IrishHomework is a blended learning one-stop-shop for primary school Irish.
Before in-class work begins lesson content is learned at home.
In-class lessons happen 3 days a week, usually the day after a homework night. Most of our lessons have a full off the shelf Task Based Learning(TBL) plan built in, including task materials and assessment (30-50 mins). The TBL is designed to compliment the homework students have completed.
Our Teacher Training is compulsory. Our Flipped Classroom approach with in-class Task Based Learning requires full buy in. Both in terms of ensuring students complete their homework and creating a focused motivated atmosphere during class.
Our sample TBL lesson plans have timings attached.
A general rule of thumb for any main task is to stop just before they run out of steam.
Try to remember that we are focused on successful completion of the Pre-task, Task and Post-task, once these are done, Stop. If you got the job done early, great, move on to your next subject, making note of your timings for the next lesson. Language learning is particularly prone to motivational damage as a result of unfocused work.
YES.
Both the previous and current curriculum emphasize the importance of the spoken language in primary school Irish. Focusing on practicality and fluency.
We follow curricular guidance in terms of content and pedagogy.
From the outset we restrict the lexicon to the most frequently used spoken Irish. Our lessons strive to ensure that the basics are mastered before progression.
As a direct result of this students feel progress comes easy and can reuse learned language frequently.
Just as a child learns their mother tongue, grammatical structures build up in a students mind quite naturally through phrasal repetition in context and self/peer correction. Combining these phenomen with careful selection of incremental grammatical comlexity in our lesson sequencing we achieve excellent inherent grammatical ability.
We, educators, recognise the difficulty of learning grammar for our mother tongue English, only attempting to teach grammar long after spoken fluency is achieved. It seems inconsistent that we would ask students to receive grammar lessons prior to mastering the spoken language in Irish. The damage to motivation and momentum is collosal to all but the most capable students.This is one way in which we are different to all other pedagogical approaches. We endeavour to achieve all grammatical requirments implicitly rather than explicitly.
For anyone worried about grammatical requirments post primary... trust us, 100% of post primary teachers will take a student with a good grammatical ear over a student without, who might know some of the terminology, every time.
As with a lot of what we do here at IrishHomework.ie our advice on this may seem a little counter intuitive.
First of all, its important to remember to have a laser focus on what you are learning "this week".
A very common mistake is having lists of words around the classroom. WIth matching colourful images. (Thank you publishers!) This is counter productive as it takes your students minds off the current lexicon. We are not decorating, we trying to help spark their communicational Irish?
In fact the use of any Irish that does not come under "this week's" direct lexicon will simply diminish your rate of progress. It distracts and confuses. Rather than creating a richer Irish environment as one might think it creates a diluted Irish environment.
Instead try to have imagery that connects recent lessons or allows students to pull together recent lessons lexicon into a new narrative. Depictions of family activities or things they do with their friends work really well. So that if you ask them to "write a short story about anything" they have lots of visual prompts around them, that sends them down familiar lexical paths.
When communicating with your students keep recycling the words that are currently showing up in your Teacher Dashboard Word Cloud.
N.B. When we refer to communicational Irish, in fact we mean "all Irish" (everything can be communicated), referring to it as communicational ensures a more user friendly format. Functional language, say, letter writing, is generally best learned, like grammatical terminology, well after students have broken the back of communicational Irish. Taking it on too early has a detrimental an impact on less capable learners in particular.
The content is suitable for students from 1st class up. However only experienced teachers should use our solution with 1st and 2nd class, as such young learners will require extra help in regularising their homework sessions.
Our lessons are divided into three main levels. Whether your spoken Irish is weak or strong we recommend going through all the lessons in Level 1 before moving up to Level 2 or 3.
Older students should be able to quickly work through the easier content and make their way up to Level 2 where the themes are more interesting for older children.
There are some lessons at level 4 which remain hidden to students until set by teacher as they contain some subject matter that require group discussion.
The Status Dots capture at a glance if the student has comprehensively completed their homework and how well they participate during in class practice
Score < 40% results in a red dot,Score between 40% and 80% earns an orange dot. Score > 80% earns a green dot.
Setting a Lesson performs a number of your important weekly tasks
Lessons that are TBA ready have this icon as a watermark 
visble when setting a lesson from our lesson library. Take a look at the top right of this image so you know what to look out for.
When working on such a lesson you have the opportunity to carry out Self Assessent with a selection (or all) of your students.
From your Teacher Dashboard click into a student view and then select Report Mode. From there you will find the Self Assessment button displayed (if your current lesson is TBA ready).
You can keep track of who has done their assessment by toggling the icon on the main Teacher Dashboard.
The assessment process helps students understand the benefits of doing the activities well. It also serves as useful feedback for parents. (And teachers of course).
Your child will ...
...learn Irish as a spoken language through our focused approach on spoken Irish and using their Irish in class.
...begin to enjoy Irish through being able to use it to communicate with classmates.
...find oral and aural tests easy and have a much better implicit grasp of grammar and functional language.
...spend much less time on Irish overall as a result of our more focused approach and rapid progress
All the above can only be achieved if students get their 3 ten minute homeworks sessions done, every week.
Your child will be set lessons by their teacher.
They should only spend 10 minutes on the site for their homework. We recommend 3 days a week. This will be dictated by the teacher however as this site serves as actual homework. Teachers can accurately view a students activity on the site. They can also measure their scores and see which vocabularly students are struggling with.
If students spend longer than 10 minutes per night, 3 times a week, it can lead the students to become disinterested and loose focus. Every 10 minute session should feel intense and the object is always to learn all of the content on every lesson, thoroughly.
Only you, your childs teacher and the site moderators can view your childs use of the site.
We don't share any information with third parties for any purpose.
Students can only communicate one on one with their teacher, and we encrypt and store copies of all communication. These are then removed every July.
Most parents who have been through the Irish education system will have a large amount of "dormant" Irish. We recommend you get stuck in with your child and practice their lessons with them. You'll be amazed how quickly you'll activate your own Irish.
Our site is designed to allow your child to learn autonomously. It will still help them however if you show an interest and perhaps encourage them to focus on mastery of the lesson before trying to get 100% in the lesson tests.
Please remind them that the platform is there to help them learn as much as they can. It's not an obstacle to "get around". The more focused they are for each 10 minute homework, the easier they will find class. The subject becomes quite easy, quite quickly.
Clicking on this link will bring you to our reset password page Reset password
You can create your new password by clicking on the link in the email we send you.
No, any internet enabled device is ok.
Using a computer is probably the best way to use out site. All other devices work fine though even if you have to scroll around the screen a bit.
The most important thing is that you have either a good mobile network connection (at least 3G) or a good broadband connection (at least 1Mbit/s). Otherwise you will have to be a little patient while the lesson page loads. When you click on a button give it a moment to respond.
Yes. You can attempt the Game and Test of each lesson as many times as you like.
Please remember that the test is designed to prevent you from getting a good score until you understand the Dialogue and Key Examples completely.
If you get a 100% without knowing the lesson well, let us know so we can make the test harder. :)
No. Only your teacher can see your activity and scores.
Every week we take a few marks off your lesson scores.
Lessons with a high score only have 1% taken off.
Lessons with a medium score have 3% taken off.
Lessons with low scores have 5% taken off.
You can loose a lot of marks if you have several lessons with low scores.
After several weeks one of your high scored lessons might fall into the medium score category, in this case you will need to refresh this lesson in your mind, and do the test again.
High score lessons will stay in the Coasting Zone even if they are going down just a little each week. When they reach Medium score level they will appear in the Dropping Zone.
We like to keep everything in English when it comes to finding your way around the site.
If we tell you exactly what you get wrong in the test then some students would just do the tests over and over, learn how to pass the tests, and not learn the lesson properly.
Instead we just show you your score for each section of the test. You can see these section scores when you submit your test BEFORE you click OK on the result.
If you don't get a high enough score, you need to learn the lesson more carefully. :)
If your browser automatically uses your old password even when you type in your new password, have a look at How to Make your Browser Forget your Old Password.
If you don't remember your password choose Forgot my Password from the Login page.
