This Blog

We believe that our English Department is vibrant and innovative, and we started this site at the beginning of our 2006-07 school year :

  • To showcase our pupils' work, from the youngest to the oldest.
  • To share enthusiasms from pupils, teachers and others about books they are reading.
  • To suggest interesting and helpful websites and links.
  • To note interesting, thought-provoking and quirky work elsewhere on the Web.
  • To write about and highlight the huge array of extracurricular activities at the College, such as drama, theatre visits and talks.
  • To provide an opportunity for our pupils to write about these, and learn the skills of shaping writing in public.
  • To build up an archive of the best creative writing produced by our pupils.
  • To provide a section of department documents that can easily be accessed by pupils.
  • To help parents, Old Columbans and friends to keep in touch with SCC, supplementing the official website. 
  • and in March 2009 we started podcasting - interviews, book discussions, revision programmes and more.
To learn more about the Department, click across to the tab 'The Department'.


As time has gone by, we have discovered more and more uses for our blog. Our website recommendations are now very extensive - generally, ones that are useful for pupils. There are now 100s of examples of pupils' work. In our two and a half years, we have posted to the blog. Each year, over 30% of the children in the school contribute to it, whether through a poem, an essay, a book recommendation or in other ways.

In term-time, a big part of our focus is on pupils' work. In the holidays, there are more general literary posts.

So this is what the blog does now:

    * It publishes as much pupil writing as possible - poems, stories, essays, book recommendations, reviews. And it provides a way to share this writing, for pupils to be inspired by each others' writing.
    * It communicates our enthusiasm about all things literary and linguistic.
    * It's mad keen on books - on novels, poetry, drama and more, and provides a way for staff and pupils to communicate their loves and discoveries.
    * It reports on what's happening in our beautiful Library.
    * It reports on all the drama that happens in school.
    * It's a diary on anything to do with English; the blog format suits the rhythm of a school year perfectly.
    * It provides podcasts for general interest (including interviews with interesting people) as well as revision podcasts for pupils - such as on Shakespeare plays and Leaving Cert poetry.
    * It recommends interesting articles on the internet for pupils, staff and other visitors.
    * It produces lots of links to valuable and useful websites - some for work, some for amusement. And it uses Twitter to back this up.
    * It showcases the interests of the school's English teachers.
    * It likes posting interesting visual images - photographs, 'Wordles', paintings.
    * It provides material for biennial books (Going Places in 2008, Outside the Frame in 2010).
    * It gives easy access for our pupils to the documents they have to have - reading lists, advice on essays and more. It's a kind of electronic filing cabinet.
    * It publishes online our College magazines, like the Library's 'Submarine', and 'Second Bell'.
    * It loves anything to do with Shakespeare, who's still very much at the heart of what we do.
    * It publishes or links to our Poem of the Week, which we use in class, and put on noticeboards around the school.
    * It's our Department's face to the world.