When we came  into 5th class, last September, our teacher told us about a project we would be doing during the year. It would be all about the Grand Canal. We were very excited and we felt very important because a school in Belfast would be working with us.

We got into groups and we talked about the project and the canal. We knew very little about the canal. We did not know that the full name of the canal is The Grand Canal. Some of us thought that the canal was always in Clondalkin but it is only about 200 years old.

Many experts came to our school and told us lots of very interesting things about the history of the canal and why it was built. Dick Warner came first. He was brilliant. He gave us a talk in the school hall. The following day he took us on a bus along the local stretch of the canal and then on to Sallins to see the Leinster Aqueduct. We had a great time walking along the canal looking at the plants and wild flowers. Dick told us the names of the trees, plants, birds, fish and insects. He was exhausted from answering all our questions.

Our next visitor was Faith Wilson from Birdwatch Ireland. She showed us slides of all the birds that live on and around the canal. She had a tape of bird songs and sounds. It was a brilliant slide show.

Godfrey Donohue came to visit us next. He was just great. He is a very good and experienced fisherman. We dressed up in our old runners or wellies and Godfrey took us down to the canal to see the fish. We brought back some of the canal water to examine it closely. Godfrey brought all his fishing gear out to the classroom. Some of the boys in our class love fishing and they were very interested in Godfrey's fishing gear and tackle.

Another day Jim (who also works for the Eastern Regional Fisheries Board) and Godfrey brought us a lovely big fish tank and fish for our classroom. All the other classes were coming into our room to see our fish. You can see us looking at it in the picture above.

Dick Warner came back again to take us down to the 9th Lock. Donal O'Brien is the lockkeeper and he showed us how to open and close the lock gates. It was a bit scary seeing all the water rushing out the gates. It was really very deep, about 20 feet deep.

The school in Belfast is called Largymore Primary School. We wrote to our partners and they wrote to us. Then we started video conferencing with them. You can read about one video conference on our quiz page. We were very shy in the beginning. Our teacher had to help us. The second time we had lots of notes ready and we talked about the Grand Canal and the workers and about the history of the canal. The Largymore students told us about their project at the next video conferencing. We are nearly finished our projects now. We will present the project to our parents and friends on May 31st.

We also worked on another project on the Grand Canal with all of the senior classes in our school. You can look at the website we helped to create for the SIP Project by clicking on the rainbow.

You can also look at our school website which has a link to this project.

E-mail us about our project by clicking on the mail box.

This website was deigned by Deirdre Corcoran.
The curriculum coordinator was Ms O'Neill.
The project was prepared by her  5th class pupils.
All materials are copyright St. Ronan's National Scool.