Ireland as a land of Learners
One of the great difficulties of education is we try to fit everyone in to the same box - it's generally accepted that this doesn't happen but - there's the "but" how else can we teach the masses?
Well that's the 1st mistake - thinking about the "teaching". If we instead look at the learners - the students and look at the world from their perspective we may begin to not only accommodate everyone but have them reach their full potential. Most of all have them be happy and enjoy doing it!
So if we take the learning nation of Ireland - what are they like?
Well we have a nation of sociable chatterboxes that have a huge number of successful athletics when you think about the size of the country. We make an impact wherever we go. We are also very generous again for the size of Ireland we contribute hugely in charity donations, peace keeping and volunteer work . We are hugely proud of anything irish!
So in simple terms that makes us Auditory, Kinaesthetic learners that need huge amounts of encouragement and praise. We really care about what everyone thinks of us, so like most other parts of the world we are a largely extrovert society. We need to work with others in social settings.
The hugely interesting fact about auditory learners is that they don't need to just listen - they need to talk as well! The idea of them starting school at 5 and learning to be quiet is ridiculous. We work our way through so much in Ireland by gossiping. The chatty taxi driver, the toilet queue or the local shop. It makes us able to cope with the weather if nothing else. One of the real difficulties with being an auditory leaner (besides just being in trouble for talking all the time) is the rambling way we work - there is no structure. This is the most common difficult many of our students have - especially all the talky kinaesthetic boys who are brilliant on the sports pitch and feel rubbish at everything else in school - they simply have no idea how to structure an answer or to focus their thoughts on to the page. It's ok to write the way you talk too.
The best way to work with auditory kinaesthetic learners is through role plays - this is sociable group work that allows us to talk out scenarios - we get to put ourselves in the situation - we all do great in this part of the oral exams! We are a country with lots of political views - it's important for us to get to talk about these! Students drop off the chairs when we ask them what they think - but it is so much easier to write about what you feel, especially when this is what matters to you when your kinaesthetic. Normally boys just get to run this off on the sports pitch rather than working through it in English or History class!
It's equally important to allow us to talk about it in our own way - The Irish have a great "gift of the gab" - the wit that has a name for every object, landmark and sculpture! We talk about creativity and innovation - this is a wonderful example of innovation with words! We can express any situation as a joke.
We have always been gifted story tellers - young kids who start school before they are made to feel self conscious about talking have this in bucket fulls.
We are hugely competitive - hence the sports heroes - the mark we leave what ever we have set our mind too ... Competition is such a great way to inject energy to any learning environment.
There is a pride deeply engrained in Irish and as a result we can never cope with being made a fool of in public - we may try to joke and slag our way out of any situation but it hurts deeply. Everyone I have ever spoken to in this country has a school story where they lost face - they never forget!
This is why we have to focus on the learners always - the real people we are helping to grow and develop. Every one is different but we all fall into patterns of behaviour that can be accommodated but you can't just take an education model from one country to another and expect it to work - especially since the models are always developed for the teachers and governments not the students. I have really begun to feel like The Lorax - who speaks for the (trees) students! There are very simple patterns and learning styles but you have to look for them and you have to use each nations strengths and values to achieve what is important for them!
Dr. Naoisé
Our experience being brought to others outside of The Homework Club
A short clip of some of our very valuable findings at The Homework Club
Advantages of the back catalogue
So this weeks theme is evaluations! I can sit in front of students from now until next June to tell them they are improving and they will never believe me... So they need to see it form themselves. The easiest way to do this apart from the evaluations we do at the end of the term where they ask themselves what has changed... what is easier.. what can they now do and so on - is to simply get them to bring in their work from this time last year! They will instantly see how much better they can now write - how much longer their answers are - Simply how much more they know!
Yes it is that easy to boast confidence - we always forget to go back and look where we have come from...it's like going back and reading your old diaries to let you see the journey you have been on....This also ties in nicely with an earlier article I wrote on looking for your mistakes. We only get to know our mistakes when someone shows them to us. By knowing our common mistakes we can learn from them and most importantly for dyslexic spectrum students we can learn to look out for those ones! I know always look for "fro" in my emails - the spell checker never finds it for me - but I do 
Dr. Naoisé O'Reilly
Innovative lesson for an Abacus
This blog piece is written by Rachel Sneyd. Rachel is currently completing an undergraduate degree in History and Politics at Trinity College Dublin. She is a keen writer and has just submitted her first teen-fiction novel for publication.
I set the team a task of thinking of an innovative lesson or use of a new toy, abacus - especially not for maths!
Rachel was thinking about using it for younger kids as a way of measuring progress/encouraging them to push themselves. If a student is having particular trouble writing, you could use it to build up the number of sentences/words they'll write and if they're having trouble reading you could use it to get them to read more paragraphs/pages/poems and so on!
So all the beads would be on the left hand side on the first day. You'd get them to read or write as much as they're willing to. Then you would move one bead from the top row to the right hand side for every sentence written/poem read etc.
The next day you would reset the abacus to show how they got on the week before and then challenge them to do better, so maybe this time you will move three beads over instead of two. As the weeks go on they will be able to clearly see that they are improving and hopefully they will be motivated to beat their own scores!
Brilliant - Just the sort of idea I was looking for!
Benefits of Poetry For Kids
This blog piece is written by Rachel Sneyd. Rachel is currently completing an undergraduate degree in History and Politics at Trinity College Dublin. She is a keen writer and has just submitted her first teen-fiction novel for publication.
For many young students the idea of reading an entire book is terrifying. Even the idea of starting a book can be scary. Poetry can be a great tool to get these students started.
They can see the entire poem on the page and know that they can handle it. Good children's poetry is engaging, fun and accessible and so they can genuinely enjoy reading it. They can read the entire poem and get the satisfaction and confidence that comes with finishing something.
Shel Silverstein's work is a fantastic example. His poems are hilarious and bizarre and he can tell a story in just a few short lines. The poems have titles like "Sister for Sale" and "Prayer of the Selfish Child" and come with wonderful illustrations. He uses simple language and has a wicked sense of humour that gets students laughing out loud and begging to read "one more."
