Igniting Curiosity in Young Learners
The course is designed to promote pupil-centered inquiry learning across the curriculum, but particularly within SESE. Teachers will be introduced to innovative ways to develop critical thinking and problem-solving skills. Teachers will have the opportunity to improve their understanding of STEM through the use of digital learning tools and resources.
Technical Requirements
All our courses require broadband Internet access (Min of 2mb recommended) and participants need to be familiar with using the internet, downloading and installing software.
Course Objectives
Participants will understand the importance of igniting curiosity in young learners in STEM education.
Participants will learn strategies for incorporating STEM and inquiry-based learning into the early childhood curriculum – junior- 2nd class
Participants’ will understand the concept of computational thinking, its importance in primary education and learn how to develop engaging and meaningful computational thinking activities for their learners.
Participants will understand the role of technology and specifically robotics in early STEM education.
Participants will understand how to apply the SSE guidelines and the Digital Learning Framework to their own teaching and understand how developing their own ICT practice can have an impact at school level.
Expected Outcomes
Participants will be more aware of opportunities to enhance the STEM skills in the classroom and better equipped to create challenging tasks that motivate their pupils.
Participants will have the opportunity to engage in hands-on robotics challenges using Sphero indi and explore ways they can change their own practice to better support STEM learning through the introduction of robotics and simple coding in junior classes.
Participants will learn to better integrate computational thinking into existing curriculum areas and gain knowledge of various computational thinking tools and resources for primary education.
Course Duration
July 10th & 11th – Mayo Education Centre Online: July 12th to August 18th
This is a blended course, 2 Days in Mayo Education Centre, Westport Road, Castlebar, Mayo and the remainder (Approx 12 hours) of the course online at teachnet.ie, between July 12th and August 18th. Participants are required to attend the face-to-face workshops and engage meaningfully with online content for approximately 8 hours. Whilst participation and engagement with the course content will be primarily judged on the quality of their contributions, an attendance roll will be kept and a log of their time spent working online.
Face-to-face Workshops July 10th & 11th
09:30-09:45 – Daily Intro and WALT 09:45-11:00- Activity One 11:00-11:20- Break 11:20- 1:00 – Activity Two 1:00-1:40- Lunch 1:40- 2:30 – Activity Three
