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
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!
Regional Geography with Flashcards
This lesson is devised by Danielle O' Connor who studied English and Geography in NUI Maynooth. She graduated from Maynooth in 2009. She is currently studying a Higher Diploma in Primary Education. Danielle loves most sports and is a black belt in kickboxing and teaches Boxercise classes. She says "Exercise is a brilliant way to take your mind off your studies. she finds, Children that take part in sports concentrate better in the classroom. It also helps to reduce stress"
The main aim of this lesson is that Students will focus on two European regions, one core region (The Paris Basin) and one peripheral region (The Mezzogiorno). It can be hard to remember all the facts so Danielle has devised a clever flash card system to help!
Students compare these contrasting regions in terms of:
Physical environment- soil, drainage, relief and climate.
Primary economic processes- farming and fishing.
Secondary economic processes- Multinational companies, high tech companies and communication systems.
Tertiary economic processes- services, education and tourism.
Human processes- population and migration.
As prep you will need to take two contrasting regions and write a series of flash cards for the topics above. Try to pick out all the opposites!
The Value of Going Back to Basics
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.
The Value of Going Back to Basics
It might seem counterintuitive, but sometimes in order to help a student move forwards you have to go backwards.
The roots of seemingly big problems are often found in basic gaps in knowledge that occurred months or even years before. For whatever reason a student doesn’t fully master a piece of information or skill. They can’t keep up with subsequent work that relies on them having this knowledge and they fall further and further behind. Their confidence is eroded and they are too embarrassed to ask for help with something they should already know. A simple gap, like not having fully grasped factorising in fifth class, becomes a big problem, like not being able to do Leaving Cert algebra.
Identifying these gaps and taking the time to fill them in, even if this means going backwards in the curriculum, can allow the student to finally catch up with their classmates.
There is also value in going back to a level of work that the student finds more manageable. They finally get a chance to be good at the subject and their confidence is built up. A third year student who thinks they are bad at English can excel at first year year level comprehensions. They can gradually be moved up to second and then third year work, often without realising that the work is getting harder. They have the confidence to attempt work they would have thought was impossible and even more importantly they expect to do it well because they have gotten used to succeeding.
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!
