The weather has been amazing over the past few weeks. I know that if this lockdown had happened during the winter I would have been in a much worse mood. Getting out and enjoying the sunshine has really helped me to stay positive and enjoy this unusual time. I strongly believe that getting children involved in gardening and nature, no matter how simple can have a great benefit. I know online teaching is difficult and I can imagine that it will be even more difficult to keep children engaged throughout June. With this in mind I decided to put together a few ideas to encourage children to explore the outdoors. The Innocent Big Grow are sending out free seed packs to families. All you have to do is sign up online for your chance to win one. Click here to sign up. GIY have partnered with Energia to Get Ireland growing. you can register here to be in with a chance of winning your very own Growbox. GIY also have a fantasic website which includes vidoes showing how to grow lots of different vegetables. They are currently running a free online course where they teach you how to grow 12 vegetables over 12 weeks. I signed up this week and am looking forward to getting lots of tips and motivation. PDST have online webinars available for teachers. These include STEM and the Garden and STEM and the Kitchen which are available to view as recording. Click here for more information or to sign up for upcoming webinars. I, like many other teachers did a course with Paddy Madden a few years ago. I absolutely loved it and got so much out of the course. I was introduced to this website through the PDST course, STEM & the Garden, and was delighted to see that Paddy Madden is one of the main contributors. The website is fantastic and has a section for Parents/Childrens activities. It has guides for growing spring onions in a milk carton, sowing potatoes and also making bio-degradable pots. It is definitely well worth checking out. I am hoping to upload one nature based activity for my students each week. I find both of these book a great help when it comes to growing vegetables. They are both very child friendly and give simple step by step instructions. The first is the Know-It-Allmanac from GIY and the second is The Usborne Guide to Growing Food. I have put together a few activities that you may like to share with your students:
Anokha Learing are offering their schools programme for €40 per course. I have done several of these over the past few years and I always find them very enjoyable. The courses available are:
Their Scared Kids course with David Coleman currently has 50% off and is now €100. I am thinking of doing this one myself as I have heard so many good things about it and feel that it will be very useful for when I go back to school. I saw a link to this course on Muinteoir Valerie's page last week and I plan to do it. A few friends of mine have also completed it and reccomend it. The course is Self Care for Teachers, it is a 45minute course that introduces teachers to the concept of self-care. It covers the importance of self-care in the life of a teacher and ways to ensure it is part of their teaching. They also provide a Mental Health eLearning Programme for teachers. this is aimed at secondary school teachers but others might find it useful. Activities I have attached alink below to my table of activities for fourteen days. I am planning on creating an Easter themed one and will upload that as soon as it is ready.
I am very lucky to be part of the Creative Schools Porgramme and our wonderful Creative Associate along with her coleagues have put together some very useful resources. You can download them here :
GIY are a fantastic organisation and are doing their bit to support people at this time. Go check out their website or social media pages for some great inspiration and competitions. They are also uploading copies of their Know it Allmanac which is full of ideas of what to do in the garden. They have lots of other lovely resources for children and adults.
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I was contacted by Prim-Ed a few weeks ago and asked if I was interested in reviewing some of their new publications. The first one I am going to focus on is their Bright Star Quizzes. Any of you that follow the page will know that I use a lot of Prim-Ed resources. Some of my favourites are their Comprehension boxes, Maths boxes, Maths Assessment, Mental Maths, Problem Solving skils cards and Comprehension books. The following opinions are all my own and are 100% honest. Bright Star Quizzes are photocopiable books and are available from 1st - 6th class. They contain both cross-curricular and general knowledge quizzes. Each book contains 50 individual quizzes, four end-of-term general knowledge quizzes, three blockbuster quizzes and one end-of-year curriculum quiz. Termly plans are included and outline the curriculum ares that the questions are based on. Each quiz contains ten questions and they are based on a variety of curriculum areas. They would perfect as a challenge for early finishers or could be sent home for homework. I would spend a few weeks allowing the children to become familiar with the format before giving it for homework. Possibly giving it as homework one or two nights per week. The books would be great for mainstream class teachers but also substitute teachers. Arriving in to a class to supervise for a day or more can be very difficult to plan for. Having a selection of these books in your resource bank would be very handy. they allow for group, pair or individual work.
The layout is clear and has a selection of different styles of questions. As with the Mental Maths tests some topics may arise that have not yet been covered in class. This allows for mini lessons on specific topics as they arise in the quizzes. If you want to find out more information or order the books click here. Last Friday I was exhausted and couldn't even imagine having to start an online course. Usually I leave my course until I return from my Summer holiday and dread having to complete it. Last year was the first time I can honestly say I really enjoyed my online courses and found them very enjoyable. It was also the first year I completed a course with Anokha Learning. I signed up early last year to take advantage of their Early Bird offer. The courses I completed Eatwise and Food for Thought, I found both very enjoyable. I really liked the topic of food and nutrition and also how it linked in with my love of gardening. I have worked so hard developing the school garden and encouraging children to try the food that they grow. Both of these courses gave me an insight into the impoartance of nutrition and healthy eating for children's learning. This was something I had never really thought about. The resources were a great help and I found that I used them at different stages during the year. This year I was gifted two courses from Anokha Learning. I decided to try their Bullying Prevention and Mental Health Fitness courses. I started the Bullying Prevention course on Sunday and have found it really useful so far. Marie O Sullivan is the course author and I have to say she is so easy to listen to. I almost feel like I am sitting in a group discussion listening to her speak. She is very knowledgeable and also very realistic in her ideas to implement. The content is really based on achieveable targets and gets you to stop and look at the atmosphere and relationships in your own school .
Having completed lesson 3 I realised that my school has so many great resources and strategies implemented to help both students and teachers. We are doing a good job and I now have plenty of ideas to develop this further. The quizzes are a nice way to reinforce what you have taken from the video lesson. Interaction in the discussion forums are very easy going and informative. The e-tutors are engaging and have shared some wonderful resources. I will update this post when I have completed both courses. If you are still looking for a course they have some available here. All courses must be completed by the 2nd August. As I said earlier this years courses were gifted. The opinions in this post are 100% my own. I was contacted by Edco and asked to review a selection of their publications. The first I will look at is the Let's Talk Literacy programme. It is a literacy skills series from First to Sixth class.
The workbooks are well laid out and aesthetically pleasing. Each unit contains reading, comprehension, word work, grammar, oral language and writing sections. They are very clearly laid out and easy to navigate. One of my favourite parts are the revision and assessment sections throughout. These recap over the grammar portion of the previous chapters. This would be something I usually try to put together myself but having it already in the book would be a great help. The scheme has online resorces and downloadable teacher plans. The teacher resources include:
The pupil workbooks include:
I would definitely use this if I had a mainstream class. If you are looking for a new skills book then click here! I posted a few months ago about how I have been trying to reduce my waste and plastic use. One of the main ways I have been doing this is by shopping locally for the majority of my purchases. I found Small Changes in Drumcondra, a small eco friendly shop offering plenty of alternatives to plastic packaging. "Our name comes from the idea that we can all make small lifestyle changes that benefit ourselves and our families, our health, the environment, and wider communities. As consumers, we have incredible power to enforce positive change. Making just one small change can have a positive impact, and one small change may lead to another as we become more mindful of the long-term benefits. Something as simple as changing your household cleaner to the environmentally friendly version is a positive step...reuse and refill the bottle and you make another positive step. Or switching some of your food shopping to organic will avoid agrochemicals and minimise damage to wildlife and the environment. At Small Changes we offer you sustainable eco-friendly choices. We take care of ethical sourcing and affordability, so you can make the changes that matter most to you." * I visited the shop yesterday and refilled my washing up liquid for €2.50 and my liquid detergent for approximately €6.50. Both of these worked out cheaper than if I bought my usual eco brand in a larger supermarket. I also picked up some brown paper tape, I never really thought of sellotape as plastic until recently. I find that since trying to reduce my single use plastic use I am more aware of the hidden plastics we use daily. We take a lot of things for granted and don't really think abut what they are made from or what happens once we throw them in the bin. I also picked up a full size tin of Pit Putty for just under €12. I absolutely love this deodorant and it smells amazing. It is 100% natural, vegan and is made in Sligo. I picked up some other things, but the main reason I have started shopping there is because I can get my Green Earth Organics box delivered there for free. It is a great partnership between two environmentally conscious small businesses. It is so handy to be able to pick up my delivery and also How it works:
From following both of their Instagram pages you get a great sense of their values and involvement in their communities. They both promote Irish companies and that is what I think we all need to do. The focus should be on buying organic, local products as much as we can. We generally buy a medium vegetable box which lasts for almost two weeks. Since shopping like this we are throwing out a lot less food and feel that we are getting great value for money.
If you are interested in finding out more visit the Small Changes and Green Earth Organics websites. There are so many ways to enjoy the outdoors with your class and they don't all need to be time consuming. Simply bringing your lunch outdoors or outdoor DEAR time can be a great start. Why not just go outside for 5- 10 minutes and listen to the sounds around you?
Here are some ideas to help when bringing your class outdoors.
I have been contemplating setting up a Summer course for the past number of years and this year I finally did it. I have a great interest in the outodoor clasroom and want to share that with others.
The course is aimed at teachers who are looking to gain confidence in promoting the outdoor classroom. Each day will focus on hands-on activities where participants will create bird feeders, biodegradable pots, tree trails and much more. I want teachers to leave the course with a better undertsanding of nature and confidence to bring this into their teaching, a folder containing useful resources and some examples of items that they can create with their classes. As you can probably imagine it is quite difficult to promote a course when you are not part of a college or education centre. I would really appreciate it if people could share this around!! As a lot of you will know we created a sensory room in my school last year. It is a compact space but is really useful. The children enjoy using the space and you can definitely see the benefits. We also had a blackout tent that didn't fit in the sensory room. It was stored in a classroom upstairs and it was rarely used. I have now set up a sensory area under our stairs beside the photocopier. It is easily accessible and has plenty of space. I have two suitcases (they were previously display items in a shop) , one containing plenty of bubble wrap and the other containing sensory toys. Most of the sensory toys were bought in Flying Tiger, the only thing that wasn't is the massager that I picked up in a discount shop. The box includes the massager €3, solar system torch €3, disco light €3, octopus fingers €1 and finger lights €3. These prices are juts approximates because I can't remember exactly what I paid. I will add more items to the box over time.
We used some of our foam PE mats to seperate the space and added some cushions. So far the solar system torch and octopus fingers are the favourites. If you don't have one of the tents you can still set up an area. Make sure to have a dark blanket that the children can put over themselves when playing with the torch. I know it might sound a bit mad but the children in my class love it. They can just block everything out and focus on the light. You also need a few cushions, with different textures and a little box of sensory toys. Education.com got in touch to see if my followers would like a free worksheet for St Patrick's Day. Of course I said yes, so click the link below to download a nice addition worksheet. It will come in handy at some stage this week. 'Give your learners a little luck with this fun St. Patrick's Day worksheet. For more fun with [math], go to Education.com!'
As many of you may know my class won the Big Grow 2018. The excitement is still buzzing around the school as we hosted the press launch for this years Big Grow competition. We were delighted to have representatives from both Innocent and GIY come out to visit our school and see the work the boys have put in to our school garden. This will be my sixth year taking part in the Big Grow and I have taken part in both a SEN and mainstream classroom setting. I highly recommend it and love to see more schools growing their own. All you need to do is go online and sign up for your free teacher pack. There are limited packs available so remember to register as soon as possible. The pack can be seen in the photograph above, it contains: cups, compost discs, Veg detective badge and poster, tomato, cress and pea seeds. The teacher's resource pack is the best part of the pack. It has step by step guidelines for planting your seeds and contains plenty of lesson ideas that link in with the curriculum. This is perfect for those teachers that may be a bit apprehensive about planting with their classes. Over the next few weeks as you plant your seeds and watch them grow you can share your progress with others on social media. You can also search #biggrow to see what other schools are doing and find addditional inspiration. This year the website is even better than before and has plenty of resources to download. One of my favourites is the Special Growers Certificate, it is much better than the ones I made myself last year. I can just imagine how excited my students will be when they receive this. If you do sign up feel free to share your ideas on my page. I would love to see how other teachers are getting on and can offer advice if needed! Also if you are completeing your Biodiversity Green Flag this is a fantastic competition to get involved in.
*this is not an ad/sponsored. I just really think this is a great way to get children growing their own fruit and vegetables! |
AuthorI have been teaching for several years and hope to share some of my ideas and experiences with you. Archives
March 2020
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