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."
Back to Basics: ABC’s
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.
Young students (and not-so-young students) who have trouble reading and writing often struggle with the most basic building block of all: the alphabet. For some this means confusing Bs and Ds or forgetting what sound Q makes. For others it means not being able to identify more than a handful of letters. Not knowing the alphabet is a problem but luckily patience, revision and a bit of play-dough can make a big difference.
Aim: To revise the alphabet and build reading and writing confidence.
You need: Markers, coloured paper, play-dough, stencils.
Give the class the markers and coloured paper.
Write the day’s letters on the board and have the students copy them down. This works best if you break the alphabet up into manageable blocks and concentrate on 3 or 4 letters per lesson. It will take some time to get all the way to Z but the results are well worth it!
Learning your own mistakes
