Book Drive – 03 March 2023 Recently, we collected book donations for a book drive event in March. Students, staff, parents and guardians of students and members of the wider Cluny community kindly donated second hand books to us for this event. Thank you to everyone who donated to us. Books donated included children’s, middle grade, young adult, adult fiction and non-fiction. We had a fantastic array of all kinds of titles available for purchase. Our Green Schools were very busy pricing and organising the stall for the day. We were delighted to help them throughout this initiative. This book sale will coincided with the sixth year coffee morning. All money raised was donated to St. Joseph’s Care Center in Shankill, this year’s sixth year charity. During the sale, parents, guardians, students and staff had […]
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Harry Potter Week 2023
Our annual week of magic returned to Cluny in March this year! Marking the third annual week of Harry Potter Week here at Cluny Library, we hope you all enjoyed the themed weeks activities.
What took place at Cluny Library for Harry Potter Week?
As in previous years, decorations and themed displays could be found all over the library. The raffles and flow chart quizzes returned for students to take part in. The which Hogwarts House do you belong in and the discover your Patronus flow chart remained ever popular. This year, the prizes included 3D printed Harry Potter wands, pens and key rings.
Olivander’s Wand Shop also returned with new wands from different witches and wizards appearing. Students were tasked with identifying who owned which wand.
The Flying Keys also made their return, hiding amongst the library books, shelves and plants. Students had to find all 8 hidden keys in the library. Well done to our first year students and visiting members from The Harold who were the only ones to find all of them!
Quidditch also returned to Cluny as lucky P.E. classes were given the chance to try the popular wizard sport!
New to the week’s activities were Potions Class and Care of Magical Creatures Class. In potions class, a selection of potions needed to be made, students had to select which ingredients made which potion. Meanwhile in Care of Magical Creatures, students had to identify the make-up of magical creatures such as centaurs, pegasus and hyppogriffs.
Primary Schools visit
We were delighted to welcome students fro
m Johnstown and The Harold to Cluny library to take part in a morning of fund activities as part of Harry Potter Week. A Harry Potter quiz with snacks was first on our agendas! The quiz was followed by board games in the library including giant snakes and ladders, giant chess, connect four, draughts and lots more. Well done to our TY students who were their buddies throughout their time here. We hope they all enjoyed their time here at Cluny!
We hope you all enjoyed Harry Potter Week and are excited for its return!!
World Book Day 2023
On Thursday, 02 March, we celebrated World Book Day here at Cluny. Staff and students jumped in to take part in our bookish themed activities. What is World Book Day? World Book Day is an annual celebration of literature and literary culture across the UK and Ireland. World Book Day was first celebrated in the UK and Ireland in 1997 but it was created and recognised by UNESCO as a celebration of reading in April 1995. Since it’s founding, it is now celebrated in over 100 countries. We are delighted to join in the fun and promote the joy of reading with our school community here in the library. As part of the celebrations, we received book tokens for all of our students. These tokens were digital this year and allowed students to exchange […]
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House Reading Challenge
The House Reading Challenge returns! With the success of our first House Reading Challenge last year, we are delighted to run this event again in conjunction with our House System here at Cluny. What is the House Reading Pledge? Each House will take part in a reading challenge to read the most pages. Over the course of this term, each House will create a team consisting of the House Captains, house members and members of staff. The maximum size of these teams is 23 members. While not a requirement to have 23 team mates, the more that are on the team, the better! These teams will read as much as they can and record the total number of pages they have read over this time period. There will be a team member for every year […]
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Christmas Reading Guide
Christmas Reading Guide 2022 Finding the perfect book for others can be tricky, especially with all the potential options available to us. Choosing a new novel, something popular or selecting something from the right genre for avid readers or reluctant readers alike can be daunting. With this in mind, we created this reading guide which captures some of popular titles from the library as well as titles currently trending in book charts and online. We hope you find this guide helpful. Book titles include a link to their information pages on Easons. To access the reading guide, please see the following: Christmas Book Guide 2022. If you are looking for additional reading guides or lists, please visit our reading guides page here on the Cluny Library website.
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Inspiring Women from Irish History Week
From the 28 of November until the 02 of December, we held a themed week on inspiring women from Irish history here at Cluny library.
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Winter Readathon
Winter Readathon 2022 Our Winter Readathon returns this year! Last year we had lots of students and staff take part in our reading challenge and we are delighted to run it again this year. All students and staff are invited to take part in what is sure to be a fun initiative! What is a Readathon? During a readathon, participants are invited to read as much as they can during a set period of time. For this readathon, there is no prescribed reading list so participants can choose whatever they’d like to read. How to take part All students interested in taking part should let Ms. Curtin know. All participants are added to a shared document where they can highlight the books that they have read. This readathon takes place between the 21st of November […]
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New Library Reading Bundles
A new reading initiative will be launching next week ahead of our mid term break. It can be very difficult to decide what to read. Maybe you have just finished a long running series or a set of books by your favorite author. Maybe you are struggling to find the next series to try, new author or perhaps recently you haven’t been able to find anything that catches your eye or interest. With so many options of books to read, it can sometimes feel overwhelming or too difficult to find that next book. To help students in their pursuit of their new favorite author, series or genre, we are creating a new reading initiaitive for all here at Cluny. As we approach the mid term break, it is a perfect opportunity to visit the library […]
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Welcome back to Cluny Library
Welcome back! We hope you all had a refreshing summer break and are ready for another exciting school year here at Cluny. Over the summer we have made some changes at Cluny Library that we would like to make you aware of. We are looking forward to welcoming you all to the library and assisting you in any queries you may have. Opening Hours We have made some changes to our opening hours this term. As always, we are open at break and lunchtime for browsing, activities and resting. Last term, the library closed at 14:00 daily. We now have some changes to this. On Tuesdays and Thursdays, the library will be open until the end of the school day. Our new closing time on these days is 13:45. Library Communication Channels As per last […]
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Summer Reading Challenge – Recommended Reading
Summer Reading Challenge 2022 – Recommended Reading List As you know, this summer we are holding a reading challenge asking students to read a title that matches each of the below prompts: Read a memoir Read something by an Irish author Read a science fiction novel Read a spy/detective novel Read an award winning book Read a historical fiction novel Ask someone for a book recommendation and read it Read a book featuring royalty Read a book featuring magic or magical realism Students who create a reading list which records each book they’ve read that matches the above will receieve a prize! One book might match multiple prompts. As long as read materials match, they’re applicable to the challenge. How to Enter Deadline for reading lists will be announced closer to September. Reading lists can […]
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World Book Day
World Book Day – 03 March 2022 World Book Day took place on the 03 March 2022. We celebrated the 25th anniversary of World Book Day this year at Cluny Library. All students were given their €1.50 book tokens to spend on their favorite books or to avail of some of the special free titles for this years annual event. We were visited by the Cluny Book Fairy who hid some books around the school. Students were tasked with finding these books. Whoever found them was allowed to keep them! Well done to all who took part in the book hunt and happy reading! A themed reading display was put together with a selection of recommended titles for all reading levels and interests. This display featured beloved stories including One by Sarah Crossan, The Boy […]
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Harry Potter Week 2022
A week of mischief, magic and more! We have come to the end of our second annual Harry Potter week here at Cluny library. We were delighted to bring back our displays of 3D printed wands at Olivander’s Wand shop, finding all 12 of the flying keys for the Philosopher Stone and lots more! Students loved seeing the 3D printed wands and trying to name the witch or wizard they belonged to. The TY library committee were busy making decorations for the week, from Hogwart’s house themed ties to making a Marauder’s Map, we had lots of wonderful decorations around the library. The House sigils made by last years committee also decorated our walls. Our suggested reads for Harry Potter fans as well as a Harry Potter book display were also ready for all who […]
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House Reading Challenge 2022
The House Reading Challenge 2022 Congratulations to St. Lucia who won the House Reading Challenge 2022! Together, they read over 23,000 pages during the challenge time. Well done to all teams who took part. As a school we read 233 books and over 80,000 pages! Wow! We hope you are all looking forward to our next reading challenge. To find out more about what this challenge was, read the below! What is the House Reading Pledge? Each House will take part in a reading challenge to read the most pages. Over the course of this term, each House will create a team consisting of the House Captains, house members and members of staff. These teams will read as much as they can and record the total number of pages they have read over this time […]
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Top Ten Most Popular Book Titles 2021
As we start a new calendar, we thought it might be nice to revisit the most popular books here in the library.
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History of Animation Week
Last week in the library we ran a themed week around the history of animation.
Students learned about the origins of animation, from the very first animated piece, early animation techniques and the origins of some of today’s most well known animation houses. Exploring the analogue methods of animation from the use of mirrors and stop-motion, we travelled through history to the foundations of technicolour, combining music and movement and eventually to the movement to computer generated images (CGI).
Our TY Library Committee were busy making posters on a selection of famous animated pieces including Song of the Sea and Cinderella. These posters were displayed around the library for the week and included facts about how each movie was made, some fun facts about it and how it was received in the box office.
Events for the weeks
Along with our display boards, we had lots of fun events and activities for students.
We had a visit from Boulder Media to our TY students to talk about working in animation. Students were shown the phases of animation from early concept art, background creation, rigging, colour and final animation pieces. Students thoroughly enjoyed this experience and asked lots of great questions. A huge thank you to Boulder Media for coming in to talk to us.
Our TY students, Neila and Sarah ran an animation workshop for first year students. Using an app called ‘Flipaclip’, Neila and Sarah showed the first years how to make a bouncing ball animation. Students each created unique drawings called frames which when combined and played in video showed a bouncing ball. The first years really enjoyed this time. Thank you to Neila and Sarah for running this workshop!
Over the week, we also ran Kahoot quizzes for class groups on the history of animation and had the opportunity to watch some classic examples of animated masterpieces like Nightmare before Christmas and Spirited Away.
Here is a gallery for the week of events we had here!
Animation workshop ran by TY students for first years. 
Animation week display with Spirited Away poster made by Neila. 
TY students visit to the library. 
Nightmare before Christmas poster made by Shauna. 
Song of the Sea poster made by Tara. 
Finding Nemo poster made by Mimi. 
Cinderella poster made by Alice.