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.
Website Downtime
Working with IT can be frustrating sometimes! Just when everything is running along smoothly, a glitch hits the system when least expected. This is what happened to the Seomra Ranga website last week. And as Murphy’s Law would have it, the glitch happened when I was out of the country. It appears that the Seomra Ranga website just got too busy during the month of October with more than 51,000 visits. This also co-incided with teachers looking for resources in the run-up to Hallowe’en. Due to the level of downloading, the allocated bandwidth of the site was exceeded and access to the site was automatically blocked. This is the first time that this has happened to the site – looking positively it may be an indicator of the success of the site.
I only became aware of the access problems to the site after I decided to check in with Education Posts during the week to see what was happening in the education world in Ireland. A swift e-mail to my host provider, Lets Host, and they worked immediately on getting the site back up and running. For the longer term, the bandwidth issue will be resolved to eliminate the possibility of this happening again. So everything is back to normal and hopefully the gremlins will be happy with their Hallowe’en surprise for Seomra Ranga and stay away for a long time to come!
New Hallowe’en Resources
A number of new Hallowe’en resources have been added to the Seomra Ranga website today. They include a set of flashcards of spooky Hallowe’en vocabulary; two new Hallowe’en themed door signs; a Hallowe’en themed writing frame; two new large and small 1-20 number lines with a Hallowe’en theme; all eleven Dolch Word Lists, each list with its own Hallowe’en theme. I hope teachers find these useful and practical for the classroom. If you have any resources for Hallowe’en in the classroom, please send them to info@seomraranga.com and I’ll upload them to the site to share with others.
2nd Birthday
Seomra Ranga recently celebrated its 2nd birthday. Those two years have flown by. When starting out, I never expected that the site would be so successful. September is usually a busy month for the site for obvious reasons with teachers preparing for the new school year and looking for resources for their classrooms. There were 54,000 visits to the site this September, an incredible figure given that the site is only two years old and that the site is not advertised anywhere – people seem to have found out about Seomra Ranga by word of mouth alone. The plan for the next year is simple – to keep on producing free resources that are relevant to the primary school classroom especially in an Irish context. The most popular areas of the site are the Gaeilge section and the blog. Teachers constantly remark that they like the site especially for the Gaeilge resources as there are very few sites on the internet that provide Gaeilge resources. Gaeilge resources will continue to form a large part of the site for this very reason. So after two very busy years, it’s still enjoyable providing free resources to Irish teachers. Here’s to year 3!
17 Martin Street
Published in 2008, “17 Martin Street” is a novel by Marilyn Taylor, the same author that wrote the very successful book “Faraway Home”, with which many teachers will be familiar. Having thoroughly enjoyed “Faraway Home” and used the novel with a sixth class some years ago, I was eager to read this book which I only came across recently. Taylor revisits the same theme as “Faraway Home” for this novel, as it centres around the lives of Jews in Ireland during the period of the Second World War.
The setting this time shifts from Belfast, as in “Faraway Home”, to Dublin. Twelve year old Hetty and her Jewish family move into number 17 Martin Street in inner city Dublin during the winter of 1940. Ben lives with his family in number 19 Martin Street. Jews and Christians live side by side and the novel shows how they co-existed in an atmosphere of hatred, suspicion but also in a spirit of co-operation for the common good. read more…
Hallowe’en Wordles
Check out the new Hallowe’en Wordles that have been added to the site today. They are based on Hallowe’en, Hallowe’en Food, Hallowe’en Creatures and Oíche Shamhna. Enjoy!
View these resources HERE>>>>>
8 Year Olds With iPods in School
What happens when you give a class of eight year olds an iPod each in school? I found out about this video through Twitter from @simonlewis. It’s amazing what educational uses iPods could be put to in a classroom. Could this ever happen in Ireland?…
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Water Safety Resources
Seomra Ranga is pleased to announce that it has received permission from Irish Water Safety (IWS) to include their powerpoint classroom resources on the site for teachers to download freely. These resources should be of great benefit to primary school teachers to use in the classroom. It should be emphasised that all of these resources were entirely created by IWS and they remain the copyright of IWS. I am very grateful to IWS for being so generous to allow these resources to be made available to teachers through this site. read more…
Anne Frank
“Anne Frank” is a picture book written by Josephine Poole and illustrated by Angela Barrett. Rather than being a picture book version of the original diary, this book tells a third hand account of the life of Anne Frank. The language used in the re-telling of the story is relatively easy to understand and would be suitable to be read to younger children or for pupils in middle class standards to read for themselves. The book outlines the main points in the life of Anne Frank without going into too much detail, which makes it ideal to introduce the story to young children. The book is thirty pages long and the text is interspersed with beautifully created illustrations which are very evocative of the the period of WWII. This book would be a great resource for the teacher when teaching about WWII through the story of Anne Frank.
The back cover of the book carries an endorsement by the popular children’s author Jacqueline Wilson: “Exquisitely and imaginatively illustrated, this is a sensitive retelling of the moving story of Anne Frank”. The book is published by Red Fox, an imprint of Random House. (see www.kidsatrandomhouse.co.uk) ISBN 978-0-099-40976-2 The book cost €6.65 in my local bookstore.
See also other Anne Frank resources on the Seomra Ranga website:
