Lesson Activities for St. Patrick’s Day
Have you started thinking about celebrating St. Patrick's Day?
St. Patrick’s Day, which ends Seachtain na Gaeilge, is a fantastic chance to celebrate everything there is to love about Ireland and the Irish culture. I have put together some ideas for celebrating St. Patrick’s Day in your class and school this year that requires little to no preparation.
We’ve also got free downloadable resources for you HERE!
Have a Lá Glas
Get everyone in your class and school to dress in green or to wear something green!
Attend a virtual St. Patrick’s Day Parade
Rewatch St. Patrick’s Day parades like the one in Dublin in 2019 and all over the world in New York and Australia.
Another amazing thing for the children to do is watch a parade like this one from 1939 and discuss how the celebration has changed over time.
Songs or Rhymes as Gaeilge
This fantastic website “Songs in Irish” has over 600 Irish language songs with lyrics included. In most cases they also include the YouTube video link and also guitar chords.
I also love An Haka Gaelach, check it out below!
TG Lurgan has lots of modern pop songs in Irish! I love playing these in class as the children work. Amhrán na gCupán is a really fun song to learn and the pupils love using the cups!
Get your dancing shoes on!
Learn and perform some ceilí dances or fun irish dances such as:
An Dreoilín
The Walls of Limerick
This can still be done outdoors, socially distanced with a little tweaking and no holding hands!
Or why not show the pupils how Irish dancing has modernised with pop music, and how it has become a TikTok trend!
Try to Trap a Leprechaun!
I saw this amazing idea on ashleymurphyfamily on Instagram and thought it was such a fun idea to do with the younger pupils! These two books could be played as YouTube read-alouds, and then after planning their trap, they could get to work using recyclable materials, glitter, paint and lots of colour!
Have an Outdoor Scavenger Hunt as Gaeilge!
One way I like to have fun leading up to St. Patrick’s Day is to compose a sentence as Gaeilge, cut it up and hide the sentence in different places on the yard. Under a bin, under a flower pot, on a wall, on a window, anywhere! The pupils must go around the area, find the words that are hidden and record each word. The group have to follow all the clues as Gaeilge, written or aural, and put the sentence together in the correct structure to win the scavenger hunt!
You could also do a scavenger hunt for younger pupils by hiding pictures with numbers around the yard and the pupils must try to match a word with a number to the correct picture with another number.
Scavenger hunts are so broad and you can have so much fun coming up with something fun and exciting for the pupils!
Comórtas Seanfhocal
This is a fun activity to get the pupils to do and is really interesting to see the different interpretations! Give each pupil a different seanfhocal and have them draw a picture to match it!
Gaelic Athletics Association
Teach the pupils the history of the GAA in Ireland and engage in some of our Gaelic sports.
I hope this has given you some ideas for celebrating St. Patrick’s Day in your classroom or school this year!
Labhróidh mé libh go luath!
Nadine
P.S. We’ve also got free downloadable resources for you HERE!
Virtual Conference for Teachers: NQT Picnic 27th July 2022
NQT Picnic is a specially designed online event for NQT’s in July 2022.
It is a daunting experience starting your very first teaching position – whether it is subbing or your own post! College seems like a long time ago now and you may be starting to feel a tad nervous.
Following the huge success of NQT Fest & Picnic in 2021, we are delighted to share this special event for NQT’s in July 2022 with you!
Free Resources for Teachers: End of School Year Activities
Free Resource for Teachers – End of School Year Activities!
11 Ideas for End of Year School Activities
What an exciting time of the year! Your main lessons and topics are complete and the pupils are getting excited for their summer holidays. It can be a challenging time to keep pupils engaged in classroom lessons due to exciting events on the horizon like school tours or sports days, so I like to keep things light and fun and still try to ensure the learning is taking place.
3 Things Teachers Should Know Before They Start Teaching
Ciara McGuane is the Summer Course Director for Rahoo.ie.
Her career highlights include being filmed by BBC London teaching in the classroom and guest-lecturing at the Institute of Education in London. She has worked as a teacher, school leader, teacher trainer and initial teacher training tutor prior to setting up Rahoo.
3 Classroom Management Mistakes to Avoid
This is always a hot topic for teachers and so important to get it right.
Here are some mistakes that teachers have shared with us when they did our EPV Summer Course on Classroom Management with Niamh Byrne, Irish Primary Teacher.
We have dipped in and out of the CPD course to learn what to do instead!
The Secret to Successful Lesson Planning!
Why do we remember the words of lyrics we haven’t heard in years? Why do some experiences stick in our heads more than others? Something made them memorable!
Make your lessons stick by trying to make some aspect of it different. This could be as simple as playing music (we have played classical music when students were working independently in the past) or hooking them into the lesson with mystery tasks or controversial questions that spark debate.
When planning ask yourself: What can I do to make this lesson memorable?
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