Summer Courses: Review

With family events and a friends wedding during the next school year, I decided to do two Summer Courses this year. One online and one face to face.

My face to face course was Exploring Primary Science in conjunction with Lifetime Lab @ Old Cork Waterworks. I love teaching Science and with my move to Senior Classes I wanted a refresher on lessons for older students. The verdict: this course delivered this and more. The two tutors Mary and Una were excellent, really animated and clearly passionate about teaching Science. I got some excellent examples on introducing topics, the importance of teaching specific language to students even the older ones and of course where to start with planning. From day 1 we were busy working as scientists, there were lots of hands on activities and plenty to keep a bunch of teachers entertained. I really enjoyed this course, and only that my school is located a little bit outside of Cork I would be lining up for the opportunity to take my class to Lifetime Lab next year.

My online course was an Irish one with ranganna.com. The course I chose was acmhainní cumarsáide don Rang Gaeilge bunscoile. Again I chose this course with my class change in mind. For me it was very daunting, as I felt my level of Irish wasn’t enough for Senior Classes. However, I surprised myself. Each topic gave examples of interactive activities for one of the themes in the curriculum which also incorporated a grammatical lesson. While this sounds quite daunting it was again a very practical course with suggestions for lessons and websites shared by participants in the forum. This course has definitely helped my confidence in preparing for senior classes in September.

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