Seomra Ranga | The Primary Education Hub

Welcome to Seomra Ranga, the Hub for Primary School Resources. For the overseas visitors “Seomra Ranga” means “classroom” in the Irish language.

Seomra Ranga has been successfully providing tried and tested resources for primary school classrooms since 2007. Since that time, the site has gradually built up a strong following amongst educators as a repository of quality teacher-created resources. The resources on the site, which support all areas of the curriculum, are arranged in accordance with the curricular provisions of the Irish primary school….

Please have a browse through the new site and support our work in developing new resources by becoming a Member. Individual and School Memberships are available.

Gerrit Van Gelderen Archive

Nov 13, 2010 | Website

Barnacle Geese - Van Gelderen

Seomra Ranga is very pleased, and indeed honoured, to announce that the family of the late Gerrit Van Gelderen have given permission for a limited number of resources created by Gerrit to be made available on the site. Gerrit van Gelderen (1926-1994) was a naturalist, wildlife broadcaster, film-maker, illustrator and cartoonist. He had a great interest in the natural environment, especially in Ireland, and he drew many pictures of the animals, birds and landscapes that he saw.

Born on 26 August 1926 in Rotterdam, the Netherlands, in his youth he assisted in surveying the plants and animals of the wildlife sanctuary at De Beer, outside Rotterdam. He was educated at the college of art in the Hague, and afterwards took to hitchhiking through northern Europe. In 1955 he settled in Dublin, working as a commercial artist for an advertising company. In 1958 he began contributing cartoons, illustrations, photography and columns to the Irish Farmers’ Journal, often on environmental themes. He had become fascinated by Irish wildlife, and from 1962 he and Éamon de Buitléar presented a weekly wildlife programme on RTÉ television called “Amuigh Faoin Spéir” (Out Under the Sky), which won the Jacobs Award in 1967. In the mid-1970s he made his own series, “To the Waters and the Wild”, filming all over the world for over 20 years.

These resources are exclusively available on Seomra Ranga with the kind permission of the Van Gelderen family. The resources are for educational use only and may not be reproduced on any other website or in any other publication. Lies Van Gelderen retains the copyright of the resource. Any further enquiries about the work of Gerrit Van Gelderen from finn@finnvangelderen.com I wish to convey my thanks and appreciation to the family of the late Gerrit Van Gelderen for permission to publish his resources on this site.

The Van Gelderen Archive can be found under the Posters > SESE tab at the top of the website.

Welcome Back

Nov 13, 2010 | Website

Welcome Back

After a lot of planning, designing and preparation especially over the last six months , Seomra Ranga is back with its brand new website. The process to create the new website actually started this time last year when I began thinking about and planning what I wanted from a new website. After three years, the website had become a little tired, and, more importantly from my point of view, was beginning to become a little difficult to mangage by virtue of the vast number of resources on the site. I was finding it increasingly time-consuming updating the site with new resources as well as trying to maintain a proper structure and navigation to the site. I felt that because of the volume of resources on the site, visitors were beginning to find it difficult to navigate the site.

At the outset, I wasn’t quite sure how I wanted the new site to look but I had a number of criteria in mind. As well as some technical issues, I was looking for:

A Content Management System that would allow me to update the site easily
A site that integrated Blog, Twitter and the Site itself
A new and easily understood navigation system
A new and appealing layout to the frontpage and the whole of the site itself

I knew that most of this was beyond my abilities so I sought the help of some web design companies. Having received a number of submissions, I eventually decided to work with Logis Media, a local company. I felt that they were the only company to interpret the criteria that I had set out and I quickly realised that they shared my vision for the site. I want to express my thanks to Debbie and James at Logis for working with me so closely and listening to my constant demands, questions, queries and requests. While it may seem that I’ve been talking about the new site for ages, it genuinely took this long in order to get it right. We had to spend some time making sure that we were all happy with the design, layout and functionality of the site before I started uploading all of the site content. This in itself has been a huge undertaking, again because of the vast number of resources on the site which had to be uploaded individually and categorised and tagged correctly. After this process was completed we moved from this:

Old Website

to this:

Seomra Ranga Screenshot

As you can see, the change is huge and it will take some time to get used to. I’ve been working with the new site for quite some time so I am used to it at this stage. However, I’m sure it will take regular visitors to Seomra Ranga a while to get used to finding the content that they need. I hope that given some time, visitors will become comfortable with the new look, feel and structure of the site. I hope also that visitors will engage a little more with the site and make comments and recommendations. Because the site is blog-based, visitors can make comments on posts and resources on the site and I hope that people will start to do that. Visitors can also engage with Seomra Ranga through the new Facebook page which has been set up to keep people abreast of new developments on the site.

During the migration process some files may have unwittingly been omitted, so if there is something in particular that you feel is missing from the old site, please let me know and I will try and locate it for you. However, I decided to go ahead with the new site without uploading some resources that I felt teachers were not in a hurry with at the moment eg. St. Patrick’s Day resources and summer resources. These will be uploaded gradually in time. Also, the location of the Christmas @ Seomra Ranga website has not changed so you can find all your Christmas classroom resources there.

Don’t forget to follow Seomra Ranga on Twitter or Facebook and let me know what you think of the new site.

O’Brien Press Resources

Nov 13, 2010 | Website

Wildflower Girl

Seomra Ranga is pleased to announce a new association with O’ Brien Press on the new website. O’ Brien Press has made all of their resources for class novels available for download via the new Seomra Ranga website. Teaching Guides and Teaching Ideas downloads are available for the full O’Brien Press catalogue of novels for primary schools. Resources are available for fiction and fact books, books for infants and senior pupils, books in both English and Gaeilge. The downloads are full of ideas to help the teacher use the books as a cross-curricular resource in the classroom. Examples of available resources include the following books:

Wildflower Girl
All About Hurling
Strongbow
The Moon King
Faraway Home
Dream Invader
Trouble for Tuffy
Mad Grandad’s Flying Saucer
Ed’s Funny Feet
Sailí na Spotaí
Fiacla Mhamó
Moncaí Dána
Bróga Thomáis

These resources may be accessed in the following ways:

Curriculum >> English >> Class Novel (resources for English Novels)
Curriculum >> Gaeilge >> Úrscéal Ranga (acmhainní do leabhair Ghaeilge)

I would like to express my thanks to Ivan at O’Brien Press for permission to make these resources available to visitors to the new Seomra Ranga website.

Samhain 2010

Nov 13, 2010 | Miscellaneous

As a new addition to the new website, Seomra Ranga will produce a monthly A4 calendar for the teacher. The one page calendar will be suitable for sticking to the teacher’s desk, to the classroom wall or to the staffroom noticeboard. A new calendar poster will be placed on the site each month. This poster is…

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Trans-Atlantic Twitter Conversation

Nov 12, 2010 | Technology

I started using Twitter in my classroom with my 1st and 2nd class during the final term of the last school year. I was encouraged to start because a number of schools throughout the country were coming together for a Twitter project. Organised by Simon Lewis (@simonmlewis) the project stimulated the pupils to learn about other schools in Ireland. During another part of the project, we had a Twitter conversation with all of the other schools in the project about the artist Jackson Pollock. This was really interesting and we followed this up by creating our own Jackson Pollock Pictures using a Jackson Pollock app on our iPod Touches. The pupils were quite engaged so after the project was completed, we continued to tweet every other day in class.

This year I have 2nd and 3rd class, half of whom I also taught last year and they were quite conversant with the whole Twitter idea. We continued to tweet this year and regularly tweet about things we are learning in class and things we write about on our School Blog. This week, we have joined other schools who have been tweeting about things we were learning during Science Week. It was while we were looking at our tweets this week that we received a message that read: “Hi there! We are tweeting from our classroom too! Would you share with us what you’re learning today? Where are you?” We replied to this tweet and so began a conversation during the course of the week with a school in Indiana, USA. (@superkiddos) This is what one of our lecturers in college called “opportunity teaching”. Without any pre-planning, we started learning about children who just happened to be the same age as my pupils. It was also interesting for my pupils to learn that the pupils in Indiana were just starting their school day as we were finishing up our school day. Another school in Indiana has also begun to join in the conversation with us (@BloggingBees). Here is how the conversation has gone over the course of a few days this week:

USA: Hi there! We are tweeting from our classroom too! Would you share with us what you’re learning today? Where are you?
IRE: We are learning things on our iPod Touches. We are in Sligo, Ireland. Where are you? What ages are you?
USA: We live in Indiana, United States. We r 7 & 8 yrs. old. We live by a lot of lakes. 20/24 of us have a lake in our backyards.
USA: Some things we’re curious about: Do u have school uniforms? Do u have big cities? How do u get around your town? Cars? Bikes?
IRE: We are learning about Christopher Columbus in history. Do you know anything about him? What is your weather like? It is cold.
IRE: We are 7, 8 and 9 years old. Our school is beside Knocknarea Mountain and near a surfing beach called Strandhill.
IRE: We wear a school tracksuit to school. It is navy with white stripes. We use cars because we live 5 miles from town. Its rainy!!
IRE: We start school at 9.20am. What time do you go to school at? We finish at 3pm. What time do you finish at?
USA: We start school at 8:20 and end 3:00 pm. We are just starting our day — are you ending your day?
USA: Normally it is snowy & cold in November, but today it is unusually warm. Last week it snowed and this week it’s hot!
USA: CC facts we think we know: Sailed across the seas in 1492 Discovered America 10/12 is Columbus Day Do u have Columbus Day?
IRE: We’ve just got another half an hour to go. We’re just finishing our Irish language lesson at the moment. Theres 27 in our class
IRE: Columbus died when he was 55 years old. We found out that his 3 ships were called Santa Maria, Pinta and Nina. We’ve no CC day.
USA: We have about 5 more hours to go. We’re getting ready for writing workshop.
USA: We are looking at a globe and light & figuring out why you are getting ready to go home & we are just starting our day.
USA: what lang. do u speak & know? We speak English.
USA: We know a little Spanish, Arabic, Korean, and sign language. (Our teacher if fluent in ASL.)
IRE: We’re going home now. We speak English and we’re learning to speak Irish. Goodbye. Tweet you tomorrow!
IRE: Our school website is http://ransborons.scoilnet.ie/blog/ Do you have a website so that we could learn more about you?
USA: Our corporation site is www.wawasee.k12.in.us
IRE: We wrote about helicopters http://bit.ly/cDRl7q We received an email from a Helicopter Training Academy in Australia because of it. #twience
USA: That is so cool! Can you teach us something about helicopters? Most people here don’t get to ride in helicopters.
USA: Helicopters are usually for emergencies or news media in America. The public ride in airplanes.
USA: We love learning about you on your website! So cool!
IRE: We found out on our iPods that Christopher Columbus introduced pineapples to Europe!
USA: Cool! We have someone in our class who LOVE pineapples! What kinds of fruit do you eat most in Ireland?
IRE: We can get almost any kind of fruit but our favourites are apples, pears, grapes and Irish grown strawberries
IRE: Do you get homework for the weekend? We don’t get any for the weekend but we do during the week.
USA: We don’t get homework, but our class is the exception. We are expected to read and practice spelling every night, though.
USA: Those are some of our faves too! We also love bananas. What kind of sweet things do you like? We like cookes and chocolate!
USA: We read your school’s site. Can you tell us: What is hurling? Our most popular sports are football, baseball, and basketball.
USA: We spell it “favorites.” We are wondering: is “favourites” a mistake or is that how you spell it?
USA: Do you spell other words differently too?
USA: Do you have special dances you do in Ireland? Some people here do a dance called a Tango.
USA: We do a school dance too!
IRE: We like chocolate bars, cake, jellies, sweets (candy) crisps (chips) biscuits, marshmallows, ice-cream, lollipops and popcorn.
IRE: Hurling is an Irish sport. The stick is made from Ash and the ball is called a sliotar. Over the bar = 1 pt. Under the bar=3pts
IRE: We spell favoUrite with a U. We also spell coloUr with a U. We also spell flavoUr with a U.
IRE: Maeve in third class does Irish dancing. One of her dances is called “The Job of Journey Work”. It’s a traditional set dance.
USA: What r your biscuits like? For lunch today we’re having chicken soup, turkey sandwich, cookie. What did u have for lunch?

And so we ran out of time on Friday afternoon. We hope to continue the conversation via Twitter and see what else we can learn about life for pupils of the same age 3,000 miles away!

Google Docs and the iPod Touch

Nov 8, 2010 | Technology

Google Docs Logo

I’m a relative novice to Google Docs and never really personally saw the need for me to find out what they could do and how to use them. I had been aware from many articles on the internet written by people in the field of education that they were widely used. However, it was only when I received my class set of iPod Touches in May 2010 that I began to think about how Google Docs could be incorporated into the use of the iPod Touch in the classroom.

I’ve received my class set of iPods on loan through a pilot project organised by Sligo Education Centre and Apple Ireland. Four classes in the country are piloting the use of this handheld technology in the classroom and they are located in Kilkenny and Wexford and are supported by their local Education Centre.

Google Docs Spelling One area that I thought that Google Docs could be useful was in the area of spelling and tables so I started to learn how Google Docs could be used with the iPod Touch in the classroom. To use Google Docs, you have to set up a Google account if you don’t already have one. When registered, you then just go into Google Docs and select “Create New >> Form”. You then just set up a form any way you wish. There are different ways of seeking responses from pupils. You can have a text box answer, a paragraph answer box, a scale 1-5 answer box etc. For our Spelling Test, I set up a form where there were four possible answers for each spelling that we had been learning during the week. There was a radio button beside each spelling and the pupils had to select the radio button beside the correct answer for each spelling. There was also a text box for pupils to fill in their names. There was also a paragraph answer box for the pupils to type in their dictation sentences. All questions were marked with an * to show that they were mandatory fields and had to be completed. If a pupil forgets to fill in a field they will not be able to submit a form. Google Docs also creates a spreadsheet associated with the form that has been created. The spreadsheet gathers the information from the answers selected by the pupils.

When creating the form in Google Docs, an address for the location of the form is also generated. Because Google Docs is created online, pupils need to have online access. We have an Apple Airport router in the classroom which connects to the school broadband. The iPods have been set up to connect to the internet through this router.

So I placed the URL of the Google Form on the School Blog, to which the pupils have already set up a shortcut on one Google Spelling Spreadsheet of the homescreens of the iPod. They open up the blog, click on the link to the Google Form, select what they think are the correct answers and fill in their dictations. When they have completed all sections of the form, they click “Submit” at the bottom. In the meantime, I have already opened up the associated spreadsheet on the whiteboard and the pupils are always amazed when their answers appear instantaneously on the screen. Each pupil’s answers appear on a single line of the spreadsheet. The teacher can also look down a column to see the class response to each spelling – it can be easily spotted if the class as a whole has had a problem learning a particular spelling.

I have done similar exercises with maths tables and litriú Ghaeilge. I have done this exercise with 1st Class, 2nd Class and 3rd Class and the response has been widely positive. Once the pupils got used to the idea, they found it quite easy to complete. As with all classroom work, some were finished quicker than others. This has been my first tentative steps into using Google Docs with iPod Touches in the classroom. I’m sure that there are boundless possibilities as to how something similar can be used for assessment tools and pupil responses in other areas of the curriculum.