This article is from page 28 of the 2008-05-06 edition of The Clare People. OCR mistakes are to be expected so download the original SWF or the rendered page 28 JPG
QUERRIN National School is very proud of its pupils who have ensured national recognition for the west Clare school.
School principal Elizabeth O’Shea paid tribute to Michael Duffy and Ronan Allen who were crowned Clare winners of the Engineers Ire- land STEPS to engineering K’NEX Regional Challenge, which took, place last week in Limerick Institute of Technology.
The two fifth class pupils will now represent Clare at the Engineers Ire- land K’NEX Challenge National Fi- nal in Dublin in June.
They will compete with other pri-
mary school children from across Ireland for the prestigious title of Junior Engineer of Ireland 2008.
Under the watchful eye of the schools other mainstream teacher, Mairead Allen, fourth and fifth class boys and girls entered the competi- nO
The school has been involved in the competition for a number of years.
The two-teacher school with one special education teacher was de- lighted when the two boys secured the regional title, as were the boys themselves.
“T can’t believe we have won. We have been practicing for the last three weeks non-stop. I love playing with K’NEX. You can make any-
thing from it,” said Ronan.
“T am very proud of them. They are excellent children, not just those two children but all of them and their parents are also very supportive,” said Ms O’Shea.
“This success was a joint effort from everyone in the school.”
John Power, Chartered Engineer and Director General of Engineers Ireland, congratulated Michael and Ronan.
“We wish them well in the national finals. The STEPS to engineering K’NEX challenge is a fantastic op- portunity for young people to expe- rience first hand how creative and interesting engineering is. The stand- ard of entry of the K°’NEX models
from Clare was very high and this is just one of 21 regional finals that will take place before the final in the Helix in June,” he said.
This year’s K°’NEX Challenge has taken place in 750 primary schools and has involved 1,500 primary school pupils from across the country. Each team of two children competed against the clock using their imagi- nation, creativity and skill to plan, design and construct an engineering model. The pupils worked under the theme, ‘celebrating the past, creating the future’, with the educational con- struction toy, K°NEX. The Clare Re- gional Final was officiated by judges John Culligan from Eircom and Ci- aran McManus from ESBI.