Two Line Tuesday: Another Blow to Patronage and Pluralism
In the latest twist to the forum for patronage and pluralism, the Catholic Church has refused to take part in the proposed ERBE curriculum. At least they’re consistent.
Month: November 2016
What next for ERBE?
As part of the government’s Pluralism and Patronage Forum, which is supposed to ensure the human rights of all children, they tasked the NCCA (the people who write our curriculum) with making a new subject called Education about Religions and Beliefs and Ethics, or ERBE for short. This new subject aimed to teach children in all … Read more
Diversity in Primary Teaching
The Teaching Council hold a conference every year called Féilte. One of the topics up for discussion was Diversity in Teaching. The panel consisted of 4 educators, two of whom were primary school teachers. The first lives with a physical disability and the second is a member of the LGBTi community. The third level representatives … Read more
Supermarket Maths: Black Friday
For some reason, Black Friday was unavoidable in Ireland this year. It is now definitely a “thing” in this country, for better for worse… well, for worse. Lidl were getting in on the act with some pages of sales. Your problem solving skills will be required to find out which of these Black Friday deals gave … Read more
Two Line Tuesday: Kids on Board
Richard Bruton has announced several reforms of the education system including the wonderful distraction of proposing children become members of Boards of Management. Seeing that Boards do not get paid for their work, would this qualify as child slave labour?
Supermarket Maths: Screens
Still avoiding Christmas for another week at least, I couldn’t resist the Black Friday section of Lidl for a couple of reasons. It’s given me two very obvious questions to ask – one about percentages and the other about cost per item. The questions I can think of straight away are: How much does each … Read more
New Google Sites
Google Sites is one of the more underused apps in G Suite (the new name for Google Apps for Education). I’ve been using it for a number of years in school for newsletters and internal staff memos. Unfortunately, while functional, Google Sites was not particularly attractive. However, its great strength, for me, was how one … Read more
Two Line Tuesday: Homophobic Bullying
The Irish Independent produced a wonderful headline today, “Primary schools asked to stop children using ‘homophobic bullying’ words,” which of course is exactly what schools should be doing. It would be even nicer if the patron body that manages the majority of them would be as kind to the LGBT community.
Supermarket Maths: Hipster Pots
Lidl has gone all brassy and hipster this week with all sorts of copper, brass and bronze cooking pots and bowls, perfect for your industrial styled classroom! This week it’s getting harder to avoid the c-word but I managed to find some sets of bowls, where my puzzle for this week comes from. Your job … Read more
Supermarket Maths: Moulds
There are 12 days of Christmas but none of them are in November so we’re going to be avoiding the C-word for a little while longer even if the supermarkets can’t! Lidl have a few pages dedicated to baking and we found some nice maths to do with baking moulds. The questions for this week … Read more