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….
Days of the Week – English & Gaeilge
Posters of the Days of the Week in both English and as Gaeilge. (.pdf file 12.6KB) Download File…
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Editable Name Tags
Name tags for the pupils’ desks in the infant classes. Tags are provided for both girls and boys and these can be easily edited by the teacher. (.doc file 103KB) Download File…
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Numbers – English & Gaeilge
Posters of the numbers 1 – 10, showing the numeral together with its name in English and Gaeilge. (.pdf file 15.1KB) Download File…
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Vincent Van Gogh
Powerpoint presentation on the life and art of the Dutch artist Vincent Van Gogh.
(.ppt file 3.59MB)
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Ceart go Leor
Póstaeir le trí frásaí: “Ceart go Leor”; “Maith go Leor”; “Tá go Maith”. (comhad .pdf 675KB) Íoslódáil an Comhad…
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Navigate the New Website
While I appreciate that the new website will be a huge change for regular visitors to the site, I hope that given time you will appreciate that the site had to be re-organised to prepare for the future with a site hosting thousands of resources. I also hope that once you get used to finding the resources that you need on the new site, you will agree that navigating the site will be easier than the old site.
The new website is a blog-based site so it’s quite dynamic and the visitor will be able to view the site according to their searches. The site has been organised according to the curriculum provisions of the Irish primary school. The new navigation bar is coloured green and is located at the top of the page. Most of the buttons have a drop down menu which will outline the different categories into which the site has been organised. Because the site is blog-based, when you open up any of the categories you will get a list of posts for that category. The latest posts will be at the top of the page and you can scroll through other related resources by clicking on “Older Posts” at the bottom of the page. To look at any resource, you simply click on its name to open it up in its own page. To download the resource click on “Download File” or “Íoslódáil an Comhad“.
When in an individual post, you will notice that the post has been assigned to a category or a number of categories at the top of the page. By clicking on any of these categories, you can view other posts in the same category. Similarly, each post has “Tags” which can be seen at the bottom of the post. By clicking on any of these tags, you can view posts which have similar tags, thereby creating a page in the site grouped by tag. While this may be a new experience for some visitors, it also means that viewing the site can be tailored by each individual visitor.
Visitors should also be aware that there is a Search Box on the top right-hand corner of the screen. You can type in key words like “Ireland”, “Éadaí” or “1916” into the box and the site will search for posts which are associated with that search term or have been tagged with the search term. Visitors should get used to using this search box as it will get you started easily when looking for a resource on the site. There is also an “Advanced Search” tab at the top of each page. This will allow the visitor to tailor a search a little more. By using this search method, you use keywords to search, but you can specify in what area of the site you wish to look for results. So for example, you could search for “rhymes” in “Infants” and “English” sections by ticking the relevant boxes. You can also decide on a specific time period to limit your search, and you can look for results in posts and pages / posts only / pages only. I hope that this search method will prove useful to visitors to the site.
Gerrit Van Gelderen Archive
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
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:
to this:
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.
