the center. The children were allowed to experiment themselves on how to achieve the highest score possible. Everyone had some great ideas and worked very well together in pairs to do so. 
Finally, we played the game itself - 60 seconds driving the robot and getting as many balls into the center. Each pair had to work together and to collaborate with the other pair to get the highest score possible. The children are doing so well and have been coming up with ideas in changing one of the robots to a fling balls into the high box (which gets us more points!).

Have a look through the photos and the videos below.