S.N. Naomh Seosamh

Something Fishy

We were delighted when our teacher told us that we were going to take part in the Something Fishy Project. We were really pleased to hear that we were one of only ten schools in Mayo taking part in the project and the only school in Achill.
There are a number of different parts to the Something Fishy Project.

Part 1:
This involved our teacher Mr. Kilbane attending a Something Fishy Workshop in the Mayo Education Centre in Castlebar. At this workshop he found out about the project, collected the Something Fishy Handbook, two videos and a beautiful Something Fishy Poster.

Part 2:
We really enjoyed taking part in the lessons. We worked through all the lessons in the pack. Rinne muid cuid de na ceachtanna i nGaeilge and some more in English.

For some of the lessons we worked off the worksheets. For other lessons we used our interactive whiteboard. We enjoyed watching the videos and learned a lot about fish and fishing.

In each lesson we learned something new. The lessons covered the following topics.
Water, Water Everywhere.
What Is A Fish?
Bradán Tells Her Story
Bradán’s Journey Continues
Bradán’s Journey Into The Estuary
Bradán’s Journey Ends And Begins All Over Again
Food: Nutritious And Delicious
Will There Be Any Left For Me?

One part of the project involved the life cycle of the salmon. We really enjoyed this because we did not know much about salmon when we first started the project. We found it difficult enough to remember all the facts about the salmon but we thought it was really cool that the adult salmon returned to its spawning ground to hatch new eggs. The return to the spawning became the main focus of our class project.

Part 3:
We decide to make salmon using clay, paints and varnish. We also decide to paint a background to display our salmon on. We used plywood and acrylic paints to paint the background.

Making a Clay Salmon
Materials needed:
Clay (plenty of it)
Paper
Paint
Paint brushes
Varnish
Imagination and patience (lots of it)

Materials needed:
We got some pictures of salmon to start with.
We made miniature salmon using a small piece of clay.
We used lots of clay to make larger fish.
We added detail to our fish using spoons, compasses, pencils etc.
We left our fish to dry for a week.
We painted our fish using different coloured paints.
We left them to dry over night.
The next day we varnished them to make them shiny and more durable.

Making our Background
Materials needed:
Plywood 8ft by 4ft
Paint
Paint brushes
Imagination and patience (lots of it)

Materials needed:
Our teacher drew a rough sketch of a river, with mountains, trees, rocks and a waterfall.
We painted the main parts of the background using Acrylic paints.
A few hours later we added the finer details, flowers, rocks trees, sheep, reeds and the gushing water of the waterfall.

The Finished Product
Using special glue we stuck our salmon to the background to make it look like the salmon were returning home.

Title of Our Work
We agreed to call our piece of art ‘Ag Filleadh Abhaile’ Returning Home

Part 4:
Two members of the North Western Regional Fisheries Board visited our school.

Two men called David Harrington and Rory Sheehan came into the school to talk to us as part of the Something Fishy Project. David talked about insects and Rory about fish. They talked about insects that had three tails and two tails and hoped we would be able to identify them. We had lots of questions.

Part 5:
The final part of the project involved visit to a water site to study it’s inhabitants.

On the 2 of April 2009 we went on a field trip down to a river in Dookinella to see people doing ‘electric’ fishing. We also watched a man gather insects. Two men from the North Western Regional Fisheries Board called Tommy Ginnelly and Gerry Hoban went into the river. Tommy had a big electric back pack and something that looked like a bag and a net. He turned the electric pack on and gave the fish a little shock. He caught some fish and some eels. The fish caught were trout and adult trout. They put the fish into three buckets and we got to touch them. Even first class touched them. Next Rory and David collected some insects for us. We got to identify the Stonefly and the Mayfly by the number of tails they had. We spotted some caddis fly larva too. We had a great day.