Hi, my name is Richard Allenden.

From Monday to Friday my alarm goes off at 7o’clock and I spend the next fifteen minutes waking up to a new day. I find this difficult, especially on a school morning. But strange as it seems on a Saturday and Sunday I have no truble getting up.Then I hear my Mum calling "Are you up yet, Richard and what would you like for breakfast’’? I tell her ‘’Mmm, I think I’d like an egg with toasted soldiers, please and hot drinking chocolate and orange juice". So up I get up and have my shower and just as I’m dried off , I hear a roar from downstairs "Come and get it, breakfast is ready".

Down I come and enjoy my breakfast with my sister ,Sarah and Mum. Sarah is ten years old. She goes to Holy cross school, which is nearer to us than this school. We have to drive for about five minutes from our house. Next stop is to brush my teeth, get dressed in my school uniform and we set off for school at 8.30 pm .

My Mum drives in her car. My sister is dropped first, as her school starts before mine. From there on to my school we take a slow drive, chatting and  laughing about anything and every thing. I get to school for 10 to 9 which is grand and early .I drop my bag at the line and run up the yard to play football. Then before I know it, the bell goes off and I pick my bag up and get into line properly. By the time our teacher comes out we might get 10-20 lines if we are not lined up correctly.. Then our teacher tells us to go to our class.

Now its 9:10pm and school starts and we begin with prayers. Next Sir corrects our home work. We do not get much but Sir wants whatever he gives us to be done properly. More often than not the class will do Irish, which is our native language .As I am dyslecick so I am exempt from Irish, so I do maths on the computer instead. My first session is on an old Acorn machine. It is so old our teacher calls it Dino. Other computers have names like Fred, Barney and Wilma, called after the stone age family. "The Flintstones". It does not have a CD drive or a Hard Drive or a sound card. I prefer working on more up to date machines, like Pentium 11 computers, but they cost money, and Sir is always telling us that we do not have enough to buy any more new computers. We got money from the Goverment this year so we have two spanking new P 11 300 ,with a 4.1 HD. We get a load of it from Mrs Moloney’s class to do some work if we want to use a CD Rom. Sir won a computer two years ago but it is giving him grief. It has a dodgy motherboard. He wants to get it rebuilt, but this costs more money.

The maths programme is called Mathsbook and it helps with our number work. It is on a CD ROM and the maths are quite hard. I get 20 sums each day .When I have them done I print out a result sheet so Sir can see how I did. If I don’t watch what I’m at I get some sums wrong. At the same time, they are great fun as I’m doing them on the computer .I prefer doing them on computer than doing the sums in a copy. We get a break to go to the toilet at 10.00 PM. Before I know it is 10.30 PM and it is break time. We have a break for fifteen minutes.One teacher walks around the yard to mind us or he goes to the staffroom for a cup of coffee or a chat.

If the weather is good we go out into the yard and play football and if it is raining we sit quietly in our places. Some boys do not do as they are told and leave their places and run around. I sometimes do not do what I am asked and I get into trouble with the teachers. The bell rings to let us know its time to get back to work again. Now we hit the maths books. This time with the use our copies, which is not as much fun as the P.C. Hurry its 11.30 am and I get to uses the the PC again .The other boys do religion at this time. I stay in the class but I listen most of the time

The CD ROM I am using now is called "Story Maker". It is an excellent CD ROM. You make up our own story up which looks like a cartoon. People move around and by using my own voice I am able to make them talk .This is great fun as I put on different accents for the different people in my story. My favourite one is the Liverpool accent and the Dublin accent. I like the Dublin accent, as I used to live in Dublin before I came to Tramore last year. I still miss life in Dublin as Tramore is so quite after life in a big city.It  has many many cartoons and sound files, which we attach to the people., which makes it all more interesting.

Already its 12.00 o’clock and it off to another classroom, where a teacher called Mrs Hayes, helps me out with my English reading. She has great paytience with the class and is a very kind person .We stay with her for half an hour and come 12:30 its lunch time . Grub time.

We eat until a quarter to one and weather permitting, its back out side to play football -chasing - and some-times I get bullied ,other times I do the bulling ,which ends us up in truble. We are marched off to the boiler house . To stand out side and wait until the bell goes at 10 past 1. The principal comes to sort us out and depending on what we have done, he will gives us line as punishment. Then off we go back to our class. Next we could do History or Geography or even every Friday, it is art ,which I truly love.We sometimes do science but I do not like it. I can draw until the cows comes home. On the other days by 2:30 having all our work done, we are allowed to spend the last 1/2 hr on the P.C. .This make the time fly by and in no time its 3.oo o’clock home time as the last bell of the day rings.

My sister Michelle is still living in Dublin and she is a Liverpool football fannatick.My Mum was a great help to me writing this story.Our teacher is Mr. O’Neachtain.I am helping him to use Adobe Paintshop. I edited the images for this project.We took the photos on our digital camera and put them on to the computer.We then had to resize them to fit on a floppy disc. I then cut out the heads ready for our internet page.When we have all the writing and photos, Sir will show us how to put a web page together. He put up our school site on his own. He knows a lot about computers.

We have to tidy our classroom as it annoys Sir if we just walk out.Sometimes there is a row as to who dropped what on the floor. We are not allowed out until the place is tidy. This drives Miley mad as he wants to head for the door and head home. My Mum is waiting for me outside in her car.She asks me how my day went and we head home.School is not too bad.
I like working with computers especially when we do interesting things.

Richard Allenden