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Visit to Collinstown Park Community School  (April-2009)

Avril Madden ...
The school that came to visit us about deaf issues invited us down to their school. They wanted to show us around their school and they had some games planned for the day. It was a great day because it was my 18th birthday.

When we arrived we had a meet and greet and then we went to the sports hall for a morning of energising games. They had a list of games for us to play. First, they got us into groups and I was the only St. Mary's girl in a group with three boys and two girls from Collinstown Park. It was a great morning especially on my 18th birthday. After the games, the teacher gave all the girls from my school a little gift of an Mp3 player.

I talked most of the day with one of the girls from that school-, Shauna Keating. We have kept in touch ever since they came to our school.

The teacher and the pupils then brought us around the classes in the school. I was a bit envious when they showed us the hair and beauty room and massage room. I want those classes in our school. I also quite liked the metal work room. The teacher gave us all another little present of a key ring they made in metal work. It was so thoughtful of them.

Then we had a game in the science lab of CSI(Crime Scene Investigation). We were put into groups again and given a finger-printing sheet each. We looked at our different finger prints to discover who the mystery murderer was. That didn't work so we tried to see a reaction with the different type of crystals we got. The teacher put each of the crystals through the fire of the Bunsen Burner and if the reaction colour turned red he had suspects, if green they were fine. Two girls were suspects so the teacher had to match the palm print he had to each of the girls' palms. The mystery murderer was one of the girls from that school.

From my view, the two schools are different. Collinstown Park has sports facilities and a gym but we have very few sports facilities in our school. They also have choices of different classes such as hair and beauty and metal work. We do not have either. I would prefer to stay in our school as I like smaller classes compared to their classes of about 20 students.

Nora Duggan ...
The students at Collinstown Park Community School invited the Transition Year girls over to their school. They had organised a fun 'half-day' for us as a 'thank you' for teaching them sign language for their project.

When we arrived at the reception, we saw a banner that spelled "Welcome to Collinstown" in ISL alphabet. They brought us to the gym to play games. We had to split up into different teams and compete against each other. My team was called 'Cheetahs'. Most of the games were new to me but they were fun. We had a break and they gave us a present each, a pedometer with a radio.

After break, we had a tour around the school. They showed us the hair and beauty room, which looked like an actual hair salon. They also showed us the massage room, the library and the engineering room. In the engineering room, they gave us a keyring each with our name on it along with 'CPCC & St. Marys 2009'.

The last room we went in to was the science laboratory. We found a person lying on the floor, 'dead'. The teacher said we had to investigate to find out the murderer. We had to do different tests: the fingerprint test, simple-flame test and the DNA test. I learnt a lot in this 'Crime Scene Investigation' class and it was also fun. We found the murderer in the end.

I enjoyed this visit as they provided us with fun and I had a great laugh playing games. I also liked the presents they gave us. I had a good day at Collinstown Park Community School.

The differences between Collinstown mainstream school and St. Mary's are: St. Mary's have smaller numbers of students in a class while Collinstown have an average of thirty students in a class. So it would be difficult for deaf student to keep up with what's happening in the class if they can't lip-read everyone in the room. St Mary's have teachers who are able to sign while Collinstown teachers don't have experience in communicating with deaf students. The facilities in Collinstown are very good and they provided a lot of choices for the students but I would say it would be difficult for me to be in mainstream as I depend on lip-reading and sign language for communication.