Waltons Champions

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On Monday the 8th of April, the Waltons group from Knockanean N.S. travelled up to the National Concert Hall in Dublin for the final of the Waltons Music for Schools competition. We gathered at the school at quarter to seven in the morning. We then travelled the long journey up to Dublin on the bus. Several teachers accompanied us on the day- Amy, Tina, Louise, Conor, Aileen, Fiona, and Mr. Curran. We arrived at the National Concert Hall at around half past eleven, and we gathered in a room and did a sound check to trial run our performance. After the sound check we had a bit of lunch and then the whole competition began at one o’clock. We found out that we would be the second last group performing on the day. There were six primary schools, six secondary schools and a special school also performing in the competition. Luckily, we had great seats in the front row of the hall. We watched the beginning performances and we soon realised that there was a very tough competition! The other performances were very energetic and it was nice to see the different genres of music and how they responded to the theme of ‘Music Moves us’.

Finally, our moment to perform came. Amy went on stage and introduced our performance which we had named ‘Stepping through the river of sound’. She also told the presenter about how much work we had to do to prepare the performance. We then began performing and we were feeling mixed emotions at the start. Then the crowd began to clap and we even got a standing ovation at the end! When we had finished, we received a huge round of applause and we knew then that we had performed really well. After the performances, we had a nervous wait until they announced the winners, and it took over fifty minutes for them to decide! A group called the Gospel Project entertained us while we waited for the results.

Then the presenter came out to announce the results. After they called out third place, and then second place, we felt so nervous and excited. When the presenter called out first place, she only got to start announcing ‘Knockanean’ when she was drowned out by the cheers and celebrations from our school! We couldn’t believe that we had come in first place, and it was amazing to hear our name being called out. Amy and Naoise then went on stage to collect the prize and certificate. It took us ages to recover from the shock of winning, but eventually we gathered up and got back on the bus. On the way home we stopped at Junction 14 for a meal of delicious Supermacs, Papa Johns and Subway. We arrived back to school very late at half nine in the evening, and there were so many people gathered at the school to welcome us home. It was a brilliant experience and we had an amazing day, which we will remember for the rest of our lives!!

By Orla Brooks, Alison Casey, Hugh Garvey and Archie Hill.

World Book Day 2024

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We celebrated World Book Day in school on Thursday the 7th of March. To celebrate this day, we all dressed up as our favourite characters from a book or a movie. Some of us chose to dress up as superheroes like Batman and Spiderman. There were a lot of costumes from movies too like Willy Wonka, Fantastic Mr. Fox and Wednesday Adams. Many pupils also dressed up as sports stars, like Clare players and soccer stars. In the infant classes, we all came together to listen to stories and play a few games. We also showed off our costumes and some of us brought in books that had our characters in them. At break time there was music playing and we had a little disco outside! We really enjoyed World Book Day and our favourite parts included reading books together and dressing up.

By Cian O’Sullivan and Clara O’Brien. 

Waltons Music for Schools Competition

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Pupils from the music club and choir began practising for the Waltons School of Music competition when we came back to school after the Christmas holidays. The teachers who worked with us were Amy, Tina, Louise and Conor. Firstly, we started picking out our favourite pieces of music and we also looked at the theme of the competition which was ‘Music Moves Us’. We thought it would be nice to move through the different genres of music from contemporary to traditional, to jazz to classical, to rap and to pop. After this, we chose songs that would suit each genre and put them together so that they would flow nicely. After some discussion, we chose who would be able to rap, play traditional music, play jazz, etc. It was hard at first to practise all of the genres together, but eventually, we put them together and it began to sound great. For the beginning section of the piece we changed the lyrics of a song from Frozen to be about the theme of ‘Music Moves Us’. Then it led into the traditional music part where we had fiddles, concertinas, tin whistles and an Irish dancer performing. After this section two pupils were rapping and street dancing. Then came a classical section called Pachelbell’s canon. After this, we played Viva la Vida for the pop section with pop dancing and we finished the piece with Hit the Road Jack for the jazz section. The final piece was just under five minutes long. We brought everything back together by finishing with the opening song that we sang at the beginning. Overall, we practised about three times a week leading up to the closing date and we also did a lot of practice ourselves at home.

On the week of the closing date, we recorded the finished piece a few times until we were happy with the final video. Then we nervously awaited the results which were released on Friday March 1st. Most of the pupils from the group gathered to listen to Lyric FM to hear the announcement of the finalists. We couldn’t believe it when they called out Knockanean N.S.! We are one of six finalists chosen from the whole country, and we will be performing in the National Concert Hall in Dublin on April 8th in front of a huge audience. We have really enjoyed the experience and our favourite parts included hearing our school name being called out live on radio and having the chance to come together to play many types of music. We are really looking forward to performing in the National Concert Hall in April.

By Cadhan O’Loughlin, Mila Rose Flannery, Harrison O’Doherty and Niamh O’Reilly.