The Blog
Welcome to the blog! In this corner of the website you will find the general ramblings of a primary school teacher. I hope you find something of use here!
Mondays: The “How it works!” Series – We walk through a specific aspect of the classroom or teaching
Wednesdays: The “Lesson Spotlight” Series – We take a look at a lesson that either went well or didn’t go so well
Fridays: The “Resource Drop” Series – We take a look at the newly added resources from the week gone by
Lesson Spotlight: Scientists at Work – Zoology Escape Room Lesson
Who doesn’t love a learning curve! Well… I for one… Take three of learning how to create an online escape challenge here was a time-consuming but rewarding experience. There was a few tears and many cups of coffee but I finally think I’m getting the hang of this! In this lesson, I applied some of the changes I wanted to try from the last escape challenge. The biggest shift was moving more towards Google Forms and Google Drive. the results were… mixed…
Lesson Spotlight: W.W.1 Western Front
In this lesson, we took a look at life on the Western Front! Another history video means a return to my love/hate relationship with ‘Pixton’. Don’t get me wrong, the software does what it says it will do. The backgrounds are what are most lacking for me but maybe I’m alone in that thought! Anyways, on to the lesson…
Lesson Spotlight: W.W.1 Propaganda Posters
In this lesson, we took a look at the role that propaganda played in the First World War. We looked at a range of different posters that were used to persuade the people of the UK and Ireland to either join or support the war effort. After this, we had a look at designing our own propaganda poster. Some chose to design posters that would support the war effort, while others designed posters that opposed the war effort! You can download everything you need to try this lesson down at the bottom of the post!
Lesson Spotlight: Scientists at Work – Microbiology Escape Room Lesson
Okay… I’m KINDA getting the hang of this now! I definitely am not quite ‘there’ yet but I feel like I’m getting closer! After much research and inspired by the success of the last ‘escape room’ lesson, I decided to finally try design one myself. To say it was time consuming is an understatement! I have this awful tendency to go down rabbit holes when designing more complicated lessons. These rabbit-holes usually leave me squinting over word documents into the wee hours and this one was no exception! However…
Lesson Spotlight: Scientists at Work – Forensics Escape Room Lesson
In this lesson, we took a first look at the work European Scientists are doing every day. It was the first in a three part lesson series on the work of scientists. As you can imagine, this was a particularly difficult one to try and translate into the world of ‘digital distance learning’! I decided to dip my toe into a brand new methodology for me. I have long been a lover of escape rooms in the real world. I’m the proud ‘escaper’ of over 25 escape rooms across the Europe! I always kept a close eye on the world of…
Lesson Spotlight: The Plantations – The Events
In this lesson, we took a look at the main events of the first three plantations of Ireland! After the somewhat successful use of Pixton for the first history video, I decided to give it a second chance. I’m not sure whether I hate it or love it. There is a good bit of learning still to do on my part. The most annoying being the different aspect ratio for the ‘downloaded’ Pixton pictures. They just don’t play nice with the animation software ‘Animaker’. But I digress. Back to the lesson…