This article is from page 37 of the 2007-11-20 edition of The Clare People. OCR mistakes are to be expected so download the original SWF or the rendered page 37 JPG
THIS year’s Junior Cert class at St Joseph’s Secondary School in Span- ish Point will go down as one of the best achievers in maths and science in the long history of the school.
Alongside a host of classmates with impressive scores on both subjects, Katie Curtin from Miltown Malbay secured a brace of As to help her be- come one of only a handful of stu- dents to gain a perfect 12As.
She was made to wait for her suc- cess however, having been awarded 11 As and a B in September before her grades were improved after a re- fe SEM oo)
“Any student who gets Il As is a
great result, but to get 12 is amaz- ing. There are very few schools who would even offer 12 subjects,” said school principal Mary Crawford.
“We offer a lot of different subjects to give each student the chance to experience a wide range of topics to choose from.”
Katie’s sister Clare was also the top-achieving Leaving Cert student at the school this year.
“T like trying out different things such as experiments and that. I like physics but I’m doing biology as well and that is also good. I like business as well so I might end up doing some- thing in that area,” said Katie.
The group is taught by maths and science teacher Marie Lynch.
“They’re a great gang and all of them are very good at maths. A lot of them had 90 per cent or more in their maths mocks, so it didn’t surprise me so much that they got on so well. They’re great workers, they wouldn’t have done so well if they didn’t work so hard,’ she said.
“T like Ms Lynch, she is a bril- liant teacher,’ said Geraldine Rynne from Miltown Malbay. “I like doing the experiments. Like today we are doing experiments to measure how fast something is accelerating. It’s very interesting to figure out how different things work.”
Sarah Donnelly, who received 10 As, also enjoys the class. “I really like doing the experiments and see-
ing how things work. We got to burn things in chemistry today, so that was good fun. I would really like to do something in the science area when I go to college. I’m not really sure what yet though,” she said.
“T like going at it and finding out how things work for myself. You learn more if you figure it out for yourself instead of reading it in a book. I’d like to learn more about different things and how they work,” said Sean McMahon from Kilmurry
“We all like the experiments I think. I like to try and solve prob- lem so it’s good fun. Fifth year is a lot tougher than it was in Junior Cert but I still like it,” said Siobhan Talty from Miltown.