Day 9

Today was the last day with workshops, because tomorrow we will present our portfolios with all the teachers present in the different methodology courses.

In the morning we had the second workshop about Irish films and we continued looking at different short films that could be used in the classroom and we also collected various ideas to use them in order to develop students’ critical thinking and creativity. The first short film we looked at was ‘Signs’. I liked it very much and I think it can be used for teaching rules and it is also great for practising storytelling. We analysed the various elements of films as well. We received a great link with lots of materials on short films. I think it is great that films are embedded in the curriculum and students work a lot on them.

Later during the workshop we also looked at and talked about the short film ‘Donkey’ and worked on the film ‘My Left Foot’ and were engaged in some creative writing activities. I found this workshop really useful because I got lots of ideas for using films in the classroom.

During the second session we focused on Irish music. We were given an introduction to Irish music and looked at examples of notable Irish singers and groups and their work.

We looked at the traditional Irish instruments and participated in two exercises related to specific songs with a focus on literacy skills development.

We did a great activity, we needed to compare two songs called ‘Galway Girl’, one by Ed Sheeran and one by Mundy. We collected similarities and differences between the two songs and looked at the lyrics as well.

It was interesting to hear that in Ireland students can work on song lyrics instead of poetry.