Podcasts

COVID-19: Teacher's Advice For Keeping Children Up To Date With School

Full-time teacher and part-time blogger Sinead Kavanagh joined Alison on Weekend Breakfast to chat about how to keep the kids up to speed with their schoolwork while they're not in the classroom. She had reassuring tips on how parents can help their children and a few handy apps that will keep them occupied and their brains ticking. Sinead's fashion blog is The Beautiful Truth, and over on her Instagram page she shared a list on how to keep some level of normality going at home.   View this post on Instagram   As some of you might be aware, my real job is a primary school teacher. With the announcement of schools closing, I have put together a quick list on how to keep some level of school work or normality going at home. I would love if other teachers added their own ideas or good websites in the comments section. Some schools will already have stuff set up but there is only so much a teacher can put together in a short amount of time. It is also impossible for them to put enough together to suit all levels of students. So hopefully this helps 1) Don't worry about progression on new topics. The best thing you can do is take out their maths book and go over old topics. Especially tables!!! Pick a topic every few days and print out a few worksheets for them to do. Revision is best here. 2) Join Mathlethics. This is a website packed full of maths games. Children can play against each other and work on all the skills that they will have already covered this year!! https://login.mathletics.com 3) Pick out the next 2 reading comprehensions in their English reader. Listen to them read. Get them to do the topics in a new copy for home. Have a read over it yourself when they're done. Spend a week on each story. 4) Read, Read, Read. This is the best time for kids to read as much as they can. Pick a good book. Download a summery for yourself. Most books have book club type questions for each chapter online. Have a chat with the kids about the books. 5) If your children are older, there are some excellent websites for coding. I use scratch when coding with the kids. There's loads and loads of tutorials online https://scratch.mit.edu 6) Twinkl are offering a free month to parents. This website is incredible. It is full of printable for everything from pre schoolers upwards. You will find so much here https://www.twinkl.ie Pick a topic and get the kids to research and put together a project. This could be done the old fashioned way or using powerpoint or Prezi https://prezi.com 8) Scoilnet Primary is another website with a wealth of worksheets and topics for researching. https://www.scoilnet.ie 9) Take 20 mins the night before to have stuff ready. Write the list A post shared by Sinéad (@thebeauttruth) on Mar 12, 2020 at 7:07am PDT Listen back to all Sinead's tips and tricks by pressing the play button at the top of the screen. Weekend Breakfast with Alison Curtis, Saturdays and Sundays from 8am! see more