About Us

Why we created IrishHomework.ie

"A fairly typical primary education in 80's Ireland left me with a lot of Irish learned but incapable of even a basic conversation" Robin Rynhart (Founder IrishHomework.ie)

"Thirty years later, I could see the exact same fate playing out for my own three children. Something had to be done to improve their Irish outcome."

What we have done

We have removed all the unecessary hurdles to learning a language. Now the young learner's enthusiasm is channelled into achieving success in the shortest time frame and with reduced effort.

Success, is feeling like you can speak Irish right from the beginning. Early success motivates you to expand your knowledge of Irish without it feeling so difficult.

How we did it

We applied modern language teaching methods using todays technology to create a web based platform that allows a flipped classroom solution.

Lowering Hurdles

  • We focus on the top 500 spoken Irish words. This is enough to give us 80% of everyday spoken Irish.
  • All our dialogues are typical of an Irish students daily encounters. This creates many opportunites to use what has been learned.
  • Vocabulary definitions and clear pronunciations are only a hover and click away, at all times. No dictionary work needed.
  • Record and playback tools and repeat testing/playing allow for Learning Through Self Assessment
  • Learning through Peer Assessment occurs in class with student to student correction during activities. The careful facilitator allows peer-pressure to become a positive force creating a "Natural Learning" environment.

    This is only possible with IrishHomework.ie thanks to its absolute transparency of learned content. i.e. you can adjust your in-class practice to perfectly fit what you know they know.

Flipped Classroom (with built-in Assessment for Learning)

The "flipped classroom" aproach is core to IrishHomework. Rather than asking teachers to deliver more, we offer a more efficient model. Giving children the ability to self study Irish content at home, in a fun way. Goal oriented, with user friendly tools. This allows teachers to use class time to "activate" the language learned. The real efficiency is achieved as a result of childrens Irish being activated, that is, transformed into a working language inside their mind. This makes it fun, it makes it stick, it creates a mental framework that is much much easier to build upon.

Teachers can see at a glance of their Teacher Dashboard which students have learned today's material, how successfully they have learned it and what if any issues they may be having with it. They can then create task based classroom activities for students to put "last nights lesson" into practice.

It could be as simple as students in pairs, re-enacting the dialogue in different characters, ( a granny voice and a Big Bad Wolf voice ), or with a slightly different task than that of the dialogue itself.

In this way, a teacher becomes a facilitator rather than an instructor. They can focus on bringing the Irish out of the students, encouraging them to speak freely and to make lots of mistakes. (Correcting is for multiple repeats of an engrained error only.)

Please take a look at our Teacher Training page for further guidance on the flipped classroom and how to activate and facilitate language learning during class time.


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