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Handwriting & Touch Typing
Here are some great resources for helping parents teach handwriting and touch typing skills during this period of virus lockdown.
Handwriting is a basic skill, but it is equally an important skill. Without legible and fluent handwriting, pupils can struggle to communicate their thoughts through writing.
During this extended school closure period, give the skill of handwriting some time and attention, with the help of these wonderful online free resources.
Handwriting Videos
The website www.schoolrun.com have a YouTube channel with a series of videos dedicated to handwriting (View HERE). Drawing on research and teaching experience, the videos demonstrate how to break down letters into groups that make practice and learning easy and manageable for young and struggling students.
Handwriting Apps
Writing Wizard and Cursive Writing Wizard are two great handwriting instructional apps by L’Escapadou. They are free and available on Android, Apple and Kindle Fire devices.
Handwriting Worksheets
If you are looking for handwriting worksheets, look no further than www.handwritingworksheets.com. Here you can customize handwriting worksheets. Here too you are enabled to change letter size, handwriting style, handwriting colour and teaching support strategy (dot, dash or hollow).
Learn to Touch Type
Learning to touch type is another basic but important skill. Like handwriting, speed and automaticity are extremely beneficial when typing. Moreover, communicating one’s thoughts through writing online or on computer is now an everyday part of school and work life. During this extended school closure period, why not help you or your child to learn touch typing.
Typing Club offers free and fun courses for kids (View HERE) and adults (View HERE). It offers courses through different languages and even courses for (what is often considered the most effective way to type) the Dvorak keyboard (View HERE).
To view their extensive range of lessons across different types of keyboards and languages; View HERE.
Enjoy Together
Why not support SPHE learning at home with the help of MediaWise?
SPHE stands for Social, Personal and Health Education and has been a compulsory subject in Irish primary school since 1999. One aspect of SPHE is media education.
With children spending more time online as part of distance learning, they are increasingly being exposed to different forms of media, i.e. advertising and their influences.
MediaWise is a free Irish educational programme that provides lessons for pupils from Junior Infants to 6th class. It aims to enable children to understand what media is, how advertising works and how media and advertising can influence how we feel; how we think and eventually what we buy.
To access the programme click HERE.
During the school closure period, why not take some time for SPHE and raise your own and your child’s awareness and understanding of media and its impact on our daily lives, our thoughts and our personal behaviour.
It is understood tonight that sources within government believe that the Minister for Education Mr Joe McHugh will make a recommendation to the present caretaker Cabinet, tomorrow morning, to cancel this year’s Leaving Certificate examinations.
With this recommendation, also will come a memo outlining possible alternatives to these exams being cancelled.
The memo to be revealed is the product of detailed consideration taken into account over a number of weeks by the Department of Education.
The Department of Education together with second level teacher trade unions, school management bodies and others, have today continued with discussions over how best to assess students.
Alternatives debated could include a review of previous Junior Certificate results; Mock Examination results: Profiles within the school of previous attainments; Teachers and School Principals professional judgment or all of the previous stated, in an effort to produce some kind of estimate of each attending students.
Taoiseach Mr Leo Varadkar had already stated that the issue of the Leaving Certificate examinations is one that his caretaker Government wishes to bring to a final conclusion this week, adding that it was important to make sure that an alternative to same was identified and put in place.
Visit Thurles and Tipperary from the 1930’s onwards & enjoy Photographs and Folklore.
Dúchas.ie is a project that aims to digitise the National Folklore Collection of Ireland.
The overall project consists of three main sections:
(A). The Schools’ Collection (Visit HERE).
(B). The Photographic Collection (Visit HERE).
(C). The Main Manuscript Collection (Visit HERE).
The Schools’ Collection includes approximately 740,000 pages of folklore compiled by pupils from 5,000 primary schools, between 1937 and 1939. Folklore compiled by Tipperary pupils can be viewed HERE.
You can even access records of folklore from pupils who attended local Thurles schools, including the Thurles CBS, (Visit HERE) and Thurles Presentation Convent, (Visit HERE).
The Photographic Collection comprises 80,000 photographs, all mostly taken between 1935 and 1970.
The main Manuscript Collection provides access to records of Ireland’s oral tradition and material culture, the majority of which was collected from 1935 onwards.
Not all of the precious manuscripts held in this great collection have been transcribed, but Dúchas.ie are inviting users of the site to transcribe, on a voluntary basis, stories that were collected as part of the Schools’ Collection. If you would like to volunteer then please visit HERE.
May The Fourth Be With You!
Tomorrow, Monday May 4th, is ‘Star Wars Day’ and the internet is teeming with fun activities and offers to keep fans, young and old, fully entertained.
Lego.com are gearing up for the big day with Star Wars games and fun through their kidzone, same available HERE.
Lego.com is also launching new Lego Star Wars products and offering great deals on their existing Lego Star Wars toys and collectibles. Indeed, Lego.com is now offering a free mystery gift for purchases made over €15, if you pay with PayPal and use the promo code IEPP.
The official online home of Star Wars is unmistakeably www.starwars.com and it has lots of fun family activities for May 4th, click HERE.
Why not explore some Star Wars themed cooking and make some banana and pineapple Fruit TIE fighters?
Take a behind the scenes look at the links between science and Star Wars by watching episodes of the series Science and Star Wars.
Why not ponder some probing Star Wars questions with the aid of the StarWars.com discussion cards? For example, If Darth Vader scares everyone, what scares Darth Vader?
Even the youngest Star Wars fans can enjoy some colouring fun with the help of a free Star Wars Activity pack available HERE.
Whatever way you choose to celebrate Star Wars day, do stay safe and remember, ‘May the fourth be with you!’
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