I was searching on the web the other day for sites that offer support and resources to Primary School teachers. I was doing this as I wanted to find a suitable home for the brilliant teaching guide that Orla Mackey of St. John's School, Kilkenny had developed with her Fifth Class when they were reading The Butterfly Heart.
One of the first sites I came across was Seomra Ranga which means classroom in Irish. It is a site set up by Damien Quinn, a Primary School teacher in a rural school in Sligo and he set it up, as he says himself, 'to share practical resources for the primary school classroom on the web.' These are mainly resources he has developed and used in the classroom himself, with the addition of resources submitted by other Primary School teachers. It is a fantastic site and when I emailed Damien to ask whether he would be interested in seeing this Teaching Guide he came back immediately and said he would. The upshot of all of this is that the Teaching Guide is now available for download on Seomra Ranga here and this week they are also running a competition with five of the books to give away.
Seomra Ranga for me illustrates the positive power of the web - here is one individual, a committed teacher, who has set up a website, a twitter and a facebook page and through this other teachers are able to share resources in a way that can only enhance the experience of the children in the schools. Just brilliant.
