Studyseed CIC | Updates and Resources

Easter 2023 GCSE Revision Classes

siofra@studyseed.co.uk (Studyseed CIC) — Wed, 29 Mar 2023 21:10:01 GMT

View our timetable of available GCSE Revision classes and Studyseed Helpdesk opening times in Portadown over the Easter 2023 holidays

Available Classes

GCSE English Language (Unit 1)
Thursday 6 April 09.45 - 12.45;
Friday 7 April 13.15 - 16.15

GCSE English Language (Unit 4)

Thursday 6 April 13.15 - 16.15;
Friday 7 April 09.45 - 12.45

GCSE Maths (Foundation)

Wednesday 12 April 09.45 - 12.45;
Friday 14 April 13.15 - 16.15

GCSE Maths (Higher)

Wednesday 12 April 13.15 - 16.15;
Friday 14 April 09.45 - 12.45

Studyseed Helpdesk

At the Studyseed Helpdesk, you can reserve a 20-minute session or just drop in for help in academic topics, revision, exam techniques, stress management, and more.

Available:

Thursday 6 April 09.45 - 12.45;
Wednesday 12 April 13.15 - 16.15

Our Easter revision classes and helpdesk will be held in person at 21 Market Street, Portadown.

To check availability and to book in, please contact us on 07599 804 844 or email info@studyseed.co.uk .

August 2022 Seminars: How Do You Learn?

siofra@studyseed.co.uk (Studyseed CIC) — Sat, 23 Jul 2022 12:53:22 GMT

We are delivering a series of online seminars for AQE/GL, KS3 and GCSE pupils between 22-31 August 2022.

We are running a selection of online seminars at the end of August to help students get prepared for the return to school and the new school year. These 2-hour interactive seminars are £30 each, with a 10% discount when booking in for two seminars and 15% off for three or more. Seminars are tailored for Northern Ireland pupils.

How do you learn?

Monday 22nd August 4-6pm

KS2 (Transfer test) - Anxiety

Tuesday 23rd August 4-6pm

KS3 - How to revise

Wednesday 24th August 4-6pm

KS3 - Dickson plan pressure

Thursday 25th August 4-6pm

KS3 - How to organise and prepare for all your subjects

Friday 26th August 6.30-8.30pm

GCSE - How to revise

Tuesday 30th August 6.30-8.30pm

GCSE - Time manag ement

Wednesday 31st August 6.30-8.30pm

GCSE - Research skills

Current clients can book in directly using the ‘Book a Lesson’ menu option in your client account. If you do not yet have one, you can create one here: bit.ly/3RSmouh . Discounts will be applied when payment is requested.

For more information or if you have any queries, pop us an email at info@studyseed.co.uk .

Christmas Cookie Pops with Aruma Treats

Sat, 05 Dec 2020 19:22:24 GMT

We asked our friends at Aruma Treats to come up with an easy - and tasty! - Christmas activity for our younger students. Print off our Christmas Cookie Pop Planner, design your treats and then follow their instructions below to create your masterpieces!

What you need:

One packet of Oreo cookies

O ne or two blocks of your favourite chocolate

One packet of lollipop sticks

Sprinkles and sweets to decorate

Step 1:

Insert the lollipop stick into the cream centre of the Oreo. Be careful, as the Oreo can break.

Step 2:

Carefully melt your chocolate by microwaving it in a microwavable container for 15-20 seconds at a time and stirring it after each time.

Step 3:

Carefully melt your chocolate by microwaving it in a microwavable container for 15-20 seconds at a time and stirring it after each time.

Step 4:

Decorate with your sprinkles, sweets and chocolate. Place the cookie pops on greaseproof paper to set.

Printable Christmas Cookie Pop Planner:

Connect with Aruma Treats and check out their handcrafted cakes and desserts on:

Instagram: @aruma_treats

Facebook: /arumatreats

Ask an Expert: Applying for Your First Job

Tue, 10 Nov 2020 13:09:06 GMT

We’re starting a new series where we gather questions from students and parents/guardians on key topics and ask experts from the industry to answer them for you.

We wanted to kick things off with a topic that so many of our students have been voicing their concerns about - finding their first job.

With everything going on this year and the detrimental impact that restrictions have had on the hospitality sector in particular, we’ve seen a lot of students worrying about how they will secure their first job or a part-time job while studying.

Over the past week, we’ve gathered questions from some of our 16-18 year olds about CVs, applying for a job without experience and where to look for job vacancies.

Answering your questions today is Jordan McAdam, founder of JMC Career Coach , who has spent the past decade in both global and regional recruitment across the UK and Ireland. We’re very grateful to Jordan for taking the time to answer these questions for us - if you have any further questions that you’d like to follow up with, you can find her contact details at the end of this article.

YOUR QUESTIONS ANSWERED

1. How can I get around needing experience for jobs when I’ve never had a job before?

"This is always a difficult one.

However, the reason a business will want to see previous experience is to understand the skills and competencies you have. So, think about the things you have done, whether this is paid for work or not, and the skills that this might display.

For example, you may have taken part in the Duke of Edinburgh Award Scheme and worked voluntarily as part of this. Duke of Edinburgh shows you are driven, resilient and a good team player. It can be a good idea to highlight the skills and competencies that your experience translates to."

2. Can I just leave out work experience on a CV if I don’t have any or should I still include the section and just leave it blank?

"You can leave this out. However, think about what could potentially be put in its place - for example: ‘achievements’. Have you been part of a sports team that has won a competition? Have you achieved highly in some of your studies? Have you done any extra-curricular activities in school?"

3. If I haven’t got my results yet but I’m currently doing A-levels can I put this down on a job application or can I only put down my GCSE results?

"You can include the A-levels, but state that results are pending."

4. I sell clothes and jewellery on Depop, can I put that down on my CV even though I don’t have an employer and it’s more of a hobby?

"Absolutely! It’s really important to put things like this on a CV, especially if you don’t have a lot of working experience yet. A CV is to tell an employer about you and to showcase your skills.

Think about what you do and the skills this has given you - for example: organisational skills, communicating with customers on a daily basis and ensuring they are happy, after-sales care, etc."

5. Who can I put down as a reference if I haven’t had a job before?

"You can usually include a professional like a teacher, for instance. Just ask the person before you include them as a referee."

6. I’m doing my A-levels and want to study politics at university. Is it better to try to find a part-time job related to politics now to get a head start on experience or should I just try to get any job I can and focus instead on trying to get a summer placement or unpaid experience related to politics instead?

"I would say unpaid/voluntary experience will allow you to be involved in more interesting projects. If you could get a paid job related to politics then of course that would be advantageous, but voluntary experience is always looked on positively on a CV."

7. My older brother got his first job by going into places around the town and asking for part-time work but with all of the current restrictions is it still worth trying that or it is acceptable to ring places up to ask if they need anyone?

"For local businesses, it would be acceptable to phone. When you do speak to someone, ask them for an email address to send them a copy of your CV should any opportunities come up."

8. Where can I find jobs that are local to me? All the jobs in my area when I look online need university degrees and experience and I don't know where people advertise jobs for students.

"There are lots of places where companies advertise. Most jobs will be advertised on one of the job boards, such as NIJobs , NIJobFinder or through the JobCentre Online .

However, businesses are now starting to use other avenues like social media. There are some groups on Facebook, for example, or you might be able to follow the business on Instagram. It also might be worth registering with a local recruitment agency as they might be able to keep you updated on any local jobs."

JMC Career Coach offers coaching in employability skills to help you feel confident and assured in taking the next steps towards your future! The services offered include:

CV review and enhancement
Specialist 1:1 interview coaching
Mock interview and review
Group sessions – CV writing, interview skills, how to interview virtually and confidence building.

Beginning your career following school or university can be difficult. It can feel like a whirlwind and with the world in a global pandemic, it can be hard to know where to start - but job hunting is a skill that can be learnt! It is a process, and I am here to support you through it. From job searching, CV writing, interview preparation and beyond, I want to help give you the skills and confidence to secure your future!

Connect with Jordan on:

www.jmccareercoach.co.uk
Instagram
Facebook

How to Take Better Notes for Effective Revision and Study Organisation

Sat, 17 Oct 2020 23:22:23 GMT

Note taking. It’s something that all students find themselves doing - but something that they often receive little guidance on how to do well .

Good note-keeping should be concise, structured and organised. This guide is going to walk you through each of these aspects and explain how and why you should write your notes in a way that follows this approach. You can download our FREE note templates at the bottom of this page.

While these guidelines are ideal for university students for taking notes during lectures, we also recommend that students begin to follow these guidelines when preparing revision notes at secondary school level. Note taking is a skill that requires practice - so start early in preparation for when you’ll need to rely more heavily on your own notes at A-level and at university.

KEEP YOUR NOTES CONCISE

When you sit down to write out revision notes on a specific topic, you aren’t aiming to rewrite your course material all over again. You’ve got the textbook, the workbook or the module guide to refer to for the full details - so you shouldn’t be writing everything out in great detail again.

How many times have you started off writing revision notes that are detailed and perfectly highlighted before realising after spending a lot of time covering just a few topics that you’ll never get through all of the content before the exams at that level of detail? For those of you who have completed a year at university, how do your lecture notes from the beginning of term compare to the ones you took by the final week of the semester? (Did you even take notes in the final class? We’ve been guilty of this one ourselves… don’t worry.)

Let’s take the following example to illustrate how to condense a paragraph about pressure cooking down into note format:

H ere you’ve got the detailed text from your textbook or workbook. There’s no point in writing this all out again for your notes because it’s going to take up too much time and we don’t actually need all of the information included in the paragraph.

Notes are better when you try to organise and rewrite the original material in your own words. This is particularly important if you’re gathering information for an essay - you don’t want to risk plagiarising another person’s work by forgetting that your notes aren’t written in your own words. To be safe, you should always keep a note of the original source material so that if you do end up using your notes as part of an essay, you’ll have the original source available to reference.

KEEP YOUR NOTES STRUCTURED

We’re big fans of the Cornell note-taking system for keeping our notes structured. Instead of writing notes across the entire width of your page, you divide your page into three sections, like this:

For lectures:

The idea behind the Cornell note-taking method is that, during a lecture, you write your notes into the main area on the page. After the lecture, you can go back and summarise your notes into key prompts or headings, which you can write down in the prompts section beside the relevant notes in the main body. At this point, you should also try to summarise everything on the page into a concise statement that you can write at the bottom in the summary section.

For revision/research:

We also recommend using this type of template for revision notes and notes that you take when researching material. Following the same idea, we recommend putting key points or questions to ask yourself in the prompt section. Then, fill in the relevant notes that expand on these points in the main section. The bottom section should summarise the contents of the page - that way, when you’re looking through your notes for a specific topic, you can check the summaries on the bottom of each page in order to find the page you’re looking for quickly.

Here’s an example of how we would fill out a page when making notes:

This format is particularly useful for when you want to test your own knowledge. Simply cover up the main section of the page and see how much of it you can remember from the prompts or questions that you’ve written down the side.

KEEP YOUR NOTES ORGANISED

Finally, there is no point in taking good revision or lecture notes if you can’t find them quickly when you need them. How you organise your notes will differ depending on your method of taking them.

Traditional notes (pen and paper!)

Keep your notes for each subject together - whether that means having a lever arch file dedicated to each subject, with topics separated by file dividers, or storing your notes in dedicated folders.

Even when keeping your notes organised like this, we strongly recommend that you save a copy of your notes in digital format as well. This is easy to do using apps on your phone that can quickly convert written pages into a digital PDF file that you can then store in folders on your computer or cloud-based account - like Google Drive or Dropbox.

We have used an app called Tiny Scanner for years to scan our written notes. It’s particularly handy as you can upload your PDF directly onto Google Drive or email it to yourself from the app. This way, if you need to consult your notes while away from home, you can access them instantly on your device.

Here’s an example of how we would save a revision note using Tiny Scanner:

First you take a photograph of your page - you can select ‘multi-page’ to scan in multiple pages as a single PDF document. Next, drag the corners to adjust the box to align with the edges of each of your pages. If you take your picture against an uncluttered background, the app will find the edges automatically for you. Once you have done this for each page, you can adjust the contrast and choose whether to save your file in colour or black and white. Finally, choose where to save your notes - it’s best to keep all your notes in organised folders so be consistent when saving these.

Digital notes

We strongly recommend using a matte screen protector to replicate the feeling of writing on paper if you’re planning on using your device for a lot of handwritten notes - it makes such a difference. It’s best to use a dedicated note-taking app like Good Notes 5 or Notability for writing digital notes using a tablet and smart pencil. Both of these apps have excellent systems for organising your notes into subject folders.

If you’re using our template, you can open the PDF file within these apps and set it as the page template to write your notes on directly. These apps also have the added benefit of letting you search your written notes using character recognition - we’ve found this feature to be very accurate (depending on how neat our writing is) as you can see below:

As always, you should save a copy of your notes on another cloud system just to make sure you have a back-up in case anything happens to the app or the device that the notes are saved on - you really can’t be too careful!

DOWNLOAD THE PRINTABLE TEMPLATES

Our note template is a PDF file that you can print off directly to use for handwritten notes or opened in a digital note-taking app so that it forms the page template for your document.

Pure Mental NI’s student-led approach towards mental health

Thu, 17 Sep 2020 20:27:57 GMT

Pure Mental NI is Northern Ireland’s first mental health organisation to be founded and entirely led by students. It is currently ran by four teenagers - Jay Buntin, Matthew Taylor, Rachael Dobbin and Owen McClure - all of whom are passionate about addressing the mental health support issues within our education system.

Pure Mental NI have established student-led committees in a number of schools across Northern Ireland, they have a student-led podcast aimed at young people and, throughout this year, they have been working tirelessly with the NI Executive to campaign for better mental health support within schools.

In this article we take a look at their work and examine why student-led mental health initiatives can play a fundamental role in a whole-school approach towards supporting the emotional development and wellbeing of young people.

ABOUT PURE MENTAL NI

Pure Mental NI was set up in late 2019 by Jay Buntin and Matthew Taylor - both of whom were studying for their A-levels at a grammar school in Co. Down at the time. Matthew and Jay had identified an issue within the education system - a lack of any emphasis on student-led, mental health support provision within schools. Both students had witnessed how this lack of structured mental health support within schools had left many of their friends and peers feeling isolated and unsure of who to turn to for help. This, combined with their own experiences with mental health, encouraged Jay and Matthew to look at how student-led committees could be established within schools to act as a first port of call and peer support service for students.

Whilst, by day, both teenagers were attending school, completing coursework and preparing for exams, outside of school hours they began to meet with political representatives and policy makers to turn their idea into a movement. Pure Mental NI was born. In January 2020, Pure Mental NI held a mental health rally in Belfast to draw attention to the lack of mental health support in schools in Northern Ireland. This received widespread media coverage and Pure Mental NI gained cross-party support for their calls for reform. Matthew and Jay continued to campaign for institutional changes to be made to allow for better mental health support to be incorporated into the education system and, to date, Pure Mental NI has established 25 student-led mental health committees in schools across Northern Ireland.

It is impressive to see how two seventeen-year-old students have achieved so much while navigating through their own pressures of A-level exams and university applications. With the school closures during lockdown earlier this year, Matthew and Jay expanded the services of Pure Mental NI to include the Pure Mental Podcast , where young people can tune in to listen to other teenagers talk about various topics surrounding mental wellbeing. This doesn’t just show their passion for what Pure Mental NI aims to achieve, but also their ongoing commitment to address the feelings of isolation and loneliness that drove them to start Pure Mental NI in the first place. If ever there was a pertinent time for young people to have a podcast where they could listen to local students of a similar age to them and gain some assurance that they weren’t alone, it was during the school closures this year. Matthew and Jay should be strongly commended for setting up the programme so quickly in order to address that need.

Pure Mental NI’s overarching aim is to see the establishment of student-led mental-health committees in every secondary school in Northern Ireland. Through student-led committees, the intent is not only to provide continued peer support for students in schools, but also to provide an open and safe platform where students can voice their concerns and, in turn, Pure Mental NI can therefore communicate these concerns to those in government. In this respect, Pure Mental NI has the power to provide students with a direct channel of communication to those representing their interests at an institutional level. The power of grassroots movements cannot be underestimated when it comes to the topic of institutional change - and it is clear that greater representation through the direct input of young people is needed when it comes to reforming the systems that they spend most of their adolescent lives in.

RESEARCH ON MENTAL HEALTH AND WHOLE SCHOOL APPROACHES

It is universally accepted that the institution of education serves not only to develop the cognitive skills of children, but also to provide them with the social and emotional skills needed to live as responsible and healthy adults within a civilised society.

A recent report (Khan, 2016) shows that primary school children aged between 5-10 enjoy good mental health overall but, on average, two children in every average-sized class will have a mental health condition. Secondary school children aged between 11-15 see an increase in mental health issues, with one in every eight children having a mental health condition. Less than 50% of children in this age group who speak to a professional are willing to approach a teacher or school staff member, with a preference shown for less formal, non-patronising counselling services where solutions are found through collaborative approaches and relationship building. For older students who fall into the 16-25 age category, one in five experience a mental health condition. In this age group, the main sources of help are found through friends and online resources, although research indicates that almost 50% of individuals in this category feel that they should just handle the problem themselves without seeking help.

Given the pressure that schools are placed under to perform well academically, it is unsurprising that priority - when allocating time and resources - is often placed on the core curriculum. This is perhaps even more evident at secondary level when students are preparing for GCSE and A-level exams - a critical time for their emotional development and understanding of self, yet a time when all emphasis seems to be directed towards academic performance.

Emotional development and academic performance are not mutually exclusive of one another either; a study conducted by Durlak et al. (2011) on over 200,000 students demonstrated that when the emotional skills of students are promoted within the school environment, their academic outcomes increase as a result. The same study also found that social and emotional development was effective when delivered by those already in the school body, without any particular need for visitors to come into the school to provide this support.

Allard (2019) points out that in Ofsted’s 2019 framework for school inspections, no mention is made of how schools can implement a whole-school approach towards emotional development and mental health, despite the growing body of research that shows its effectiveness. A whole-school approach towards promoting mental health involves creating a culture - a school ethos - that represents open dialogue, collaboration between staff and students and a positive emphasis on providing a safe environment that nurtures the emotional development and mental wellbeing of all individuals within the school family (Weare and Nind, 2011). It is a positive indication that the Northern Ireland Executive is placing emphasis on this need for schools to adopt a whole-school approach to promote positive mental health and wellbeing, as indicated in their Protect Life 2 strategy which was published last year.

The urgent need for this type of school ecology came up in a recent Pure Mental Podcast episode, where the student presenters discuss the obstacles that they faced when trying to get mental health support in school. They highlight that there was no clear signposting within their school environment for students to know how to get support within school for their mental health, and that it was an intimidating process to approach the front desk to ask a staff member for help. In this sense, it is clear how a student-led service could provide an alternative first point of contact for any students who feel unsure or uncomfortable about approaching a designated member of staff who they may not be familiar with.

There is also a clear difference between simply providing guidance on how to seek mental health support and creating a school environment that actively fosters a regular, transparent and open forum for dialogue about mental wellbeing concerns. Research indicates that, on average, there is a delay of ten years between the point at which a young person first experiences mental health problems and the point at which they actually receive help - with only 25% of children in school ever actually receiving support for a diagnosable problem (Khan, 2016).

Pure Mental NI point out that while there may be mental health ‘talks’ scattered throughout a student’s time in school or posters put up on noticeboards, those are not sufficient in equipping students with the information and resources they need to seek support at a later time, if that need arises. They argue that in many cases, the mental health support services that they experienced themselves in school felt more like a box-ticking exercise, rather than a whole-school approach that gave the assurance that their mental wellbeing was an area of priority.

Only 25% of children in school receive support for a diagnosable mental health condition

In this respect, it is clear why a whole-school approach towards positive mental wellbeing is necessary in order to provide continued support and consistent signposting for students. Mental health problems are disproportionately higher in Northern Ireland in comparison to England, Scotland and Wales. One in five adults have a mental health condition in Northern Ireland - a rate that is 25% higher than that of England. The latest National Confidential Inquiry into Suicide and Safety in Mental Health report shows that Northern Ireland also has the highest suicide rate in the United Kingdom and, whilst suicide rates in England, Wales and Scotland have been declining since 2013, the rate in Northern Ireland has consistently risen since 1970. Younger people are also more affected in Northern Ireland, where the highest rates of suicide are seen in people in their 20s - which is in contrast to the rest of the UK where the highest rates are seen in people in their 40s.

Mental health support has often been described as a Cinderella service due to the neglect and lack of priority that is shown for it in health budgets. Despite the fact that Northern Ireland has the highest rates of mental health problems and suicide in the UK, it also has the lowest rate of funding allocated towards mental health services. In 2016-17, just over 5% of the health budget in Northern Ireland was directed towards mental health - this was in comparison to the 13% allocated in England during that period. Free counselling services provided by third sector organisations have often been unsustainable due to a lack of funding. Indeed, in Northern Ireland, progress in this area is not only hampered as a result of limited funding or resource distribution, but also because of political obstacles. For almost five years, Northern Ireland was the only region in the UK that failed to have an up-to-date suicide prevention strategy in place because the collapse of the Executive meant that the Protect Life 2 strategy sat in draft format and was not officially published until the end of 2019.

While mental health support services continue to call for greater funding and resources, it makes sense to consider how the promotion of positive mental health can be integrated into school eco-systems using existing resources. Peer-led, mental health committees do not require substantial funding, given that they are ran by students and operate within a structured framework across schools. Pure Mental NI envisages that these committees will contribute towards a whole-school approach to mental health by fostering that environment of open dialogue and clear signposting for support that is so clearly needed within many of our schools - particularly at secondary level. As an organisation that works directly with students of disadvantaged backgrounds, we are often confronted by the debilitating impact that a lack of mental health support in school can have. We believe that Pure Mental NI has the potential to transform how schools promote positive mental health by providing students with the power to have direct input into lobbying, by giving them the autonomy to have their voices heard through campaigns and, most importantly, to learn in a school environment where positive mental health is fostered through open dialogue between students, teachers and staff in a transparent and consistent format.

HOW WE CAN SUPPORT PURE MENTAL NI

Pure Mental NI is led by full-time students and, for that reason, they do need financial support to allow them to continue to expand upon their student-led school committees, to continue their campaign work and to improve upon the running of their podcast. They require funding for their domain name and annual web hosting costs, microphones to increase the sound quality of their podcast, printed materials and other running costs which they have detailed on their fundraising page. If you can contribute anything towards their Go Fund Me - their aim is to reach £1000 - then you’ll be greatly supporting Pure Mental NI in their expansion and campaign work to promote positive mental health in schools over the upcoming months.

Pledge your support here: https://www.gofundme.com/f/pm3p9-pure-mental-ni

You can also show your support for the work that Pure Mental NI are doing by sharing their updates on social media to spread the word about their work.

If you are keen to see a Pure Mental NI student-led committee in your school, email them or contact the Secondary Students’ Union of Northern Ireland if you are a member and they will forward your request to the organisation.

Follow Pure Mental NI’s work:

A Conversation with Singer/Songwriter Emma Horan

Thu, 10 Sep 2020 14:52:22 GMT

We sit down with music artist and former student Emma Horan to talk about how she balanced her education with her music career, her unconventional pathway into university and the advice she would give to teenagers who are trying to figure out what they want to do in the future.

We first met Emma when she was 13-years-old. At the time, she was a third-year student at Lurgan Junior High School; bubbly, hard-working and busy preparing her college entrance exams.

That was also the year when Emma first went viral online. Having had her first stage performance at the age of 4, Emma had long been used to singing in front of audiences. At thirteen, she began to record videos of herself covering different mash-ups of popular songs. These videos would go on to receive millions of views on Facebook and YouTube.

It was a fascinating dynamic for us to observe from the perspective of tutor and mentor. While our weekly sessions with Emma would be like any other - sitting around a kitchen table with coffee, catching up on the week’s events with calculators and notes on algebraic fractions spread out around us - we could see that she was also busy preparing for media appearances, dealing with thousands of online fans and, of course, creating new music videos to publish online.

As the years passed and Emma went on to study for her GCSEs and A-Levels, we could see the pressure that she faced in balancing her music career with her education. By the time she had reached her A-Levels, Emma was acting alongside James Nesbitt in ITV drama, The Secret, as well as flying out to Amsterdam to record with Trance Label, Raz Nitzan Music.

It was always clear that Emma never had any desire to follow a traditional pathway into university; indeed, the entire time that we worked together, Emma was adamant that she wouldn’t go to university as it didn’t align with her music aspirations. And yet, at the age of just 20, Emma would find herself living in London and undertaking a Master’s degree in Commercial Songwriting.

Now, aged 22-years-old, Emma’s music career has continued to flourish. She released two singles this summer - ‘Feeling’ and ‘Over You’ - and has spent almost all of her time this year writing and recording music in the studio.

With her degree completed, it felt like a good time to sit down with Emma and reflect on how she found her time in education. Too often, we see teenagers struggling under the expectations placed on them from others to follow a particular career path when it doesn’t coincide with their interests and passions. If anyone could provide some guidance to our young people on finding that balance, we knew it would be Emma.

And so, a decade after we’d first sat down to it, we found ourselves seated again around that same kitchen table. This time, however, Emma would be the one giving us the advice.

I would say I found school very difficult. I loved the teachers but I just genuinely didn’t want to be there because I wanted to be in the studio every day.

Emma has that very rare, delightful quality of being extremely impressive when listing off her proudest achievements, while managing to sound equally as humble when doing so. She tells us about how, since she finished school, she has met and performed for Prince Harry and Meghan, that she has gained over one million streams on Spotify and reached No. 3 on the iTunes singer/ songwriter charts with her cover of Mumford and Son’s ‘Little Lion Man’, that she has worked on three new singles this year, that she graduated with an MA last December and about her numerous trips to record for the Amsterdam trance music industry. We sit for a moment in awe at how much she has achieved since her A-levels. “Yes...” she muses, “It’s nice, actually, to look back on it and think, jeepers, look at how much I’ve done.”

We reflect on how she must have found it a hard balance to strike when still in full-time education; how did she find the time to build her music career when trying to navigate coursework, homework and exams in school? “I looked forward to summer holidays because I was able to focus on my music. I remember one summer, I was travelling on the train every day to Coleraine, just to go to the music studio. I could do loads and then, when it did come to the school year, I was able to step back a bit - but I was still able to go for auditions and write music.” She tells us about study periods during her A-levels that were spent in the library and how she would rush to get her school work completed so that she could spend the rest of the time planning music videos and songwriting.

Music wasn’t an add-on to Emma’s education but, rather, her sole passion and priority. Even when important exams rolled around, she didn’t struggle to find time for her singing - instead, it served to help her cope with her exam stress. “The music was my getaway. Like, it was what helped me get away from worrying about exams and stuff. But, at the same time, I was that laid back - I didn’t really care about exams.” She stops abruptly at this point. “That’s awful, actually. I don’t know if I should say that. I worked... but, I wouldn’t say I worked my hardest. All I wanted to do was pass so that if I ever wanted to do something, I could do it. I never wanted A stars and As. It was just a means to an end and I didn’t put my hardest work into it because I was putting my hardest work into music and what I wanted to do.”

That was something that we remembered well from our time working with Emma. Even at the age of fourteen, she had always made it clear that she only intended to work towards her GCSEs and A-levels in order to keep her future opportunities open, but that her aim was not to try to reach the highest grades if that meant spending less time on her music. She thinks for a moment when we ask her if that had been a conscious decision on her behalf to put her school work second to her music. “Yes,” she ponders, “I’d say I did sacrifice school a bit but, like, with your help I was able to get by - and that’s what I wanted.”

Despite this, Emma doesn’t believe that it was a necessary decision for her to make at the time and believes that she could have prioritised her schoolwork more while still developing her music career. “I think if I had wanted to get higher grades, I would have been able to sacrifice a bit of music and still do well with it.” She pauses. “But I didn’t want to do that.” And it was clear that she didn’t want to do that - just one month before her A-level exams, Emma had started recording trance music in Amsterdam and was acting alongside James Nesbitt in an ITV series. “Anybody else, a month before their exams, would not be missing class intentionally - but I was getting out of school to travel and do music, you know?”

It must be easier now to look back on that time as a teenager and feel a sense of relief that the right choices had been made, but we wonder how clear those decisions had been for her at the time. Surely, as a student at an excellent grammar school, there was a lot of pressure to focus on pursuing higher education. We point out that those pressures can’t have been easy to navigate at that age and she agrees that it had been difficult to convince others around her that she was making the right decision for herself. “I remember in a careers class - it was when we had to apply for UCAS - I was the only one not doing UCAS. I didn’t want to go to university. I remember the teacher coming over to me and saying to me, ‘How are you going to make money?’ I told him I was already making money from my singing and acting and that, once I finished school, I’d be able to focus and put all my time and energy into my work. But he just couldn’t see that.”

Emma felt that she was often fighting back against the advice of others to place more focus on her schoolwork than her music. “They would have been, you know, ‘School, school, school.’ A lot of teachers were like, ‘Well, this is fun but, come on, Emma. What are you going to do?’ Everyone was telling me to go down to Stranmillis to see if I would be interested in being a teacher, or to Jordanstown to see if I wanted to be a social worker. Well, I went down to the open days.’ She laughs. ‘But it was only to get a day out of school.’

I t’s clear that Emma responded better to education when it enabled her to pursue her musical interests instead of impeding upon them. She reflects on the teachers who recognised her passion for singing and helped her to explore it. One teacher in particular, Mrs Moorehead at Lurgan Junior High School, left a strong impression on Emma by encouraging her to pursue her creative interests. “I loved her so much. It makes such a difference just having a teacher that you get on with. You were able to express yourself with music in Lurgan Junior High School. They let me be creative.” Emma found that her time at the Junior High was conducive for her musical interests because the lack of exam pressure meant that the school setting enabled her to explore her creative interests without worrying about grades.

At fourteen, Emma went on to study at Lurgan College. She also enjoyed her time there and speaks fondly of taking part in House Music competitions - but notes that she struggled to focus on the subject content once she reached her A-levels. “I would say I was so close to dropping out after GCSEs. So close - just with not enjoying learning science and stuff like that. I just wanted to do music.” She reflects for a moment. “I would say I found school very difficult. I loved the teachers but I just genuinely didn’t want to be there because I wanted to be in the studio every day. I could go to the studio at the weekend but then you had so much homework, it was a lot of pressure.”

On top of that balance between her music and school life, Emma also had to factor in the pressures that every teenager faces in approaching adulthood and finding their identity. “School is not easy. It’s really hard - not even just from school, but from your social life and just growing up and finding out who you are. It is hard.” This must have been further compounded for Emma when she had such a large online presence and regularly appeared on the media even as a young teenager. We ask her about how that impacted upon her interactions with peers at the time and if it all ever became too overwhelming for her to deal with. “I had a lot of hate - probably more online. I actually remember someone coming up to me and being like, ‘Do you know, before I met you I thought you were really stuck up.’ I remember thinking, why? You didn’t even know me. I would have had a lot of stuff like that. At the time, it was awful.”

That wasn’t enough to deter Emma from continuing to work on new videos each day after school. Even at that age, she was determined not to let any negative comments get to her and was well supported by her friends and peers. In that respect, she reflects on how Lurgan College provided her with a safe and close-knit school community to draw support from. “I don’t think I looked at it as stress, even with messages like that, because most of the messages were nice. I just couldn’t wait to get home from school and do more stuff online. I think I was that laid back that I didn’t care what anybody thought - I just knew it was what I wanted to do. None of my friends treated me differently either, they just all supported me.”

Did I follow a traditional pathway into university? Definitely not! I never did UCAS. I was the only one who put my hand up to say I didn’t want to go to university.

The importance of a strong support network was something that Emma needed in order to navigate those school and social pressures as a teenager while establishing her music career. She tells us that her parents had first asked us to tutor her because she needed extra help with maths, but that over the years she found that she drew upon us more as a support for her overall approach to studying. “I remember with you, it wasn’t just about getting help with maths but you showed me how to actually revise, like, with revision techniques that I didn’t know about, and it was even things like just having someone to talk to about school and stuff - like a mentor.”

We muse for a while over the role of a tutor as mentor and the difference that can make for a student’s approach to their education. Our own experience of tuition at school involved A-level English tuition from Gareth Russell, the author, playwright and historian from Co. Down, who managed to cultivate in us a sheer love for English poetry that replaced all resentment that we held towards the works of Chaucer at the time. Even after years had passed, he was quick to give us support when asked for guidance during a PhD thesis. Similarly, Emma was able to ask us for guidance when putting together her application for University, long after our weekly sessions had ended - and now, we too can draw upon her for advice. “It’s like having someone on your side. Just, someone who knows where you’re coming from and someone to talk to when things are really pressurising.”

We were certainly surprised when Emma had told us that she was going to London to study at University after how adamant she had always been that she had no interest in pursuing higher education. “Did I follow a traditional pathway into university? Definitely not!” She laughs. “I never did UCAS. I was the only one in Lurgan College who put my hand up to say I didn’t want to go to university.” And yet, she graduated at the age of just 21 with a Masters degree before many of her peers from school had completed their undergraduate courses.

It was during a weekend trip to London when Emma called into a music studio to have a look around. While there, by chance, she found out about a Masters degree that the studio recommended she apply for. “I said, ‘I can’t. I don’t have an undergraduate degree.’ But they told me that with 3-5 years of experience I could apply. It was all so quick - literally only a month later and I was moving over to London for university.” It must have been an exciting - and intimidating - time for Emma to suddenly find her plans for the year completely changed. We ask if she had ever envisioned herself at university before that happened and she reiterates how resolute she had been against returning to education. “It was never planned. Not at all. I didn’t want to go to university and I didn’t ever end up doing UCAS. I never did those forms. Never. Because I knew I didn’t want to go to university. It just so happened that it was meant to be that I did go - but I didn’t have to do all that stuff.”

Having seen how Emma had struggled to engage with her education during her A-levels, we wondered how she had managed, then, with her return to full-time education again at university. Had she enjoyed her time there? “I absolutely loved it - it was totally different to A-levels. Yes, I had to do essays and they weren’t fun, but 80% of it was practical. We had a writing camp, we got to go to Copenhagen for writing, we got to write for Sigala, I got to hang out with Ella Eyre, it was just unbelievable.” She reflects on how, even though she hadn’t intended to go to university, it turned out to be a significant benefit for her music career. “I came home doing far better in my music. It took me to have London to do that.”

W e wonder, now that Emma has completed her degree, what advice she would give to herself at sixteen-years-old, knowing now what she didn’t know then. “I would give myself more assurance. Like, don’t feel bad when other people tell you, ‘You need to stop doing music right now, you’ve got exams.’ I’m glad that I was able to balance it out as best as I could because the stuff that I was doing outside of school was just as important as the stuff in school. I would give myself the assurance that I was doing a good thing.” We discuss how, for a teenager, it can seem like a bad decision to go against the advice of well-meaning adults who appear to know what’s best for a young person, given their lived experiences and age. She tells us that she doesn’t regret not following their advice to spend less time on music and more time studying. “I think generations change, you know? You don’t always need to go to university to do something. Yes, mine fell into my lap - but if I hadn’t gone to university, I’d still be doing my music.”

We discuss the impact of the disruptions that students have faced this year and how many students have felt frustrated that they haven’t received grades that they’d hoped for. Emma is adamant that students shouldn’t feel like their lives have to be dictated by their GCSE and A-Level grades. “It’s not the be-all and end-all. It’s not. If there’s something that they’re really passionate about, there are ways around it other than directly getting into university. If they didn’t get the results they wanted, they can do different courses that can help them get to that - and could be better suited for them.”

She thinks for a moment, before telling us that she feels students are often pressured to go straight to university or into the workplace with a fear that taking time out could set them back. “Just take time out to figure out what you want to do. You’ll not be behind - that’s just not the case. You can study at any age. A lot of my friends went to university just for the sake of going to university and then found that they wanted to do something else, so they ended up dropping out and then had to start all over again. What’s the point of all that hassle and stress? Whatever’s meant to be will be for you.”

It’s clear that if Emma hadn’t pursued her interests in music as a teenager, she wouldn’t have felt confident in trusting her gut feeling in prioritising it. She points out that students should listen to their gut instinct more in order to discover what it is that they love doing. “Try different hobbies out. Find an interest that you really like and maybe see what way you could do it to make money. And think of things that you wouldn’t want to do as well, that’s just as important. Get as much experience as you can - ask around to see how you can get that experience in different roles. Even if it’s unpaid - try to get a part-time job and use your free time to figure out what you want to do.” She pauses. “Just don’t feel pressured to rush into something. Take time for yourself because if you’re not okay mentally... well, you can’t put your happiness in a job.”

Just take time out to figure out what you want to do. You’ll not be behind - that’s just not the case. You can study at any age.

So what does the future hold for Emma? We ask about her upcoming plans and she laughs, telling us that she doesn’t tend to think too far ahead. One of her main goals is to see her music on Sync - the platform where music is sourced for television, films, advertisements and games. “I’d love Sync opportunities - that’s a big goal for music. And I want to continue writing. I love writing for other artists and travelling for music. In March, I’m planning to go out to Nashville to record music - it’s all funded by Panarts Belfast Nashville and I was meant to go this year, but obviously with everything that’s happened it’s been postponed.” She pauses to reflect. “It’s good to be organised and have goals but I am very much one to go with the flow and just enjoy things - and with having that attitude, so many opportunities have come from it instead of me stressing about where I’m going to be in five years’ time.”

She stops again to think about the future. “I would never want to be famous.” Her comment surprises us. Surely, after spending the better part of a decade accumulating millions of streams, tens-of-thousands of online followers and numerous appearances on the media, she had aimed for fame as a natural by-product of her work? “No. I wouldn’t want that - because you wouldn’t have your own privacy and you wouldn’t control your own music. If I was to get a label, I’d want an independent label that would look after you. So, my goal isn’t fame. My goal is just to continue writing music and releasing it.” She laughs again. “Maybe fame in Northern Ireland isn’t a bad thing. I just want a comfortable and quiet life - but an exciting one too.”

Emma’s journey so far has certainly ticked the box for exciting and we look forward to seeing how her career will continue to shape and expand over the upcoming years. In her early twenties and with a wealth of experience already behind her, Emma has gained a calm, assured and positive outlook on life that will serve her well in navigating the path ahead. We are so excited to see what the future holds for Emma and her music.

Follow Emma Horan on:

Facebook: /emmahoranmusic

Instagram: @emmahoranmusic

Twitter: @emmahoran

Listen to Emma's latest singles:

Over You ( iTunes and Spotify )

Feeling ( iTunes and Spotify )

Listen to Emma's latest feature on Amsterdam Trance Records:

The Highest High ( iTunes and Spotify )

Research Project 5 - Moths and Moth Trapping

Sat, 05 Sep 2020 21:09:25 GMT

Take part in this free research project for KS2 - KS3 students!

For our latest research project, we’ve teamed up with Copper and Blue Ireland who are passionate about moth and butterfly conservation in the UK and Ireland. They have put together a fantastic presentation on moth trapping for beginners and have also shared photographs of some moths that they have discovered on their journey to catalogue the different species of moth that they have found so far.

Our moth worksheet set includes some interesting facts about moths, a word search that highlights some very unique moth names and some ways that children can attract moths at night so that they can have a closer look at them. A PDF copy of the moth worksheet is available at the end of this article for you to download and print. For now, we’re going to hand you over to Dakota from Copper and Blue Ireland!

Watch Dakota's introduction to moth trapping here:

My name is Dakota and I am a student at Queen’s University and I also run a small business, Copper and Blue Ireland, selling sustainable fashion. I absolutely love lepidoptera! Whilst my business is based on my love of butterflies, I am also really fascinated by moths. I have been using a moth trap this summer to safely catch the moths in my garden to see what species live in my area and by the start of September I had recorded 83 different species!!

Moths come in so many shapes, sizes and colours and you might be surprised by the diversity that live in your garden. They are also a very important part of our ecosystem. Moths, like butterflies and bees, are pollinators, meaning that they transfer pollen between plants which allows seeds to develop and new plants to grow. They are also an important food source for many other species including bats but also birds that may disturb moths during the day or eat their caterpillars.

If you want to discover the amazing world of moths that exists at night-time, try some of the activities below on a mild night and tag us on social media when you’re sharing what you’ve seen! You might also like to try looking for moths in different seasons to see what species live in your garden at different times of the year!

Some moth species that Dakota has found:

Narrow Bordered 5 Spot Burnet (left) is a beautiful day-flying moth that can be found on flowers during the summer. The Antler moth (middle) and Gold-Spot (right) can both be seen during the day or night. The Antler moth has a distinctive pattern on its wings that look like a deer’s antlers!

The Poplar Hawk-Moth (left) is one of our biggest moths! It’s a real gentle giant and doesn’t have working mouthparts so it lives off its fat reserves from its caterpillar days. The Peppered Moth (right) can also come in a darker form which evolved to blend in with the soot in cities!

The Early Thorn (left) and Canary-Shouldered Thorn (right) are both part of the Thorn family which often hold their wings upright like a butterfly. The Canary-Shouldered Thorn is a beautiful, brightly coloured moth which can be found in the autumn time.

The Brimstone (left) is a common and very recognisable moth, look out for a flash of yellow as it flies by! The Mother Of Pearl (middle) has a beautiful sheen to it, giving it its name and is also common in gardens. The Barred Yellow (right) is a nice and colourful summer time moth.

The Scalloped Oak (left) is a common species in my garden, but the Scallop Shell (middle) is a less frequent visitor. The Scallop Shell’s pattern is very distinctive so you’re unlikely to confuse it with any other species! The Light Emerald (right) is a stunning green species from the Emerald family. We have several Emeralds in Northern Ireland but this is the only species from that family that I’ve had in my garden so far!

The Angle Shades (left) is an unusually shaped moth, with its wings looking like a withered autumn leaf. I had my first Angle Shades in the garden this month! It’s clear where the Spectacle (middle) gets its name - as you can see from my photo, its markings make it look like it’s wearing big glasses or goggles! Finally, the Copper Underwing (right) is a beautiful big autumnal moth, another one that you might spot in the changing seasons!

Moth Research Project - Download the PDF

We would love to see any moths that you discover in the garden! Tag us on Instagram, Twitter or Facebook in your photographs or send them through to us directly and we’ll share them on our social media. Copper and Blue Ireland have lots of great information and pictures of moths and butterflies on their social media accounts so be sure to follow them to stay updated with their latest discoveries!

Follow Dakota's work at Copper and Blue Ireland on:

Twitter

Instagram

Website

Autumn Term 2020 | Bookings Open for After-school Classes

siofra@studyseed.co.uk (Studyseed CIC) — Thu, 20 Aug 2020 18:05:55 GMT

Our centre is reopening for after-school classes! 33 weekly classes now available to book for our 7-week Autumn Term, beginning 7 September 2020.

We are so happy to finally have our Autumn Term confirmed! Our centre is set to reopen again in September, with a seven-week term commencing on Monday 7 September. It has been a long five months with our doors closed and we are delighted to be back open.

You'll notice that our after-school timetable is a little different this term. We have had to factor in 15-minute breaks between classes held in each room to allow for cleaning and to provide a safe waiting area for any students whose lifts haven't arrived yet. There will be no central waiting area open in the centre this term, so we would greatly appreciate it if parents and guardians can lift their children as soon as possible after their class ends, as we will only have this brief period when each room is free to wait in before the next class begins to arrive.

We will be sending out full guidance on our safety measures to everyone who has booked in for classes. The following classes are available now for booking:

Primary Class Times:

KS1 Literacy - Tuesday 3.30PM
KS1 Numeracy - Monday 3.30PM
KS1 Numeracy and Literacy - Thursday 3.45PM
KS1 Reading - Wednesday 3.45PM

KS2 Literacy - Tuesday 4.45PM
KS2 Numeracy - Tuesday 3.45PM
KS2 Numeracy - Wednesday 4.45PM
KS2 Numeracy and Literacy - Tuesday 6.15PM
Reading and Comprehension - Monday 6PM

AQE/GL Transfer Test Prep - Monday 5PM
AQE/GL Transfer Test Prep - Thursday 4.45PM

Year 8-10 Class Times:

Year 8-9 Maths - Tuesday 5PM
Year 8-9 English - Tuesday 6PM
Year 8-9 Science - Monday 7.30PM

Year 10 Maths - Monday 3.45PM
Year 10 English - Monday 4.45PM
Year 10 Science - Thursday 6.15PM

GCSE Class Times:

GCSE English Language - Monday 7.15PM
GCSE English Language - Wednesday 6PM

GCSE Maths Foundation - Monday 6.15PM
GCSE Maths Foundation - Wednesday 5PM
GCSE Maths Higher - Monday 6.15PM
GCSE Maths Higher - Wednesday 5PM
GCSE Further Maths - Thursday 5PM

GCSE Biology - Wednesday 7.15PM
GCSE Chemistry - Wednesday 6.15PM
GCSE Physics - Tuesday 7.15PM

Adult Essential Skills Maths - Tuesday 7.30PM
Adult Essential Skills English - Thursday 7.30PM

A-Level Class Times:

AS/A2 Biology - Monday 8.30PM
AS/A2 Chemistry - Thursday 7.15PM
AS/A2 Maths - Tuesday 8.30PM
AS/A2 Physics - Thursday 6PM

All classes are £15 per week and we will take bookings until the 6 September 2020. Any classes that only have one student enrolled will be converted to 45-minute online private tuition sessions (normally £18) or a full refund provided. We apologise for this as over the years we have always ran classes even if only one student had signed up - these have always operated at a loss and unfortunately we are not in a position to be able to do this during this time. Thank you so much for your understanding and continued support.

There are five spaces available per class. Bookings can be made here .

Squish Therapy Dough for Learning and Mindfulness

siofra@studyseed.co.uk (Studyseed CIC) — Wed, 19 Aug 2020 18:37:07 GMT

Locally produced in Co. Antrim and with all-natural ingredients: Squish is an aromatherapy playdough that we’ve been delighted to get our hands into!

Playdough has long been seen as an effective tool for multi-sensory methods of teaching. For younger children, playdough provides children with an activity that is not only fun - but also beneficial for their cognitive and emotional development. Young children benefit from being able to see the immediate results that they get when manipulating materials through mediums such as playdough.

The physical act of creating letters or shapes using playdough is particularly beneficial for kinaesthetic learners, who process new information best when able to physically interact with what they are learning. Physical actions, for kinaesthetic learners, are much more effective than simply reading over notes repeatedly and trying to absorb information that way.

For our older kinaesthetic learners, we work through revision techniques that involve moving and manipulating physical information. This can involve simple processes such as writing out important information on Post-it notes and then rearranging the notes around on a board during recall exercises. We also use physical items to create a story that incorporates the information that the student is trying to remember for their test or exam - by attaching key facts to objects that the student can lift and handle, they are able to use their memory of handling these objects to reconstruct these facts in their minds during an exam situation.

This is one reason why we’ve been very excited to try out Squish Therapy Dough, as it not only provides a medium for creating physical objects to use for memory recall, but students can also associate the different scents of the therapy dough with their learning. The company recommends bringing a tin of Squish to the exam so that you can take in the scent before entering the hall to recall the facts that you have associated with it. Squish is infused with aromatherapy oil and is currently available in Lavender/Vanilla, Eucalyptus/Mint and Lemon/Grapefruit.

These scents make Squish a very different experience in comparison to traditional playdough - we’ve never been very keen on the artificial scent that traditional forms of playdough leave on your hands after using it. The aromatherapy oils in this dough are designed to calm, relax and stimulate - not only when learning, but also when practicing mindfulness during periods of anxiety or worry. For many of our older students, we can see how Squish can be a calming revision aid to incorporate into stressful revision periods.

The benefits of playdough as a medium for creative expression and emotional release have long been documented within the literature surrounding children’s play therapy. Playdough provides an outlet that is open-ended by nature, encouraging children to develop their cognitive and emotional skills with it in increasingly creative ways.

Playdough has also been advocated as an excellent medium for promoting calmness and relaxation by directing children’s focus towards the appearance and texture of the dough itself. In mindfulness exercises, children are encouraged to take a few quiet moments to observe how the dough feels in their hands in terms of weight and temperature, to examine the colours in the dough and to describe the scent of it.

For older students and adults, the physical act of kneading and manipulating playdough can provide a needed distraction and serve as a grounding mechanism. This is particularly enhanced by the aromatherapy oils in Squish. One aspect of Squish that we particularly appreciate is the sophisticated packaging, which doesn’t look out of place sitting on a teenager or adult’s desk.

Creative spelling exercise for younger children:

Give each child a ball of Squish. Ask them what the scent of the dough reminds them of and then ask each child to create an item with the dough that begins with the same letter as the first answer they gave you. [If they said that the scent reminded them of the sea, ask them to form an item with the dough that begins with the letter S - like a strawberry, for example.]

Now, ask each child what the last letter of the item they have created is. Ask them to create another item with the dough that also ends with this letter. [If they created a strawberry in the last exercise, they need to create another item now that ends with the letter Y - like a key].

Fraction exercise for younger children:

Playdough is an excellent tool to use to illustrate fractions. Ask each child to split the dough into two balls. Use this to explain what halves are - and how, when merged together again, two halves will make a whole ball of dough. Repeat the exercise with thirds/quarters/fifths/etc.

Spelling exercise using missing letters:

Write a spelling on the board with a letter missing. Ask the children to form the missing letter with their dough - this is a good one to turn into a race!

Revision exercise for kinaesthetic students:

Let’s say you’re trying to revise the different stages of the water cycle. Split the dough up into the number of stages, and form an item that represents each stage. For example, you could form a raindrop to remind you of the precipitation stage, a cloud to represent the condensation stage or a plant to represent the transpiration stage. Take a picture of your stages before you roll them all up back into a ball again.

Now, read out your notes aloud and, as you read each stage, use the dough to recreate the item that you have associated with that stage. Repeat this process with your book closed to see if you can form all of the stages with the dough, without using your notes as a reference. Use the photograph that you took earlier to check to see if you have got all of the stages formed in the correct order.

In the exam, go through the physical actions of forming the dough into the different stages in your head. This should help you to visualise the correct order that you need to write each stage down in.

What is the story behind Squish?

Squish Therapy Dough is based in Co. Antrim, Northern Ireland. It was founded by Emma Wilson, a mother of three, who wanted to share her passion for the benefits of therapy dough through a locally-produced, sustainable product that would be just as appealing for adults as it would be for children. Squish is made entirely from natural ingredients (with a shelf-life of 3-6 months) and is sold in recyclable packaging.

When given the option of choosing to purchase a mass-produced product or to buy from a local business, it’s a no-brainer for us. From our interactions with Emma, we’ve seen so much warmth and kindness for the mental wellbeing of the young people that we work with - and also for ourselves. As a female-led social enterprise, we are always delighted to support the work of other women and small businesses that work so hard to benefit children and young people. Squish Therapy Dough is both of those - and producing an environmentally-friendly product that we believe to be so beneficial as a learning and mindfulness aid.

You can find much more information on their website about the use of Squish for other areas - such as incorporating it into working from home, sleep therapy and stress relief at: https://www.squishtherapydough.com/

Cryptic Crosswords for Children and Beginners

Sun, 09 Aug 2020 15:00:28 GMT

A beginner's introduction to cryptic crosswords - and a competition!

One of our favourite challenges to give to our older students is a good old cryptic crossword clue. Unlike regular crossword puzzles, cryptic crosswords encourage us to think outside of the box with word play. We need to avoid looking for a literal meaning behind the clue and, instead, piece together the puzzle inside it in order to construct our answer. Cryptic clues provide excellent practice in English language skills, developing our knowledge of:

Synonyms
Anagrams
Use of a thesaurus and dictionary
General knowledge
Abbreviations

Many cryptic crosswords, however, are tailored for an older or more experienced audience who have a much wider range of vocabulary and general knowledge. This makes it difficult for children and absolute beginners to start getting into cryptic crosswords, as it's very easy to look at one in a newspaper and have no idea where to even begin!

We've put together a cryptic crossword that uses only the two easiest types of clue to spot - anagram clues and hidden word clues. If you can get a solid understanding of these types of cryptic crossword clue, then you should be able to answer at least a few clues in a regular cryptic crossword - and it will hopefully get you eager to learn about the more complicated clue types out there!

Cryptic crosswords are very satisfying to do as, often, you can work out an answer that is a completely new word to you. This is why it's false to assume that you can't do cryptic crosswords if you don't know lots of complicated and obscure words!

You can use the button below to download the crossword, fact sheet (which explains the anagram and hidden word clues) and a hint sheet that can be used if you get stuck with any of the clues.

Inclusive Online Learning for Children with a Disability or Special Educational Need

siofra@studyseed.co.uk (Studyseed CIC) — Wed, 29 Jul 2020 23:14:18 GMT

Not an afterthought. Not an oversight. Accessibility is where we must begin.

In the UK, Northern Ireland has the highest disparity in educational attainment between students with a disability and students without a disability. This is not an issue that we can set aside to address later if online learning is set to continue to form part of our children’s education in September.

And it isn’t affecting a small minority either; one in five children in Northern Ireland has a disability or special educational need. By failing to be proactive in creating an online teaching framework that has the needs of all students in mind as the starting point, we are returning to a historical narrative that views barriers to education as an individual problem and not a societal problem.

If 2020 has taught us anything, it is the importance of community, care and togetherness. As a society, we are responsible for the provision of inclusive learning environments and equal opportunities for all of our children.

The 2020 pandemic has forced primary and secondary schools to utilise online teaching methods

The closures of schools during the coronavirus pandemic has forced educators, children, parents and guardians to quickly come to terms with delivering and accessing online learning at home. Whilst online teaching methods have been widely utilised across universities, e-learning platforms and national tuition providers, they are a new experience for many children of primary and secondary-school age.

Nobody could have predicted the widespread disruptions that we would see for children’s education this year. As a result of this lack of warning and with no overarching education plan in place for online teaching, it is unsurprising that there has been a wide variation in the online teaching approaches that schools and other educators have adopted.

Across the board, schools and teachers must be strongly commended for their quick adaption to new and innovative methods of delivering lessons to their students beyond the classroom. The use of platforms such as Google Classroom for collaboration and the showcasing of students’ work on school Facebook and Instagram pages has enabled many children to continue to enjoy a peer-learning environment and a sense of school community whilst learning at home.

Many parents and guardians have indicated that online learning approaches have made them feel far more clued in to their child’s education as they can regularly see their engagement and feedback from teachers on day-to-day work. It provides a level of autonomy for students in providing them with some flexibility to choose when and how they carry out their learning tasks, as well as teaching good time-management skills when students must submit work online to their teachers by given deadlines.

As with higher education, online teaching has the potential to enhance the education of many children at primary and secondary level. It is likely that blended forms of education will be seen when schools return in September 2020, with some learning taking place in the classroom and the rest at home. Even well into the future, with robust systems of online teaching delivery in place as a result of this year, students who are off school for extended periods of time may benefit from being able to access lesson materials from their teachers in more engaging ways than the traditional method of physical learning packs being sent home.

It is very likely that some form of online teaching will become incorporated into future primary and secondary level teaching. This is a key, transformative stage within our current educational ecosystem. One thing that we must get right at this point - from the very beginning - is how online teaching for primary and secondary level children will be open and accessible to students with a disability or learning difficulty. This is not something that can be put to one side until it becomes a serious issue that should have been addressed in hindsight.

Educational barriers are a systematic problem - not an individual problem

To fully understand why educators must immediately prioritise online teaching methods for disabled students and students with learning difficulties, we need to take a step back in time to look at the history of how society’s understanding of disability has shaped the way in which institutions must be proactive - and not reactive - in enabling inclusivity and equality.

The Medical Model of Disability

Up until the 1970s, society’s view of disability was shaped by the medical model of disability. The medical model views disability as an individual problem - where something is ‘wrong’ with the individual and must, therefore, be corrected in order for the individual to have the same access to resources as a person without a disability could have. The language of the medical model underscores how it frames disability as an individual problem, with descriptions like ‘suffering from...’ and ‘needs’ and not being ‘normal’ all serving to emphasise that the issue exists only at an individual level.

Education under the medical model of disability separated students ‘with needs’ from ‘normal’ students in a clinical approach. Unsurprisingly, this served only to alienate and discriminate against any children that society deemed as ‘other’ to the mainstream system of education. Within the education system, a child’s disability or learning difficulty was treated as their main identity classification with, unsurprisingly, significant implications for their education, future employment opportunities and self-esteem.

The Social Model of Disability

In 1972, a letter was published in The Guardian newspaper by Paul Hunt, where he proposed the formation of a group for those ‘...in isolated and unsuitable institutions, where their views are ignored and they are subject to authoritarian and often cruel regimes’. This led to the formation of UPIAS (Union of the Physically Impaired Against Segregation), a disability rights organisation which led to a new model of viewing disability: the social model.

Under the social model, disability is viewed as a societal issue and not an individual problem. The barriers that a person with a disability or learning difficulty faces are not through fault of their own, but as a result of poorly designed institutions that are inherently discriminative. This shifted society’s view of disability completely.

According to the medical model, if a student was unable to access higher education because of a disability or learning difficulty, it was seen as an individual problem. The social model, on the other hand, views their barrier to accessing higher education as the result of a systematic failure in the education system to enable this opportunity.

How does this relate to online lessons and teaching virtually?

The disability rights campaign saw the introduction of legislation such as the Disability Discrimination Act 1995, the Special Educational Needs and Disability Act 2001 and the Equality Act 2006. These laws sought to address institutional inequalities by making it illegal to discriminate unfairly against individuals because of a disability. In the education system, the onus was now placed on schools and educators to ensure that reasonable provisions were in place to provide disabled students and students with special educational needs with the same opportunities as those without a disability.

Section 13(1)(a) of the Special Educational Needs and Disability Act stipulates that ‘disabled pupils are not placed at a substantial disadvantage in comparison with pupils who are not disabled’ in relation to ‘education and associated services provided for, or offered to, pupils at the school'. This calls for the education system to take a proactive approach towards enabling inclusivity and equality for all students.

Although the very notion of online teaching through technology such as Google Classroom, Show My Homework and Zoom were not within the realm of possibility for legislators to consider in 2001, they have, as a result of the school closures, become an integral part of the education service provided by many schools and educators today.

If online teaching is to become integrated into the institution of compulsory education, proactive measures must be taken to ensure that it will not discriminate against disabled students or students with learning difficulties. 23% of pupils in Northern Ireland have a disability or a learning difficulty. The lack of any widespread precedent to follow is not a justification for taking a reactive approach to addressing the issues that could arise for disabled pupils when accessing online learning. We have existing research to follow on disabled students who have experienced issues with online teaching methods at university to be able to inform and guide our approach to online teaching methods now for younger students.

What do we already know from existing research on online learning?

Existing research tells us that while it is not necessary for every teacher to be an expert in technology and digital accessibility, it is necessary for them to understand the barriers that students with a disability or learning difficulty may face when learning online. These barriers do not only include the existing barriers to learning that we can see in a traditional setting, but also the new barriers that online teaching methods can create. By being aware of the barriers, educators can create an online learning environment that enables their students to increase the efficacy of their technology and use of online learning platforms.

In a 2017 study (McManus et al.), interviews were conducted with adult learners with a mental health disability to explore the barriers that they face in accessing online learning at university. Some of the barriers that the participants discussed included feelings of isolation and a disconnect from the learning environment, along with the inability to receive immediate feedback from their educators. Many of the participants felt intimidated by the idea of participating in online discussions due to a fear of how they could be judged by other students or because they felt their contributions would look too simplistic in comparison to what other students had posted. They also felt that because they were learning at home, it was difficult to separate home life from their education - this was particularly exacerbated if family members did not fully respect or enable the time that they needed to be in ‘student’ mode while at home.

Another study by Shonfeld and Ronen - carried out over five years - followed a group of students completing an online learning course. They found that the average grades at the end of the course were higher amongst the students in the group with a learning disability. The study found that online learning provided students who were sensitive to loud or noisy environments with a quiet form of studying that was much more conducive to their preferences. It also enabled students who benefit from hearing information multiple times with the ability to replay their teacher’s audio as many times as they needed, as well as providing students with a shorter attention span with the ability to break their learning sessions up into shorter, more productive periods of learning.

An important element of online learning is self-regulated learning. In a traditional classroom setting, self-regulated skills come from observing the learning strategies demonstrated by educators, as well as being corrected and guided on the spot when encountering any areas of difficulty. Evidently, self-regulation methods must be conveyed in an altogether separate way when learning online. A study by Rice and Carter examined how well students were able to self-regulate when learning online. One of the key challenges that they found related to difficulties in communication - often, teachers would find it impossible to track progress if their students failed to respond to their messages. They noted that one way of mitigating this lack of response was to schedule their communication in advance - students were much more likely to check in with their teachers when given preset times to do so.

Another way in which teachers assisted students with self-regulation was through the use of pacing guides - these would give students an idea of how to pace their work and an understanding of how much work needed to be completed by set dates. However, the teachers went a further step here by creating custom pacing guides for students who had failed to follow the original timeframe. The purpose of the custom pacing guide was to show these students how they could catch up on missed work and get back on track with the original timeframe.

A 2012 study (Habib et al.) found that the design of online learning platforms can have a negative impact on accessibility for students with dyslexia. The students participating in the study noted that learning platforms often have a lot of clutter which creates an environment that is difficult to navigate. Features such as calendars, welcome pages, event information and additional writing on screen that isn’t directly related to the task at hand can make it difficult to focus on the relevant information. When accessing external websites for research, advertisements can add to the clutter on screen. Another aspect that can cause confusion is the use of subfolders - searching for information within folders is difficult if precise directions on where the educator has put a file has not been conveyed to their students.

'Accessibility is a term that has particular meanings in different contexts; here it refers to design qualities that endeavour to make online learning available to all by ensuring that the way it is implemented does not create unnecessary barriers...' (Cooper, 2006)

What methods can we use to make online learning more accessible?

One of the biggest challenges that online learning platforms pose is that they do not create an environment that is always conducive to the individual learning style that each student has. For example, students who have difficulty reading will find it extremely challenging to engage effectively with learning materials if these are presented mainly in written format online. Students who benefit from discussion and group activity will be at a disadvantage if there is no means of engaging with their peers within a virtual classroom. Kinaesthetic learners will find it hard to absorb new material if they are only able to engage with it visually on a screen.

Given the existing research on online learning, the following are suggestions for educators to incorporate into online learning platforms, where possible, to increase their accessibility:

1. Use of both visual and auditory forms of presenting information.

Having a lesson available in written format, along with a video or audio recording of the teacher discussing the key points. If a video or audio recording is being used without a text file, then captions should be included.

2. Access to past resources should be kept available throughout the term.

One benefit of online learning is that it encourages students to consult previous lessons independently if they are easily accessed within the learning platform.

3. Breaking assignments up into smaller tasks with multiple deadlines.

Online learning provides an excellent opportunity for students to develop their time management skills and practice independent learning. However, for many students who are still developing these skills, large assignments with a set deadline for submission may be overwhelming and subsequently lead to a lack of engagement. By breaking larger assignments up into separate components with staggered deadlines, educators can keep track of their students’ progress and easily see if any students are not engaging with the material. Smaller deadlines will also encourage students to better develop their time management skills on a regular basis.

4. Custom pacing guides for students who have fallen behind with work.

By working with students who have not been able to meet the original deadlines for work, custom plans should be agreed upon that will guide students through catching up on work and getting back on track with the original schedule.

5. Use of a class discussion platform.

Students who benefit from group discussion and peer feedback will benefit from the use of an online discussion area within the learning platform. This is particularly important for students who feel isolated and demotivated by independent study outside of the classroom. However, it is also important to note that some students may feel anxious or self-conscious about being required to partake in online discussions if they do not feel confident in a topic or worry about asking a question in front of everyone that might make them look ‘silly’. For this reason, it is also important to have a means of communication where students can submit questions to the teacher that are not visible to everybody else in the class.

6. Pre-arrange check-in times.

Online learning does pose the risk of students failing to respond to queries sent to them - especially if they have fallen behind with work or failed to participate in tasks that have been set. Instead of relying solely on as-and-when communication between educators and students, each student should have a series of prearranged times each week/month when they must check in with their teacher to discuss their progress. Obviously, this requirement is not necessary if a system of blended learning is taking place with some lessons held in the classroom as well as online. However, for students who are not present in the classroom at all, a clear schedule of times to meet with their teacher online will help to mitigate against any communication issues that can arise when relying only on ad hoc communication.

7. Avoid unnecessary clutter and the overuse of folders and subfolders.

If it is possible to keep the presentation and organisation for files consistent across different classes, this should be done. Similarly, if it is possible to customise the landing page that students see when logging into their online learning platform, it is important to keep the displayed information simple, clear and relevant.

8. Verbal feedback through short Q&A sessions.

Many students may feel uncomfortable with asking questions in real-time in front of their classmates, but would benefit from receiving verbal responses to their questions rather than written feedback. One approach could be to encourage students to submit questions privately to the teacher and these could then be answered either in a live webinar or in an audio recording file that students can access in the learning platform. Verbal feedback sessions should be kept brief - mainly to engage with students who may find it difficult to concentrate through a longer session, but also to keep audio files small enough that they are still downloadable on slower bandwidths.

Sources and Further Reading

Cooper, M. (2006). 'Making online learning accessible to disabled students: an institutional case study', Research in Learning Technology, 14 (1), pp. 103-115.

Berghs, M., Atkin, K., Hatton, C. and Thomas, C. (2019). 'Do disabled people need a stronger social model: a social model of human rights?', Disability and Society, 34 (7), pp. 1034-1039.

Gallagher, D., Connor, D. and Ferri, B. (2014). 'Beyond the far too incessant schism: special education and the social model of disability', International Journal of Inclusive Education, 18 (11), pp. 1120-1142.

Habib, L., Berget, G., Sandnes, F.E., Sanderson, N., Kahn, P., Fagernes, S. and Olcay, A. (2012). 'Dyslexic students in higher education and virtual learning environments: an exploratory study', Journal of Computer Assisted Learning, 28, pp. 574-584.

Kotera, Y., Cockerill, V., Green, P., Hutchinson, L., Shaw, P. and Bowskill, N. (2019). 'Towards another kind of borderlessness: online students with disabilities', Distance Education, 40 (2), pp. 170-186.

Lambert, D. and Dryer, R. (2018). 'Quality of life of higher education students with learning disability studying online', International Journal of Disability, Development and Education, 65 (4), pp. 393-407.

McManus, D., Dryer, R. and Henning, M. (2017). 'Barriers to learning online experienced by students with a mental health disability', Distance Education, 38 (3), pp. 336-352.

Rice, M. and Carter, A. (2016). 'Online teacher work to support self-regulation of learning in students with disabilities at a fully online state virtual school', Online Learning, 20 (4), pp. 118-135.

Rodrigo, C. and Tabuenca, B. (2019). 'Learning ecologies in online students with disabilities', Media Education Research Journal , 62 (28), pp. 53-64.

Simoncelli, A. and Hinson, J. (2008). 'College students with learning disabilities personal reactions to online learning', Journal of College Reading and Learning, 38 (2), pp. 49-62.

Shonfeld, M. and Ronen, I. (2015). 'Online learning for students from diverse backgrounds: learning disability students, excellent students and average students', The IAFOR Journal of Education, 3 (2), pp. 14-29.

Research Project 4 - Walled Gardens

Mon, 20 Jul 2020 13:40:14 GMT

Take part in this free research project for KS2 - KS3 students!

Across Northern Ireland, there are hundreds of walled gardens hidden away in the grounds of castles, hotels, country homes and parks. Many of these gardens have fallen out of use and, in some cases, only a wall or archway remains of what was once a busy area of productivity. At one time, walled gardens would serve the important purpose of providing food for a family - with a team of dedicated gardeners tending to the fruits and vegetables growing with the walls.

Some excellent examples of walled gardens are still in use today and make for a wonderful day out to see. Some of our local favourites include:

The award-winning walled garden at Bangor Castle [ website ]
The walled garden at Carnfunnock Country Park which has multiple gardens within it, a maze and numerous walking trails [ website ]
Hillsborough Castle's walled garden, which also produces food used in their cafe [ website ]
One of the oldest walled gardens in Ireland, found at Glenarm Castle [ website ]

This free resource pack about walled gardens includes a worksheet for KS2-3 students that has some comprehension and SPAG questions. We also encourage students to carry out their own research on walled gardens and to compile their findings into a fact sheet of their own.

We would love to see your completed factsheets and will share them on our website if you would like us to! Just pop them over to us in an email to info@studyseed.co.uk, PM us them on Facebook or tag @studyseedcic on Instagram . Happy researching!

Will the Government Fund Private Tuition for Children in Northern Ireland?

siofra@studyseed.co.uk (Studyseed CIC) — Fri, 19 Jun 2020 00:08:03 GMT

Government private tuition scheme targeting disadvantaged communities in England should extend to the 100,000 children living in poverty in Northern Ireland

This week the Guardian drew attention to government plans to fund a national tutoring programme aimed at helping pupils in England to catch up on missed learning due to the coronavirus pandemic. An announcement is expected to be made by the government later this week regarding the scheme, which is set to run into millions of pounds in spending.

Due to the school closures, millions of children across the UK and Ireland have missed out on essential learning that only a face-to-face teaching experience within the classroom can provide. The primary aim of the private tuition scheme is to reach children from disadvantaged communities who will suffer the most from the lack of access to their classroom setting.

Is the government scheme for private tuition being extended to Northern Ireland?

This is the key question that schools and parents across Northern Ireland will be keen to see answered in the official announcement. The latest report on child poverty figures for Northern Ireland set out that 82,000 children live in absolute poverty - that is almost one in every five children - while just under 100,000 children in Northern Ireland live in relative poverty.

The discrepancy that exists in the educational achievements of children living in poverty compared with children who are not is extreme. Over 50% of students who are entitled to free school meals are likely to leave school with less than five GCSEs. This is a significant proportion of the population of children in Northern Ireland who are likely to be disproportionately impacted upon by the school closures.

Many children of key workers in Northern Ireland have also been placed at a disadvantage with little to no additional educational support provided to them while their parent(s) are working to provide essential services. These children have had less opportunity to have face-to-face teaching provided to them at home and it is likely that many of them will have suffered in their home learning as a result.

What funding have we secured so far to support children with their home learning in Northern Ireland?

To date, we have received funding from Halifax Foundation for Northern Ireland and the Charities Aid Foundation that has allowed us to open up a free online tuition service for children of key workers in Northern Ireland, children from socially disadvantaged backgrounds and children with special educational needs. These funds are allowing us to provide immediate support to children who require home learning support through our ‘ Ask a Tutor ’ scheme. We have also been able to heavily discount our online tuition services for these students who require ongoing support.

However, this funding is a limited resource and we are only one educational support provider. This is the time for a coordinated approach between Northern Ireland educators, education support providers, tuition companies and private tutors to work together in supporting those children who are seeing their education suffer as a result of the school closures. Investment in this area will be necessary to help our children and young people to make up for their lost learning opportunities due to Covid-19 and we hope to see the government including Northern Ireland’s children in their educational support scheme.

Do you need support with home learning?

Our Ask a Tutor scheme is providing free tuition support online and w e still have funded tuition sessions available for eligible students. If you need a tutor for maths, English or science at any level then please use our form to apply for an online session at:

Ask a Tutor - Apply Now

Our tuition services are now online, so it doesn’t matter if you are in Belfast, Craigavon, Omagh or Coleraine - our tutors are available and ready to support you at this time.

Preparing for school openings in Northern Ireland amidst Covid-19 Uncertainty

siofra@studyseed.co.uk (Studyseed CIC) — Sat, 06 Jun 2020 17:07:09 GMT

We have never seen such uncertainty amongst our Primary 6 and 7 students. At this time of the school year, P6 students who intend to sit the AQE or GL tests are busy attending after-school Transfer Test clubs, working through papers in the evenings and still learning new material in their regular classes. P7 students should be attending trips, enjoying end-of-year activities and spending their last month as primary school students finalising memories with the school family that they have spent the past seven years with. It is a very difficult transition from primary to secondary school at the best of times - we empathise with every child who will be starting a new unknown after summer without having had the opportunity to end their previous and longest school chapter in the way that they should have been able to.

There is great uncertainty around the Transfer Test examinations. In April, the AQE Board contacted the Department of Education to request that the examinations be rescheduled to January 2021 - this request was unable to be met due to time restrictions. As a result, the Transfer Test dates have been confirmed to start on the 21st of November 2020. A number of schools in Co. Down have announced that they will be doing away with the Transfer Test for one year, but there has been little information provided on how students would otherwise be selected for intake in September 2021. With this announcement, there is growing concern amongst parents that other grammar schools may follow suit.

This is understandably causing frustration for pupils who are currently working through practice papers with the possibility of not having to sit the tests hanging over them. We have already seen the impact that this has had on our Year 10 students in the Dickson Plan who had put so much energy into preparing for their transfer exams - many of whom are disappointed that they did not have the chance to see the results of this hard work reflected in their allocated marks. Our GCSE and A-Level students have been working for years towards exams that they should be in the middle of sitting right now - exams that their teachers, families, tutors and friends have drilled into them as being the most important exams that they will sit - only to now wait anxiously for an outcome that may not reflect the grades that they could have received.

It is a grossly unfair situation. It is also a dangerous situation. We are seeing an increase in students who are demotivated, who feel that there is no point in studying at home, who miss their friends and their hobbies and their sports, who feel ‘stupid’ because they don’t understand difficult topics and who, ultimately, do not know what their future will look like. As adults, we have the benefit of hindsight and can easily see that exams can be retaken in the future, that there are multiple pathways to careers, that a person is the sum of so much more than a list of grades or numbers, that the school or university that was second or third on a student’s list of preferences may turn out to be the better choice in the end - that there are always other options. We know that this is true because, in many cases, we have experienced these things ourselves, but we know that these reassurances are much harder for our young people to accept.

Moving forwards over the upcoming months, we will continue to help our Primary 6 students prepare for the possibility of the Transfer Test exams. We will guide our Year 11 students for what will be a very challenging year ahead as they tackle all of their GCSE examinations in one year, rather than having them spread out over two. We will support our students of all ages and abilities in understanding the materials that they have been learning at home.

However, our priority in doing so is not for the sole purpose of improving academic grades or giving quick tips on how to cover as much material as possible. Our priority and our focus is on the mental wellbeing of each young person that we support. It is not about, ‘You need to learn and understand everything on this list,’ but about, ‘You might be feeling overwhelmed right now - and that’s okay. Let’s break things down and work through everything in manageable steps.’

Education does not stop. It does not stop for a pandemic, it does not stop for summer, it does not stop after you finish a test or an exam or a university degree. We want our students to have the confidence and enjoyment of learning that keeps that thirst for knowledge going long into their adult lives. 2020 must not be the year that demotivated and discouraged a generation of learners.

Everyone has a right to educational support - and we know that there is a disparity between socioeconomic backgrounds when it comes to the private tuition industry. That is the reason why we formed Studyseed CIC and right now, when so many young people are unable to reach extra support, that reason could not be more prevalent. The news that these school closures are undoing years of work in lowering the educational attainment gap between rich and poor is of significant concern and we must do everything that we can to mitigate the long-term effects that this will have.

We have done everything possible to keep our individual prices and our classes affordable in balance with keeping our company running. We have funding to provide free tuition support to students referred to us by schools and youth organisations. We have funding to support children of frontline workers, children with special educational needs and children from families who have lost their jobs or are struggling financially. We have discounts for local companies who wish to pay for 6-8 weeks of tuition for the children of their returning workers. We are working with local government to provide free support to young people in neighbourhood renewal areas.

We are here to support education. Amidst the uncertainty of everything right now, that is one thing that we will always keep constant. We are here if there is anything that we can do to support you, your child, your school, your organisation or your employees.

Research Project 3 - Swallows

Wed, 03 Jun 2020 14:03:46 GMT

Take part in this free research project for KS2 - KS3 students!

Which bird has flown 200 miles every day for nearly two months to get to Northern Ireland for the summer? What desert, rainforest and mountain range did it see along the way? Why does it have very weak legs?

It’s time for our next research project for KS2-KS3 students! Northern Ireland has had an influx of little visitors from the very south of Africa... swallows! These birds are a pleasure to see darting about in the sky as they kindly pluck out wasps and midges for their supper.

This free resource pack includes a worksheet for KS2-3 students that has some comprehension and SPAG questions. We also encourage students to carry out their own research and to create their own fact sheet about a bird that they have spotted outside.

You can download the fact sheet and worksheet for free by clicking here.

We would love to see your completed factsheets and will share them on our website if you would like us to! Just pop them over to us in an email to info@studyseed.co.uk or PM us them on Facebook. Happy researching!

Research Project 2 - Moira Towpath (The Broad Water)

Tue, 12 May 2020 14:06:53 GMT

Take part in this free research project for KS2 - KS3 students!

One of our favourite spots to go for a long walk is by the Broad Water. This towpath runs between Moira and Aghalee and you can see lots of interesting creatures and flora along the way. We've put together a fact sheet that highlights some of the creatures that you can spot on the walk, along with a few interesting facts about Moira railway station, the Lagan Canal and the way in which this towpath was once a very busy way in which goods were transported between Belfast and Lough Neagh.

This free resource pack includes a worksheet for KS2-3 students that has some comprehension and SPAG questions. We also encourage students to carry out their own research and to map out a route of a walk that they take, with any interesting wildlife and plants marked out along the way!

You can download the fact sheet and worksheet for free by clicking here.

Research Project 1 - Queen Bumblebees

Tue, 05 May 2020 17:13:52 GMT

Take part in this free research project for KS2 - KS3 students!

This time of the year is perfect for spotting a queen bumblebee zigzagging around the garden! We have made a little research project for KS2 - KS3 students that include some comprehension and grammar questions based on a queen bumblebee factsheet. We are also encouraging students to conduct some research of their own and to create their own bumblebee factsheet!

You can download the fact sheet and worksheet for free by clicking here .

My Study Routine

Fri, 27 Mar 2020 23:29:06 GMT

Consistent learning routines at home through daily online lessons

What a crazy couple of weeks it has been! Here at Studyseed, we have been adjusting to the new normal. Our centre closed on 18th March, and since then, we have been working hard to move our tutoring online using the Zoom platform. Our students have been engaging well with online teaching and our parents have been adapting too!

We know that this new normal is unsettling, and from speaking with our parents, we can sense the pressure they are all under. The lack of routine and consistency is not good for anyone in the home and there is a lot of guidance out there stressing the importance of protecting our mental health in these days. You just have to look at your social media and the news to see that parents and children are feeling overwhelmed as they try to wade through the work being set for them.

At Studyseed, we want to help you refocus and recreate consistency and routine in your child’s day. It is important that we do not lose sight of the fact that there will come a time where pupils will return to school. Some of your children and young people have important exams to sit in their next school year and we do not want them to feel like they have missed out on over a term’s worth of work.

My Study Routine

We have been working hard to come up with a creative and fun way to get your child focused on their school work in a setting that does feel somewhat like a classroom. Parents have been enquiring about how they can get more help from us so that it takes a little bit of the pressure off them.

Therefore, we are introducing a new programme called My Study Routine . You can book your child/young person in for an online 30, 45 or 60 minute session at the same time daily (Monday-Friday) with our friendly and experienced tutors. This is not just about keeping your child/young person focused on their work, it is also about reestablishing consistency and routine for them, which is such an important factor in supporting positive mental health.

Study Daily with a Friend!

We know that all our students are missing their friends. So we have also introduced a “Bring a Friend” option for these classes, where a student can invite a classmate/friend of the same age to join in their session. This allows them to have communication with their peers as they learn.

We are rolling these classes out for Key Stage 2 age and above, week commencing 30th March 2020. The weekly KS2 and Year 8-10 classes will be made up of two numeracy sessions, two literacy sessions and one science session. GCSE classes will be made up of two/three English sessions and two/three Maths sessions.

Pricing

We understand that there is a lot of economic uncertainty at the moment. At Studyseed, we are committed to making tuition affordable and accessible for everyone. Here is an outline of our pricing for My Study Routine:

Individual:

5 x 30 minute sessions: £60.00 per week (Saving £5.00)

5 x 45 minute sessions: 80.00 per week (Saving £10.00)

5 x 60 minute sessions: £100.00 per week (Saving £10.00)

Bring a Friend:

5 x 30 minute sessions: £80.00 per week/£40.00 per student (Saving £10.00)

5 x 45 minute sessions: £100.00 per week/£50.00 per student (Saving £15.00)

5 x 60 minute sessions: £120.00 per week/£60.00 per student (Saving £15.00)

As an introductory offer, you will receive 20% off your first week of My Study Routine . Please note that this is a subscription service, so you will be charged weekly. If you wish to cancel at any time, you can do so by contacting us directly.

We are so excited to roll out this new programme. Our parents have been very eager for us to offer more help and we are looking forward to relieving the pressure and helping our students get back into some form of a routine for the upcoming months.

Book online:

If you would like to book in, you can do so online by clicking here .

If you would like more information on My Study Routine, please do not hesitate to contact us on Facebook , via phone 07599 804 844 or via our contact form .

Thank you for all your continued support.

The Studyseed Team.

COVID 19 Centre Closure

Mon, 23 Mar 2020 23:59:15 GMT

23 March 2020 Update for Parents

Just a quick message for our students and parents as we won't be able to speak to you in person for quite some time!

Our first online tuition session took place today and everything seems to working. Please do stay patient with us this week - in ideal circumstances we would have had longer than five days to set up and configure an entirely new service with no access to our offices, so we do expect there to be some bumps that need to be smoothed out along the way.

Quick summary of our updates so far:

✅ Online tuition is available now on our website at:

www.studyseed.co.uk/online

✅ Pricing - we have lowered our individual tuition rates and added in the ability to book shorter 30-minute and 45-minute session times.

✅ 'Bring a Friend' - students can book a friend into their online tuition session so that they can connect into the session from their own home. This further lowers the cost and we hope this will be a reassuring feature for anyone who is a little nervous about their first few online tuition sessions.

✅ 'Ask a Tutor' - we are a social enterprise and as part of our ethos of giving back, we deliver support services for students in our local schools. Obviously, we cannot do this at the moment and so our team of tutors have volunteered time each week to provide free educational support to children of frontline workers and for any families who cannot afford to book a full tuition session. We are still working on our sign-up feature for this and time slots, so we will update you on this service soon.

✅ CURRENT STUDENTS - all classes are going ahead as normal this week online. We will send you all details of how to connect to the tuition sessions. We are using Zoom - it can be downloaded at www.zoom.us and this software is free on desktops, laptops and as an app for phones and tablets. If any parents or students would like to try out a call with us to test the platform out, we'll all be near our computers over the next few days so just let us know!

We'll have further updates with you soon as we continue to work through this.

Discussing Mental Health and Cyberbullying amongst Young People in Northern Ireland

Thu, 22 Feb 2018 19:11:09 GMT

Action Mental Health, the Samaritans, QUB Mind Your Mood and the O2 Guru Team discuss mental health and cyberbullying at our February Event

Many of the young people, schools and parents/guardians that we work directly with have stressed that there needs to be more awareness around mental health and wellbeing - particularly here in Northern Ireland, where statistics show that the rate of mental health needs is 25% higher than in England. A lot of young people feel unable to speak about their mental health. This can be seen clearly in many of the responses given to the 2013 Young Life and Times survey , such as:

"Adults especially, put "teenagers" into the "teenage" category and think everything is due to hormones or a phase. We aren't taken as seriously..."

"I don't think adults take it seriously when a young person says they can't cope with the stress they're under or is seen as something that isn't a serious issue."

"I think that more needs to be done about it, i.e. spreading awareness and preventing so many misconceptions people have about it. A lot of people are not informed or do not understand it and that can make it harder for people to deal with things like depression and self-harm as they are scared about the reactions to it."

In light of this, we wanted to bring together key organisations in Northern Ireland to discuss mental health and wellbeing amongst young people for our February community event. ABC Lord Mayor Gareth Wilson opened the evening with words of encouragement for the organisations in Craigavon, Belfast and across Northern Ireland that work to support the wellbeing of young people.

Action Mental Health's presentation provided key facts about mental health - with the aim of addressing many of the misconceptions that are widely held about mental ill health. Cherith drew attention to the symptoms that we should look out for that could indicate depression, such as:

Constant tiredness
Lack of energy
Moodiness and irritability
Difficulty concentrating
Feeling unhappy or lonely most of the time
Changes in sleeping and/or eating patterns

Speaking out is so important if you think you are experiencing mental ill health. Cherith signposted the following, key support organisations that we have available in Northern Ireland:

Childline (0800 1111 or online via their website )
Samaritans (116 123)
Lifeline (0808 808 8000)
CAMHS (Child and Adolescent Mental Health Services)

Phone calls to Childline, the Samaritans and Lifeline are free of charge and do not appear on phone bills.

Margaret from the Samaritans team in Craigavon gave the audience information about how their service supports people of all ages. They exist to provide a 'listening ear' to anyone who needs to talk to somebody - with qualified confidentiality provided. The Samaritans are available 24/7 and every day of the year.

As Margaret emphasised - there's a big difference between how you feel when you're busy during the day and at 3 o'clock in the morning when there is little to take your mind off things. You do not have to be feeling suicidal to speak to the Samaritans - they are there to provide a safe place for you to talk about whatever is bothering you.

Robyn McCue from Mind Your Mood - a student-led mental health campaign at Queen's University Belfast - began by sharing her personal experience with mental ill health. This was a moving presentation and we greatly appreciated Robyn sharing her own story with us. Robyn went on to discuss her personal approaches to each of the five steps to mental wellbeing:

Connect
Be active
Take notice
Keep learning
Give

More information on the Five Steps can be found on the NHS Website . QUB Mind Your Mood exists to support the mental wellbeing of university students and they regularly provide free workshops about mental health awareness and resilience.

We were delighted to welcome back the O2 Guru team who always provide excellent information at our events on child safeguarding and protection via technology. Josh and Eamon spoke about the joint O2/NSPCC campaign against cyberbullying and outlined the three steps to spotting cyberbullying - 'stop, speak and support':

Stop - Get an overview of what's really going on.
Speak - Get advice from a trusted adult or with any of the support organisations available.
Support - Encourage the person that they are supported and give positive distractions to them.

The O2/NSPCC campaign is aimed towards parents and children - whether they are victims of cyberbullying or perpetrators of cyberbullying. Full information on each of the steps can be found on their website .

We would like to extend our sincere thanks to each of the speakers and the organisations who took the time to prepare for and speak at our event. Our warm thanks, also, to the audience for taking the time to attend. Further information on the organisations taking part can be found on their respective websites at:

Action Mental Health - http://www.amh.org.uk/
The Samaritans (Craigavon) - https://www.samaritans.org/branches/craigavon-branch-samaritans
QUB Mind Your Mood - https://www.facebook.com/mindyourmood/
O2 Gurus - https://www.o2.co.uk/help/nspcc

If you would like to suggest a topic for our next event, or to register your interest in attending as a speaker or listener, please contact us at info@studyseed.co.uk.

Positive Mental Health and Awareness with Lurgan Junior High School

siofra@studyseed.co.uk (Studyseed CIC) — Sat, 10 Feb 2018 12:01:16 GMT

Studyseed CIC take part in Lurgan Junior High School's 'Positive Mental Health and Awareness' Day

Lurgan Junior High School hosted a Positive Mental Health and Awareness event on 9 February 2018 to help their Year 10 students prepare for the upcoming Year 10 (Dickson Plan) Transfer exams in April. This event was organised by The Pupils' Voice - the school's student council - who selected organisations that they felt would help their peers in managing stress and coping with exam pressures.

Studyseed CIC delivered nine workshops throughout the day on time management and study skills, encouraging students to think about different learning techniques and how they spend their free time outside of school hours. It is important that our young students do not become overwhelmed by exam preparation and we wanted to emphasise the importance of effective time management - not just to ensure that enough time is set aside for plenty of revision, but also for students to have dedicated time to relax.

All students were guided through creating personal revision plans in preparation for their Transfer exams. For anyone who missed the event, we have plenty of blank study timetables available - please contact us if you would like to collect a few. We were all extremely impressed with the strong enthusiasm and excellent behaviour shown by all of the Year 10 students - all of whom are a real credit to themselves and their school. It was also a pleasure to deal with the student council in planning the content of the event.

Also delivering workshops on the day were Reach Mentoring ( https://www.reachmentoring.co.uk/ ) and Action Mental Health NI ( http://www.amh.org.uk/ ). Both are fantastic organisations that support student wellbeing and we were delighted to have the opportunity to take part alongside them on the day.

2018 Spring Term Timetable - Studyseed after-school classes and tuition in Craigavon available now for booking

siofra@studyseed.co.uk (Studyseed CIC) — Fri, 09 Feb 2018 18:43:03 GMT

Our after-school class timetable for the 2018 Spring Term is now available for booking via our website.

After-school classes are now available for booking via our website for the 2018 Spring Term, running from 19 February - 29 March. These are small group classes (maximum of five) and are held at our centre in Bleary, Craigavon. Our tuition services are easily accessible to the surrounding towns of Portadown, Banbridge, Armagh, Lurgan and Moira. Our after-school classes offer affordable tuition and will cover a variety of levels this term - including GCSE, KS1, KS2, Essential Skills tuition and early support towards the Northern Ireland Transfer Test exams.

If you are looking for a private tutor, please contact us to check our availability. We have a number of Maths tutors, English tutors and Science tutors in the Craigavon area that have availability. Please note that we are quite busy now with the Year 10 (Dickson Plan) Transfer, GCSE and A-Level exams approaching, so please enquire early to secure a tutor for the remainder of this academic year if needed.

To book into any of our after-school classes, please visit our bookings page here .

2018 Northern Ireland Transfer Test Results - Useful Links for Parents and Guardians

siofra@studyseed.co.uk (Studyseed CIC) — Sat, 27 Jan 2018 00:51:13 GMT

The following links provide detailed information for parents and guardians on the Northern Ireland Transfer Test score breakdowns from previous years.

1. Belfast Telegraph Transfer Test Data

Each year, the Belfast Telegraph publishes data on the highest and lowest Transfer Test admission scores for schools across Northern Ireland. This data also covers the number of applications per school, the number admitted and the percentage admitted through selective intake. Data is available for the years 2014, 2015, 2016 and 2017 and can be viewed on the Belfast Telegraph's data page which can be accessed via the following link:

https://www.belfasttelegraph.co.uk/news/education/2017-transfer-tests-table/

This data provides full information on the Transfer Test intake for the following Northern Ireland schools:

Antrim Grammar (AQE)
Aquinas Grammar School, Belfast (GL)
Assumption Grammar School, Ballynahinch (GL)
Ballyclare High School (AQE)
Ballymena Academy (AQE)
Banbridge Academy (AQE)
Bangor Grammar (AQE)
Belfast High School (AQE)
Belfast Royal Academy (AQE)
Bloomfield Collegiate, Belfast (AQE)
Cambridge House Grammar, Ballymena (AQE)
Campbell College, Belfast (AQE and GL)
Carrickfergus Grammar (AQE)
Christian Brothers' School Omagh (GL)
Coleraine Grammar School (AQE)
Dalriada School, Coleraine (AQE)
Dominican College, Belfast (GL)
Dominican College, Portstewart (GL)
Down High, Downpatrick (AQE)
Enniskillen Royal Grammar School (AQE)
Foyle College, Londonderry (AQE)
Friends' School, Lisburn (AQE)
Glenlola Collegiate, Bangor (AQE)
Grosvenor Grammar, Belfast (AQE)
Hunterhouse College, Belfast (AQE and GL)
Lagan College, Belfast (AQE and GL)
Larne Grammar (AQE)
Limavady Grammar (AQE)
Loreto Grammar, Omagh (GL)
Lumen Christi College, Derry (GL)
Methodist College Belfast (AQE)
Mount Lourdes Grammar, Enniskillen (GL)
Omagh Academy (AQE)
Our Lady and St Patrick's College, Belfast (GL)
Our Lady's Grammar School, Newry (GL)
Rainey Endowed, Magherafelt (GL)
Rathmore Grammar School, Belfast (GL)
Regent House, Newtownards (AQE)
Royal Belfast Academical Institution (AQE)
Royal School Armagh (AQE)
Royal School Dungannon (AQE)
Sacred Heart Grammar, Newry (GL)
St Colman's College, Newry (GL)
St Columb's College, Derry (GL)
St Dominic's High School, Belfast (GL)
St Joseph's Grammar, Donaghmore (GL)
St Louis Grammar, Kilkeel (GL)
St Louis Grammar, Ballymena (GL)
St Malachy's College, Belfast (GL)
St Mary's Christian Brothers' Grammar (GL)
St Mary's Grammar School, Magherafelt (GL)
St Michael's College, Enniskillen (GL)
St Patrick's Academy, Dungannon (GL)
St Patrick's Grammar School, Downpatrick (AQE and GL)
Strabane Academy (AQE)
Strathearn School, Belfast (AQE)
Sullivan Upper, Holywood (AQE)
The Abbey Christian Brothers' Grammar, Newry (GL)
Thornhill College, Derry (GL)
Victoria College, Belfast (AQE and GL)
Wallace High School, Lisburn (AQE)
Wellington College, Belfast (AQE and GL)

2. FAQ pages for the AQE and GL:

The Transfer Test website provides full information sheets for both the AQE and GL tests, including details on remarking and a brief explanation of how the results are calculated. These can be accessed via the following links:

FAQ for the AQE: https://aqetest.files.wordpress.com/2013/06/english-version-of-faq.pdf
FAQ for the GL: http://www.pptcni.com/files/PPTC%20FAQs%202016-17.pdf

3. When are parents notified if their child has received a place in their chosen school?

This information will be conveyed to parents and guardians in May 2018.

Full list of Northern Ireland School Open Days in 2018

siofra@studyseed.co.uk (Studyseed CIC) — Mon, 08 Jan 2018 22:26:11 GMT

Parent/guardian information for 2018: Post-Primary School Open Days and Nights across Northern Ireland

Abbey Christian Brothers’ Grammar School

Saturday 13 January 2018. 10.00 - 12.30.

Abbey Community College, Newtownabbey

Thursday 18 January 2018. 18.30 - 21.00.

Antrim Grammar

Saturday 13 January 2018. 09.15 - 12.15.

Aquinas Grammar School

Saturday 13 January 2018. 09.30 - 13.00.

Ashfield Boys’ High School

Tuesday 23 January 2018. 19.00 - 21.00.

Ashfield Girls’ High School

Tuesday 16 January 2018. 18.30 - 21.00.

Assumption Grammar School, Ballynahinch

Saturday 20 January 2018. 10.00 - 13.00.

Aughnacloy College

Tuesday 09 January 2018. 19.00 - onwards.

Ballycastle High School

Thursday 04 January 2018. 19.00 - onwards.

Ballyclare High School

Thursday 04 January 2018. 18.00 - 21.00.

Ballyclare Secondary School

Wednesday 03 January 2018. 18.45 - 21.00.

Ballymena Academy

Wednesday 10 January 2018. 19.00 - 21.00 for those attending Primary Schools within 3 miles Thursday 11 January 2018. 19.00 - 21.00 for those situated more than 3 miles from Ballymena Academy.

Ballymoney High School

Monday 08 January 2018. 19.00 - onwards.

Banbridge Academy

Monday 29 January 2018. 19.00 - 21.30.

Banbridge High School

Thursday 18 January 2018. 19.00 - 21.30.

Bangor Academy and Sixth Form College

Monday 22 January 2018. 19.00 - 21.00

Tuesday 23 January 2018. 19.00 - 21.00.

Bangor Grammar School

Saturday 13 January 2018. 09.30 - 12.00.

Belfast Boy’s Model School

Thursday 18 January 2018. 19.00 - 21.30.

Belfast High School

Saturday 13 January 2018. 09.30 - 13.00.

Belfast Model School for Girls

Thursday 04 January 2018. 19.00 - 21.00

Belfast Royal Academy

Wednesday 10 January 2018. 18.45 - 21.00.

Thursday 11 January 2018. 18.45 - 21.00.

Blackwater Integrated College, Downpatrick

Wednesday 10 January 2018. 19.00 - 21.00.

Blessed Trinity College

Wednesday 10 January 2018. 18.45 - onwards.

Thursday 11 January 2018. 18.45 - onwards.

Bloomfield Collegiate

Thursday 11 January 2018. 18.00 - 21.00.

Breda Academy Belfast

Thursday 18 January 2018. 19.00 - 21.30.

Brownlow Integrated College

Tuesday 09 January 2018. 19.00 - 21.00.

Cambridge House Grammar School, Ballymena

Saturday 20 January 2018. 09.30 - 13.00.

Campbell College

Friday 19 January 2018. 18.30 - 21.00.

Saturday 20 January 2018. 10.00 - 12.30.

Carrickfergus Academy

Thursday 04 January 2018. 18.30 - 21.00.

Carrickfergus Grammar School

Thursday 25 January 2018. 18.30 - 21.00.

Castlederg High School

Wednesday 17 January 2018. 19.00 - onwards.

Christian Brother’s Grammar School, Omagh

Saturday 20 January 2018. 10.00 - 13.00.

City of Armagh High School

Thursday 04 January 2018. 19.30 - onwards.

Clounagh Junior High School Portadown

Thursday 11 January 2018. 19.00 - 21.00.

Colaiste Feirste

Saturday 13 January 2018. 10.30 - 12.30 and 14.00 - 16.00.

Coleraine College

Tuesday 16 January 2018. 19.00 - onwards.

Coleraine Grammar School

Wednesday 10 January 2018. 18.30 - onwards. For P6 pupils and parents.

Thursday 11 January 2018. 18.30 - onwards. For P7 pupils and parents.

Cookstown High School

Tuesday 16 January 2018. Time TBC.

Craigavon Senior High School

Thursday 01 February 2018. Time TBC.

Cross and Passion College, Ballycastle

Thursday 11 January 2018. 19.00 - onwards.

Crumlin Integrated College, Crumlin

Tuesday 16 January 2018. 19.30 - onwards.

Cullybackey Integrated College

Monday 22 January 2018. 19.30 - onwards.

Tuesday 23 January 2018. 19.30 - onwards.

Dalriada School

Saturday 06 January 2018. 09.15 - onwards.

De La Salle College Belfast

Tuesday 16 January 2018. 19.00 - 21.00.

De La Salle High School, Downpatrick

Wednesday 17 January 2018. 19.00 - 21.00.

Dean Maguire College

Monday 15 January 2018. 19.00 - onwards.

Devenish College

Wednesday 31 January 2018. 19.00 - onwards.

Dominican College, Belfast

Saturday 20 January 2018. 09.30 - 13.00.

Dominican College, Portstewart

Wednesday 10 January 2018. 19.00 - 21.00.

Thursday 11 January 2018. 19.00 - 21.00.

Down High School, Downpatrick

Thursday 18 January 2018. 18.30 - 20.30.

Dromore High School

Thursday 11 January 2018. 19.00 - onwards.

Drumglass High School

Wednesday 10 January 2018. Time TBC.

Drumragh Integrated College

Saturday 06 January 2018. 09.45 - 13.00.

Dunclug College

Wednesday 03 January 2018. 19.00 - onwards.

Thursday 04 January 2018. 19.00 - onwards.

Dundonald High School, Belfast

Saturday 13 January 2018. 10.00 - 13.00.

Dunluce School

Tuesday 09 January 2018. 19.00 - onwards.

Edmund Rice College

Wednesday 10 January 2018. Times TBC.

Enniskillen Royal Grammar School

Tuesday 30 January 2018. 19.00 - onwards.

Erne Integrated College

Saturday 20 January 2018. 10.30 - 13.00.

Fivemiletown College

Thursday 11 January 2018. 19.00 - onwards.

Fort Hill Integrated College, Lisburn

Thursday 25 January 2018. 19.00 - 21.00.

Foyle College

Saturday 27 January 2018. 10.00 - 13.00.

Friends’ School Lisburn

Saturday 06 January 2018. 09.30 - 12.00.

Gaelcholaiste Dhoire

Saturday 20 January 2018. 11.00 - onwards.

Glastry College, Newtownards

Monday 22 January 2018. 19.00 - 21.30.

Glengormley High School

Thursday 25 January 2018. 19.00 - 21.00.

Glenlola Collegiate, Bangor

Thursday 25 January 2018. 18.30 - 21.00.

Grosvenor Grammar School

Wednesday 10 January 2018. 18.30 - 21.00.

Thursday 11 January 2018. 18.30 - 21.00.

Hazelwood College

Thursday 11 January 2018. 18.00 - 21.00.

Holy Cross College, Strabane

Saturday 20 January 2018. 10.00 - 12.00

Saturday 20 January 2018. 13.00 - 15.00.

Holy Trinity College, Cookstown

Thursday 18 January 2018. 19.00 - onwards.

Hunterhouse College

Friday 05 January 2018. 19.00 - 21.30

Saturday 06 January 2018. 09.30 - 12.00.

Integrated College, Dungannon

Tuesday 16 January 2018. 19.00 - onwards.

Kilkeel High School

Wednesday 10 January 2018. 18.30 - 21.00.

Killicomaine Junior High School Portadown

Thursday 18 January 2018. Time TBC.

Lagan College Belfast

Saturday 13 January 2018. 10.00 - 12.30.

Larne Grammar

Tuesday 23 January 2018. 18.30 - 21.00

Wednesday 24 January 2018. 18.30 - 21.00.

Larne High School

Thursday 11 January 2018. 19.00 - 21.00.

Laurelhill Community College Lisburn

Monday 08 January 2018. 19.00 - onwards.

Limavady Grammar School

Thursday 18 January 2018. 18.30 - 21.00.

Limavady High School

Thursday 04 January 2018. 18.45 - onwards.

Lismore Comprehensive Craigavon

Thursday 18 January 2018. 18.00 - onwards.

Lisnagarvey High School, Lisburn -

Thursday 11 January 2018. 19.00 - 21.00.

Lisneal College

Wednesday 10 January 2018. 19.00 - onwards.

Loreto College, Coleraine

Saturday 13 January 2018. 09.30 - 13.00.

Loreto Grammar School, Omagh

Wednesday 24 January 2018. 17.30 - onwards.

Lumen Christi College

Monday 22 January 2018. Time TBC.

Lurgan College

Thursday 25 January 2018. 19.00 - 21.30.

Lurgan Junior High School

Thursday 11 January 2018. 19.00 - 21.30.

Magherafelt High School

Tuesday 09 January 2018. 19.00 - onwards.

Malone College

Thursday 11 January 2018. 19.00 - 21.00.

Markethill High School

Wednesday 10 January 2018. 18.45 - onwards.

Mercy College

Wednesday 17 January 2018. 19.00 - 21.00.

Methodist College

Thursday 04 January 2018. 18.30 - 21.00.

Friday 05 January 2018. 18.30 - 21.00.

Mount Lourdes Grammar School

Thursday 18 January 2018. 19.00 - onwards.

Movilla High School, Newtownards

Thursday 25 January 2018. 19.00 - onwards.

Nendrum College, Comber

Wednesday 10 January 2018. Time TBC.

New Carrickfergus Post Primary School

Thursday 04 January 2018. 18.30 - 21.00.

New Voluntary Maintained Secondary School Amalgamation of St Mary’s College, Clady and St Paul’s, Kilrea

Thursday 18 January 2018. 19.00 - onwards.

New-Bridge Integrated College Loughbrickland

Saturday 13 January 2018. 09.30 - 12.30.

Newry High School

Thursday 11 January 2018. 19.00 - onwards.

Newtownhamilton High School

Thursday 18 January 2018. 19.30 - onwards.

North Coast Integrated College

Monday 08 January 2018. 19.00 - 21.30.

Oakgrove Integrated College

Thursday 11 January 2018, 15.30 - 18.00.

Omagh Academy Grammar School

Thursday 18 January 2018. 19.00 - onwards.

Omagh High School

Thursday 25 January 2018. 18.00 - onwards.

Our Lady and St. Patrick’s College Knock Belfast

Saturday 13 January 2018. 09.15 - 13.00.

Our Lady of Lourdes High School, Ballymoney

Thursday 18 January 2018. 19.00 - onwards.

Our Lady’s Grammar School, Newry

Tuesday 05 December 2017. 19.15 - onwards.

Parkhall Integrated College, Antrim

Thursday 11 January 2018. 18.45 - onwards.

Portadown College

Wednesday 31 January 2018. 19.00 - onwards.

Priory Integrated College Holywood

Thursday 11 January 2018. 18.30 - 21.30.

Rainey Endowed Grammar

Wednesday 17 January 2018. 19.00 - 21.30.

Thursday 18 January 2018. 19.00 - 21.30.

Rathfriland High School

Wednesday 31 January 2018. 19.00 - onwards.

Rathmore Grammar School

Saturday 20 January 2018. 09.30 - 13.00.

Regent House School, Newtownards

Thursday 07 December 2017. 18.00 - 21.00.

Friday 08 December 2017. 18.00 - 21.00.

Sacred Heart College, Omagh

Saturday 13 January 2018. 10.00 - 13.00.

Sacred Heart Grammar School, Newry

Thursday 23 November 2017. 19.00 - 21.00.

Saintfield High School, Saintfield

Wednesday 17 January 2018. 19.00 - 21.00.

Shimna Integrated College Newcastle

Saturday 13 January 2018. 14.00 - 16.00.

Slemish Integrated College

Wednesday 24 January 2018. 19.00 - onwards.

Thursday 25 January 2018. 19.00 - onwards.

Sperrin Integrated College

Wednesday 24 January 2018. 19.00 - onwards.

St Aidan’s High School, Derrylin

Tuesday 23 January 2018. Time TBC.

St. Benedict’s College, Randalstown

Thursday 18 January 2018. 19.00 - 21.00.

St Brigid’s College, Derry

Thursday 25 January 2018. 17.00 - 21.00.

St Catherine’s College, Armagh

Thursday 25 January 2018. Time TBC.

St Cecilia’s College, Derry

Saturday 20 January 2018. 10.00 - 13.00.

St Ciaran’s College, Ballygawley

Thursday 25 January 2018. 19.00 - onwards.

St Colm’s High School, Draperstown

Thursday 25 January 2018. 19.00 - onwards.

St Colm’s High School, Dunmurry

Thursday 04 January 2018. 19.00 - onwards.

St Colman’s College, Newry

Saturday 20 January 2018. 10.00 - 13.00.

St Colman’s High & Sixth Form College, Ballynahinch -

Monday 29 January 2018. 09.30 - 12.45.

Tuesday 30 January 2018. 09.30 - 12.45.

Wednesday 31 January 2018. 09.30 - 12.45.

Thursday 01 February 2018. 09.30 - 12.45.

St Colmcille’s High School, Crossgar

Thursday 25 January 2018. Time TBC.

St Columb’s College, Londonderry

Tuesday 16 January 2018. Broken down as follows. 16.00 - 20.00.

St Columba’s College Portaferry

Saturday 27 January 2018. 10.00 - 12.30.

St Columban’s College, Kilkeel

Thursday 18 January 2018. 19.30 - onwards.

St Columbanus’ College, Bangor

Tuesday 09 January 2018. 19.00 - 21.00.

St. Dominic’s High School, Belfast

Saturday 13 January 2018. 09.30 - 13.00.

St Fanchea’s College, Enniskillen

Thursday 25 January 2018. 19.30 - onwards.

St Genevieve’s High School, Belfast

Tuesday 09 January 2018. 19.00 - onwards.

St John’s Business and Enterprise College, Dromore

Tuesday 23 January 2018. 19.30 - 21.30.

St John the Baptist College, Portadown

Saturday 13 January 2018. 09.30 - onwards.

St Joseph’s Boys’ High School, Newry

Saturday 13 January 2018. Time TBC.

St Joseph’s Boys’ School, Creggan

Wednesday 17 January 2018. 19.30 - 21.30.

St Joseph’s College, Coalisland

Monday 15 January 2018. Time TBC.

St Joseph’s College, Enniskillen

Saturday 13 January 2018, 10.30 - 13.00.

St Joseph’s Grammar School, Dungannon

Thursday 18 January 2018. Time TBC.

St Joseph’s High School, Crossmaglen

Thursday 25 January 2018. 19.30 - onwards.

St Joseph’s College, Belfast

Thursday 18 January 2018. 19.00 - 21.00.

St Kevin’s College, Lisnaskea

Tuesday 16 January 2018. 19.00 - onwards.

St Killian’s College (Garron Tower Campus)

Saturday 20 January 2018. 10.00 - onwards.

St Louis’ Grammar, Ballymena

Wednesday 24 January 2018. 19.15 - onwards. For those from Mount St Michael’s, St Colmcille’s, St Comgall’s, Antrim, St Joseph’s, Dunloy and St MacNissi’s, Larne Primary Schools.

Thursday 25 January 2018. 19.15 - onwards. For those from other primary schools.

St Louis’ Grammar School, Kilkeel

Thursday 07 December 2017. 19.00 - 21.30.

St Louise’s Comprehensive College, Belfast

Thursday 11 January 2018. 16.30 - 18.30.

St. Malachy’s College, Belfast

Wednesday 10 January 2018. 19.00 - 21.30.

Thursday 11 January 2018. 19.00 - 21.30.

St Malachy’s High School, Castlewellan

Saturday 13 January 2018. 10.00 - 13.00.

St Mark’s High School, Warrenpoint

Saturday 13 January 2018. 09.00 - 12.00.

St Mary’s, Limavady

Saturday 20 January 2018. 10.00 - onwards.

St Mary’s Christian Brothers’ School, Belfast

Thursday 18 January 2018. 19.30 - onwards.

St Mary’s College, Derry

Saturday 13 January 2018. 10.00 - 13.00.

St Mary’s College, Irvinestown

Tuesday 16 January 2018. 19.00 - onwards.

St Mary’s Grammar, Magherafelt

Tuesday 23 January 2018. 19.00 - onwards.

Wednesday 24 January 2018. 19.00 - onwards.

St Mary’s High School, Downpatrick

Thursday 11 January 2018. 18.30 - 19.30.

St Mary’s High School, Brollagh, Belleek

Wednesday 24 January 2018. 19.00 - onwards.

St Mary’s High School, Newry

Monday 15 January 2018. 19.30 - onwards.

St Michael’s College, Enniskillen

Thursday 25 January 2018. 19.00 - onwards.

St Patrick’s Academy, Lisburn

Thursday 11 January 2018. 19.30 - onwards.

St Patrick’s & St Brigid’s College, Claudy

Thursday 18 January 2018. 19.00 - onwards.

St Patrick’s College, Ballymena

Wednesday 10 January 2018. 19.00 - 21.00.

St Patrick’s College, Banbridge

Thursday 11 January 2018. 19.00 - onwards.

St Patrick’s College, Dungannon

Thursday 11 January 2018. 16.30 - onwards.

St Patrick’s College, Dungiven

Thursday 11 January 2018. 19.00 - 21.00.

St Patrick’s College, Maghera

Wednesday 17 January 2018. 19.00 - onwards.

Saturday 20 January 2018. Time TBC.

St Patrick’s Grammar School, Armagh

Tuesday 16 January 2018. Time TBC.

St Patrick’s Grammar School, Downpatrick

Monday 29 January 2018. 19.00 - 21.00.

St Patrick’s High School, Keady

Thursday 01 February 2018. 19.00 - onwards.

St Paul’s High School, Bessbrook

Saturday 02 December 2017. 09.30 - onwards.

St Pius X College

Saturday 13 January 2018. 09.30 - 13.30.

St Ronan’s College, Lurgan

Wednesday 10 January 2018. 19.00 - onwards.

Strabane Academy

Thursday 25 January 2018. 19.00 - onwards.

Strangford Integrated College, Carrowdore

Wednesday 24 January 2018. 19.00 - 21.30.

Thursday 25 January 2018. 19.00 - 21.30.

Strathearn School, Belfast

Saturday 06 January 2018. 09.15 - 12.30.

Sullivan Upper School, Holywood

Saturday 20 January 2018. 09.30 - 12.30.

Tandragee Junior High School

Thursday 04 January 2018. 19.00 - 21.00.

The High School Ballynahinch

Thursday 04 January 2018. 19.00 - 21.00.

The Royal Belfast Academical Institution

Saturday 06 January 2018. 9.30 - 12.30.

Tuesday 30 January 2018. 16.00 - 18.00.

The Royal School, Armagh

Wednesday 17 January 2018. 19.00 - 21.30.

The Royal School, Dungannon

Wednesday 24 January 2018. For P7 pupils and parents.

Thursday 25 January 2018. For P7 pupils and parents.

Friday 26 January 2018. For P7 pupils and parents.

Tuesday 13 February 2018. 19.15 - onwards. For P6 pupils and parents.

Thornhill College, Londonderry

Tuesday 30 January 2018. 16.00 - 18.30. Principal’s Address at 16.00 and 18.00.

Ulidia Integrated College

Saturday 06 January 2018. 09.30 - 13.00.

Victoria College, Belfast

Saturday 13 January 2018. 10.00 - 13.00.

Wallace High School Lisburn

Saturday 20 January 2018. 10.00 - 13.00.

Wellington College, Belfast

Thursday 04 January 2018. 19.00 - 21.00.

Monday 08 January 2018. 19.00 - 21.00.

Studyseed 2018 New Year Term Timetable - Craigavon after-school classes and tuition available now for booking

siofra@studyseed.co.uk (Studyseed CIC) — Mon, 01 Jan 2018 16:06:59 GMT

Our 2018 New Year Term Timetable is now available for booking via our website.

After-school classes are now available for booking via our website for the 2018 New Year term. These are small group classes (maximum of five) and are held at our centre in Bleary, Craigavon. Our tuition services are easily accessible to the surrounding towns of Portadown, Banbridge, Armagh, Lurgan and Moira. Our after-school classes offer affordable tuition and will cover a variety of levels this term - including GCSE, KS1, KS2, Essential Skills tuition and early support towards the Northern Ireland Transfer Test exams.

If you are looking for a private tutor, please contact us to check our availability. We have a number of Maths tutors, English tutors and Science tutors in the Craigavon area that have availability. Please note that we are quite busy with the mock exams in January, so please enquire early to secure a tutor for the remainder of this academic year if needed.

To book into any of our after-school classes, please visit our bookings page here .

O2 and Yellow Ribbon Suicide Prevention Charity team together to deliver stark warning against excessive social media use amongst young people in Northern Ireland

Fri, 01 Dec 2017 00:00:00 GMT

The second of Studyseed CIC's information evenings focused on the psychological impact of social media.

On November 22nd, Studyseed CIC hosted a community information evening on the psychological impact of social media. The event was held in Bleary Business and Community Centre, Co. Armagh, and speakers from O2, Yellow Ribbon Suicide Prevention Charity and celebrity psychologist Dr Arthur Cassidy gave presentations on the dangers that social media can have on young children and teenagers. Armagh, Banbridge and Craigavon Council Lord Mayor Gareth Wilson opened the event, which was attended by parents, local representatives and key stakeholders in education.

O2 provided shocking statistics on the increasing use of social media apps by children. Through interactive presentations, they provided parents with information on how to track and limit the amount of time that children spend accessing social media platforms such as Facebook, Instagram and Snapchat. Every O2 shop has a dedicated Guru who can advise on how to protect children through the phones or tablets that they are using - no matter what network they might actually be on.

A team from the School of Psychology at Ulster University, currently working with Yellow Ribbon Suicide Prevention charity, provided key information on the danger that excessive social media use has been shown to have on the mental wellbeing of young people. They drew attention to a number of telling psychological changes that parents should be aware of - such as reclusive behaviour, changes in personality and self harm.

Dr Arthur Cassidy, well known for his work on national TV programmes such as Celebrity Big Brother, called for urgent action from health authorities in addressing the sharp increase in children suffering from negative behavioural changes from accessing unsuitable material on the internet. Dr Cassidy also commented on the sharp rise in cases that he has dealt with - even in Northern Ireland alone - that have stemmed from excessive online gaming and inadvertent access to adult content. A study conducted by Middlesex University shows that 94% of children have encountered adult material online by the age of 14 - a shocking figure that Dr Cassidy warns will only lead to increased cases of psychological harm.

For further information on upcoming events or if you or your organisation are interested in taking part in future information evenings, drop us an email at info@studyseed.co.uk.

Studyseed Winter Timetable - Craigavon after-school classes and tuition available now for booking

siofra@studyseed.co.uk (Studyseed CIC) — Tue, 31 Oct 2017 18:37:29 GMT

Our 2017 Winter Timetable is now available for booking via our website

After-school classes are now available for booking via our website for the 2017 Winter term. These are small group classes (maximum of five) and are held in Bleary, Craigavon. Our after-school classes offer affordable tuition and will cover a variety of levels this term - including GCSE, KS1, KS2, Essential Skills tuition and support towards the Northern Ireland Transfer Test exams.

If you are looking for a private tutor, please contact us to check our availability. We have a number of Maths tutors, English tutors and Science tutors in the Craigavon area that have availability before Christmas.

To book into any of our after-school classes, please visit our bookings page here .

Social Saturday 2017 - Free Study Advice Sessions

siofra@studyseed.co.uk (Studyseed CIC) — Tue, 10 Oct 2017 16:24:33 GMT

Free Studyseed Student Advice Sessions in Craigavon on Saturday 14 October, 2017

Today is World Mental Health Day. We are very aware of the stress that our young people are constantly put under, especially during term time with coursework deadlines, exam preparation and controlled assessments.

Along with numerous other Northern Irish Social Enterprises, we will be taking part in this year's Social Saturday (this Saturday 14 October). We will have tutors at our centre between 1PM-3PM to provide FREE guidance and advice on areas such as:

✅ Study Skills
✅ File Organisation
✅ Plagiarism
✅ Revision Techniques
✅ Undergraduate Essay Writing
✅ Research Skills
✅ CV Writing
✅ Time Management

If you or your child has any work that you would like one of our tutors to have a look at, any documents that you need feedback on or if you just want some general advice on study skills and approaches, please do pop in for a cuppa and a chat!

We do have limited spaces so please let us know if you're coming in advance using this form:

https://www.studyseed.co.uk/social-saturday-2017-free-study…

Our free study skills sessions will be held at our centre in Bleary, Craigavon. Hope to see you there! ��

Giveaway: WIN an Amazon Fire 7 Tablet!

siofra@studyseed.co.uk (Studyseed CIC) — Sun, 03 Sep 2017 18:22:19 GMT

We are giving away an Amazon Fire 7 Tablet for our September 2017 Giveaway.

To enter our giveaway, visit the entry page at: https://www.studyseed.co.uk/win

Studyseed CIC are giving away an Amazon Fire 7 Tablet to celebrate the launch of our 2017 Autumn Term after-school classes. We have 28 weekly classes running from our centre in Craigavon, Co. Armagh - including focused tuition towards the Northern Ireland Transfer Test, GCSE tuition, Primary literacy and numeracy support, Adult Essential Skills and French, Spanish and Portuguese language classes. Our home tutors in Craigavon, Lisburn, Banbridge and Portadown are also currently accepting new clients for the Autumn 2017 Term - please contact us for our latest availabilities.

2017 Autumn Timetable - 28 Weekly After-school Classes

siofra@studyseed.co.uk (Studyseed CIC) — Sun, 03 Sep 2017 17:59:03 GMT

Our after-school class timetable for the 2017 Autumn Term is now available for booking. Running from September 11 - October 26.

To reserve a space on any of our classes, please click here to visit our secure bookings page.

Our weekly, after-school group classes are held at our centre in Bleary, Craigavon in Co. Armagh. These are small-group classes for a maximum of five students and are taken by 1-2 tutors. Classes are tailored to the specific needs of those in attendance. All learning materials, worksheets and refreshments are provided.

A £30 deposit secures a place on any of our weekly classes. A 10% discount is available when paying for 7 sessions in full. Alternatively, classes can be paid for on a weekly basis if attendees are unable to attend all 7 weeks. We can accept payment by cash, cheque, BACS, Paypal and all major debit/credit cards.

We are fully insured, with disabled access and parking facilities. Studyseed CIC provides affordable, high-quality educational support for students and adults through small-group tuition classes in Craigavon. Our range of services also include home tuition, SEN support and tailored revision and exam skills programmes for organisations across Northern Ireland. Studyseed CIC tutors are educated to degree level as a minimum, are AccessNI checked and have proven experience in student-led educational support.

O2/NSPCC and Craigavon PSNI speak at Child Safety Online Event in Bleary Business and Community Centre

siofra@studyseed.co.uk (Studyseed CIC) — Wed, 07 Jun 2017 13:23:34 GMT

The first of Studyseed CIC's community information evenings focused on the topic of keeping children safe online.

On June 6th 2017, Studyseed CIC held its first community information evening within Bleary Business and Community Centre, Co. Armagh. With speakers from O2 in conjunction with the NSPCC and the Craigavon PSNI, the information presented by our guest speakers covered a wide topic area on the technological and criminal aspects of child safety online. Child safety is of the utmost importance to us as an education service and we follow child safety procedures both in the delivery of our services and in the way that we advertise. Studyseed CIC follows the NSPCC Guidelines on photography and images and strictly prohibits the taking or publication of photographs of minors or of any other identifying details of the children that we work with as part of our news or marketing.

Our first speakers were Stephen Graham (O2 Portadown), Josh (O2 Craigavon) and Josh (O2 Park Centre) in conjunction with the NSPCC. They delivered an educational and interactive presentation on keeping children safe online through app awareness and gave excellent signposting to organisations such as CEOP (Child Exploitation and Online Protection Centre) and Thinkuknow ( https://www.thinkuknow.co.uk/ ). Parents and guardians should also avail of the Guru in every O2 store who can advise on how to protect your children through the phones or tablets that they are using - no matter what network you might actually be on.

Constable Gary from the Craigavon PSNI delivered an informative presentation on the criminal aspects surrounding child safety online, with some eye-opening statistics and stories that drew to light the harsh reality of the dangers that our young people - right here in Northern Ireland - face over the internet. He also drew attention to the importance of reporting any online incidents that make you feel worried or unsafe to CEOP ( https://ceop.police.uk/safety-centre/ ) and emphasised the ways in which parents and guardians can keep an eye on their children's whereabouts through technology.

We, at Studyseed CIC, would like to thank all of our guest speakers for taking the time to come to the centre and for delivering these excellent presentations. As technology and apps continue to advance, it is pertinent that well-informed and professional speakers such as Stephen, Josh, Josh and Constable Gary continue to deliver their knowledge and expert advice to parents, guardians, schools and key stakeholders in the community. We would also like to thank everyone who came along to listen to the speakers and hope to see you again at our next community information event in July. Last, but certainly not least, our thanks to Jimmy Robinson for the fantastic (as always) catering service for the event.

Details on our next community information evening will be released shortly. Keep an eye on our website or follow us on Facebook to stay updated on our events.

USEFUL LINKS:

O2 (and NSPCC) - http://www.o2.co.uk/help/nspcc
NSPCC (and O2) - https://www.nspcc.org.uk/what-we-do/about-us/partners/nspcc-o2-online-safety-partnership/
PSNI Internet Safety - https://www.psni.police.uk/advice_information/internet-safety/
Child Exploitation and Online Protection Centre (CEOP) - https://ceop.police.uk
Thinkuknow - https://www.thinkuknow.co.uk/
NSPCC Guidelines on sharing images of children - https://www.nspcc.org.uk/preventing-abuse/safeguarding/photography-sharing-images-guidance/

Open Invitation: Child Safety Online Information Evening

siofra@studyseed.co.uk (Studyseed CIC) — Thu, 25 May 2017 22:07:46 GMT

You are invited to attend a community information evening on Child Safety Online on Tuesday 6 June at 7:30PM in Craigavon.

We are hosting an open, community information evening on keeping children safe online. This event is free for everyone to attend. It will be held in Bleary Business and Community Centre on Tuesday 6 June at 7:30-9:00PM .

Families often think they know exactly what their kids get up to online, and that they understand all the apps and sites their kids use. But with technology changing every day, that's not always the case. With guest speakers from O2 and NSPCC, we hope to provide key information on protecting children on the internet through the apps, social media and websites that they might be accessing.

Drinks and refreshments will be available during the evening. We look forward to seeing you there!

RESERVE YOUR SEAT(S) HERE : https://www.eventbrite.co.uk/e/child-safety-online-tickets-34830527044

NOTE: We have a seating capacity of 50 places. Reservations will be made on a first-come-first-serve basis. If you have reserved a seat and can't attend then please let us know so that we can make your space available to someone else. Thank you!

Studyseed Summer 2017 Programme - Weekly Educational Activities and Fun Saturday Events

siofra@studyseed.co.uk (Studyseed CIC) — Thu, 25 May 2017 21:56:06 GMT

Our full Summer 2017 programme for educational activities in Craigavon is now available for bookings.

For more information on each class, please use the following links:

Weekly Educational Activities:

AQE and GL Transfer Test Tuition Classes
Year 11/12 GCSE Mathematics and English Tuition Classes
Year 10 Junior High (Dickson Plan) Transfer Exam Preparation Classes
Reading Recovery and Comprehension Fun Classes
Learn Through Play - Number and Spelling Skills Classes for Primary Children

One-day Learning Events:

Saturday 22nd July - Arts and Crafts Learning for Primary Children
Saturday 5th August - Creative Problem Solving for Key Stage 2 Students
Saturday 19th August - Dealing with Mistakes for Key Stage 2 and Key Stage 3 Students

Reservations for all classes can be made online via our bookings page at: https://www.studyseed.co.uk/book

All classes are held in Bleary Business and Community Centre, Craigavon, Co. Armagh. We also provide high quality, affordable tuition services in Lurgan, Portadown, Moira, Banbridge, Craigavon, Lisburn and surrounding areas. For more information on our private, home tutors please email us on info@studyseed.co.uk or use our contact form.

Saturday 19th August - Dealing with Mistakes - Summer Education Activity in Craigavon

siofra@studyseed.co.uk (Studyseed CIC) — Thu, 25 May 2017 21:32:50 GMT

A creative, educational session for KS2 and early KS3 students in Craigavon, Co. Armagh on the importance of learning from mistakes.

Saturday 19th August
12PM - 3PM
£30 per child

How does your child deal with getting things wrong? Do they struggle to accept when they get anything lower than a ‘perfect’ test score? How do they respond to this ‘failure’?

During primary school, children usually score very high in their tests. But as they get older, this trends usually decreases. How do children deal with not getting 100% in every test?

During this session, we will introduce the students to new environments, where they will not know the right answer all of the time. This will involve a lot of creativity and will draw upon skills they have developed from all areas of their education so far. The main purpose is to show the students that will not always know the right answer, but to teach them how to approach unknown situations and deal with getting some things wrong. We will finish this session with a focus on the importance of accepting failure from a psychological point of view.

Location:

Studyseed CIC
Bleary Business and Community Centre
1 Deans Road, Bleary.
Co. Armagh
BT66 8TD

Book online: https://www.studyseed.co.uk/book/-p84689622

For more information on our Key Stage 2 (KS2) and Key Stage 3 (KS3) tutors and group revision sessions in Moira, Craigavon, Lurgan, Portadown and Banbridge, please email us on: info@studyseed.co.uk.

Saturday 5th August - Creative Problem Solving - Summer Activity in Craigavon

siofra@studyseed.co.uk (Studyseed CIC) — Thu, 25 May 2017 21:27:08 GMT

An interactive afternoon of problem solving questions for Key Stage Two (KS2) children in Craigavon, Co. Armagh.

Saturday 5th August
12PM - 3PM
£30 per child

Does your child find applying their maths and english to other topics difficult? Are they able to understand problem solving questions when they are broken down, but not independently? Is there a lot of frustration around problem solving tasks?

During this session, we aim to address the difficulties surrounding problem solving questions for our students. We will depend on our knowledge of maths, english, science, art, geography, history and more! This session will be very interactive. We will have students competing against each other on some tasks, and working together too. The main purpose of this session is to teach students how to approach problem solving questions that they are faced with. We will provide a variety of templates and different processes they can follow, and allow them the freedom to pick whichever one they prefer the most. There will be a mixture of interactive learning and fun in this session, and students will leaving feeling equipped to approach any problem solving question they face in the future.

Location:

Studyseed CIC
Bleary Business and Community Centre
1 Deans Road, Bleary.
Co. Armagh
BT66 8TD

Book online: https://www.studyseed.co.uk/book/-p84689170

For more information on our KS2 Mathematics and KS2 English tutors and group revision classes in Portadown, Moira, Lurgan, Craigavon and Banbridge please email us on: info@studyseed.co.uk.

Saturday 22nd July - Arts and Crafts Learning Summer Activity in Craigavon

siofra@studyseed.co.uk (Studyseed CIC) — Thu, 25 May 2017 21:21:28 GMT

A fun afternoon of learning through arts and crafts for primary-aged children in Craigavon, Co. Armagh.

Saturday 22nd July
12PM - 3PM
£15 per child

Does your child like to build and create things? Are they constantly taking things apart and rebuilding them? Is there an awareness that they are learning while doing these things?

During this session, we will focus on creative learning through arts and crafts. We will not explicitly teach things like measurements, area, volume etc., but the students will be drawing upon these skills in order to complete the crafts that are created. All materials created will be brought home.

Location:

Studyseed CIC
Bleary Business and Community Centre
1 Deans Road, Bleary.
Co. Armagh
BT66 8TD

Book online: https://www.studyseed.co.uk/book/-p84689156

For more information on our summer group revision classes and private tutors in Moira, Craigavon, Lurgan, Portadown and Banbridge, please email us on: info@studyseed.co.uk.

Learn Through Play - Fun Spelling and Number Skills Classes this Summer in Craigavon

siofra@studyseed.co.uk (Studyseed CIC) — Thu, 25 May 2017 21:17:08 GMT

Fun, summer educational classes to introduce and revise basic number and spelling skills for younger students.

Number Skills
Mondays: 15:00-16:00
Running from: 10 July - 21 August

Do you dread when your child brings home a mental arithmetic homework? Does your child struggle with the fundamentals in maths? Are they depending on their fingers when counting?

Weekly sessions to introduce and reinforce the basic number skills. This will involve a lot of verbal work with the class and there will be a particular focus on number bonds, times tables and mental arithmetic. This class will be very interactive and engaging, in order to show students that these fundamental maths-related topics can be interesting and fun!

Spelling Skills
Mondays: 16:00-17:00
Running from: 10 July - 21 August

Is your child struggling to get a grasp of phonics? Is their spelling suffering as a result? Do they find basic alphabetic ordering challenging?

Weekly sessions to introduce and reinforce basic english language skills. This will involve a lot of verbal work with the class and there will be a particular focus on the alphabet, phonics and spellings. This class will be very interactive and engaging, in order to show students that these fundamental English-related topics can be interesting and fun!

Location:

Studyseed CIC
Bleary Business and Community Centre
1 Deans Road, Bleary.
Co. Armagh
BT66 8TD

Each session is £12.00 and we require a £30.00 (non-refundable) deposit to be paid in order to secure your place. A 10% discount will be applied when payment for seven sessions is made in full upon booking.

Book online: https://www.studyseed.co.uk/book/-p84689150

For more information on our number and spelling skills tutors in Lurgan, Portadown, Moira, Banbridge and Craigavon, please email us on: info@studyseed.co.uk.

Reading Recovery - Fun, Summer Tuition Classes in Craigavon

siofra@studyseed.co.uk (Studyseed CIC) — Thu, 25 May 2017 21:10:11 GMT

Fun, summer classes for children struggling with reading and comprehension in Craigavon.

Is your child struggling with reading? Is their reading age low? Do they struggle to engage with books?

During this weekly class of up to five students, we will read through a number of books whilst exploring the narrative, structure and format. This class will consist solely of verbal work, involving reading and verbal comprehensions. All reading books will be provided.

We are located within Bleary Business and Community Centre, Craigavon - parking is available, with disabled access and full insurance.

Every Monday - 13:00-14:00
Running from: 10 July - 21 August

Location:

Studyseed CIC
Bleary Business and Community Centre
1 Deans Road, Bleary.
Co. Armagh
BT66 8TD

Each session is £10.00 and we require a £30.00 (non-refundable) deposit to be paid in order to secure your place. A 10% discount will be applied when payment for seven sessions is made in full upon booking.

Book online: https://www.studyseed.co.uk/book/-p84689082

For more information on our English reading and comprehension home tutors in Moira, Lurgan, Craigavon, Portadown and Banbridge, please email us on: info@studyseed.co.uk.

Year 10 (Dickson Plan) Summer Revision for 2018 College Transfer Exams

siofra@studyseed.co.uk (Studyseed CIC) — Thu, 25 May 2017 20:58:54 GMT

Weekly, summer tuition classes for the Year 10 Transfer Exams in Craigavon

Weekly, summer revision classes for students entering into Year 10 in the following schools:

Lurgan Junior High School
Clounagh Junior High School
Killicomaine Junior High School
Tandragee High School

These revision classes are in preparation for the Dickson Plan Transfer Exams into Lurgan College, Portadown College and Craigavon Senior High School. These are small group tuition sessions for a minimum of three and a maximum of five students. A review of Year 8 and 9 Mathematics and English will be covered during the course.

All learning materials and refreshments will be provided each week. We are located within Bleary Business and Community Centre, Craigavon - parking is available, with disabled access and full insurance.

Running from: Tuesday 11 July - Thursday 24 August

Available Sessions:

Tuesday - 16:00-17:00
Thursday - 17:00-18:00

Location :

Studyseed CIC
Bleary Business and Community Centre
1 Deans Road, Bleary.
Co. Armagh
BT66 8TD

Each session is £15.00 and we require a £30.00 (non-refundable) deposit to be paid in order to secure your place. A 10% discount will be applied when payment for seven sessions is made in full upon booking.

Book online: https://www.studyseed.co.uk/book/-p84689037

For more information on our Dickson Plan college exam tutors in Lurgan, Craigavon and Portadown, please email us on: info@studyseed.co.uk.

Summer 2017 - Year 11 and Year 12 GCSE Mathematics and English Tuition Classes in Craigavon

siofra@studyseed.co.uk (Studyseed CIC) — Thu, 25 May 2017 20:44:52 GMT

Weekly, summer revision classes for GCSE Mathematics and English students in Craigavon, Co. Armagh.

Weekly, summer classes for students entering into Year 11 and Year 12 in preparation for GCSE Mathematics and English Language. These are small group tuition sessions for a minimum of three and a maximum of five students. Both foundation tier and higher tier courses are covered for each subject.

All learning materials and refreshments will be provided each week. We are located within Bleary Business and Community Centre, Craigavon - parking is available, with disabled access and full insurance.

Running from: Tuesday 11 July - Thursday 24 August

Available Sessions:

Tuesday

Mathematics (Foundation Tier: T1, T2 & T5) - 13:00-14:00
Mathematics (Higher Tier: T3, T4 & T6) - 13:00-14:00

English Language (Foundation Tier) - 14:00-15:00
English Language (Higher Tier) - 14:00-15:00

Thursday

Mathematics (Foundation Tier: T1, T2 & T5) - 11:00-12:00
Mathematics (Higher Tier: T3, T4 & T6) - 11:00-12:00

English Language (Foundation Tier) - 12:00-13:00
English Language (Higher Tier) - 12:00-13:00

Location :
Studyseed CIC
Bleary Business and Community Centre
1 Deans Road, Bleary.
Co. Armagh
BT66 8TD

Each session is £15.00 and we require a £30.00 (non-refundable) deposit to be paid in order to secure your place. A 10% discount will be applied when payment for seven sessions is made in full upon booking.

Book online: https://www.studyseed.co.uk/book/-p84689021

For more information on our GCSE Mathematics tutors and GCSE English tutors in Moira, Lurgan, Portadown, Craigavon, Banbridge and surrounding areas, please email us on: info@studyseed.co.uk

Summer 2017 - AQE/GL Transfer Test Tuition Classes in Craigavon

siofra@studyseed.co.uk (Studyseed CIC) — Thu, 25 May 2017 20:27:50 GMT

Studyseed CIC are now taking bookings for weekly, NI Transfer Test preparation classes in Craigavon, Co. Armagh.

We are now taking bookings for our weekly, summer classes in preparation for the Northern Ireland GL and AQE Transfer Tests. These are small group tuition sessions for a minimum of three and a maximum of five students.

All learning materials and refreshments will be provided each week. We are located within Bleary Business and Community Centre, Craigavon - parking is available, with disabled access and full insurance.

Running from: Monday 10 July - Thursday 24 August

Available Sessions:

Monday
Mathematics 10:00-11:00
English 11:00-12:00

Tuesday
Mathematics 18:00-19:00
English 19:00-20:00

Thursday
Mathematics 14:00-15:00
English 15:00-16:00

Location:
Studyseed CIC
Bleary Business and Community Centre
1 Deans Road, Bleary.
Co. Armagh
BT66 8TD

Each session is £15.00 and we require a £30.00 (non-refundable) deposit to be paid in order to secure your child's place. A 10% discount will be applied when payment for seven sessions is made in full upon booking.

Book online: https://www.studyseed.co.uk/book/-p84679488

For more information on our AQE and GL Transfer Test tuition or for information on our private tutors in Lurgan, Craigavon, Portadown, Banbridge and surrounding areas please email us on: info@studyseed.co.uk.

Competition: Win a Madlug Backpack of your choice!

siofra@studyseed.co.uk (Studyseed CIC) — Sat, 13 May 2017 19:40:01 GMT

We're giving away a Madlug Backpack to celebrate passing 1000 followers on Facebook.

We've been blown away by how quickly our Facebook following has increased since February. We would like to give our HUGE thanks to each of you for continuing to support ethical tuition for Northern Ireland.

To celebrate, we're giving one of you a Madlug backpack - take a look at their full range here and choose your favourite one!

Madlug (Make a Difference Luggage) is also a community interest company that has its roots here in Co. Armagh. For each bag that they sell, they give a new travel bag to a child in care - fighting against the indignity that many young people face when having to pack their possessions into plastic bin bags. Check out their social media to see the incredible movement that they have started across and beyond Northern Ireland.

ENTER THE COMPETITION HERE

Your Opinion: Summer 2017 Activities and Courses

siofra@studyseed.co.uk (Studyseed CIC) — Sun, 30 Apr 2017 23:35:41 GMT

Have your say on what courses you want to see us running this summer.

We want our summer programme for 2017 to include the courses/activities that YOU want us to provide for the local community. Whether you want to see a particular language class for adults, educational arts and crafts for kids or NI transfer test summer preparation - let us know using our suggestions form at:

https://www.studyseed.co.uk/opinion

The more suggestions we have for a particular idea, the harder we'll work to pool our resources together and make it happen. Our permanent premises is in Craigavon but we are also able to run courses from various centres across Armagh, Banbridge, Lisburn and Belfast - just let us know in the form where your nearest town is.

Studyseed CIC is currently running weekly, GCSE Mathematics preparation through group tuition sessions in Craigavon. We work with excellent home tutors and provide tuition in all subjects and at all levels across Co. Armagh, Down and Antrim. For inquiries about our tutoring services, please contact us or send us a PM via our Facebook page .

3 Things You're Doing Wrong when Revising

siofra@studyseed.co.uk (Studyseed CIC) — Thu, 27 Apr 2017 13:38:04 GMT

Here are some things you need to avoid when preparing for your exams:

1. You aren't managing your time effectively

Time management is key to good exam preparation. Depending on how long you have until your exam date, you'll want to have a plan in place for how you're going to make the most of your available time. Let's break it down into chunks here:

Months before the Exam:

Find out what modules and topics are going to be in the exam and list these in order of how difficult you find them.
Draw up a loose plan of how long you think you'll need to spend going over the harder topics. Bear in mind that you probably still haven't learnt everything that's going to appear on the exam yet.
Work backwards from your exam date and estimate when you're going to need to start your revision - you may be surprised at just how early you'll want to begin in order to fully prepare.

Weeks before the Exam:

Print off a weekly timetable of the days between now and your exam date.
Cross out any days that you know you'll not be revising on. Be ruthless here - it's all very well to say you'll do some revision after your cinema date next Tuesday, but we all know that's probably not going to happen! Remember to take school hours, your work rota, trips away, social activities and major events into consideration when you're doing this.
At this point, the number of days you thought you had available to revise on should be looking a lot smaller. Don't panic! Now is the time to plan out the remaining days effectively. Allocate more time for those harder topics and make sure you begin with them so that they aren't being left until it's too late.

Days before the Exam:

During your revision sessions, make sure that you use a daily revision planner to use your time effectively. We have some revision planner templates available for free - just pop us a message on our Facebook page and we'll send you a PDF copy.
A daily revision planner allows you to list the topics that you need to cover in a single revision session and the amount of time you're going to spend on each one before moving on to the next.
Don't let yourself get overwhelmed. You know what topics you need to cover - so break these down into manageable portions and allocate time to each one.
It's important to avoid going over your designated time on a single topic at this point. When the allocated time is up, move on to the next topic - even if you're not finished. You can always come back to any unfinished topics if you have time at the end of your revision session.

2. You aren't making the most of revision apps

We know that technology can be a distraction during revision time, but there are some wonderful apps out there that you should be taking advantage of when preparing for your exams. Here are a few of our personal favourites (that we've personally used!):

SelfControl - Block your own access to distracting sites (*cough* Facebook)
https://selfcontrolapp.com/ (Free download for Mac users. Some variations exist for Windows and Linux but we haven't personally tried these.)

This one is a life-saver. Sometimes you need to be on your desktop or laptop during a revision session and it's oh-so-handy to have a Facebook or Youtube tab open in the background. Next thing you know, hours have passed and the only thing that was kept in the background was your revision. This app lets you input a list of websites you know you'll get distracted by and completely blocks your access to them until the timer that you've set is up. It's so effective, even uninstalling the app to regain access during the timeframe won't work - trust us, we've tried.

Exam Countdown - Keep track of all your exam dates
IOS - https://itunes.apple.com/gb/app/exam-countdown/id873279955?mt=8
Android - https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=uk.co.beyondlearning.examcountdown&hl=en_GB

We weren't kidding when we said time management is important. This handy app lets you input all of your exam dates and sets a countdown for each one so you can see how long you have left to prepare for your exams - down to the last second . This one works a dream for visual learners as well, since you can colour-code each of your exams and organise them using notes and icons.

Forest: Stay Focused - Don't let your phone distract you when revising
IOS - https://itunes.apple.com/gb/app/forest-stay-focused-be-present/id866450515?mt=8
Android - https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=cc.forestapp&hl=en_GB

We love this app for its visual aesthetic - and its effectiveness! Basically, you set a timer for how long you want to focus on revising (25 minutes is ideal, but that's another article altogether) and a little tree is planted on your phone screen. If you exit the app to check up on your Snapchats or Instagram, you kill the tree. Do you want to kill the tree? Of course not. This one really motivates us to stay focused for short, intensive revision periods.

3. You aren't using the right revision techniques

Everybody is different and that means that we all revise better using different techniques. How do you know which technique is best for you? The first thing you need to do is identify what type of learner you are - then you can hone your revision techniques accordingly.

Visual Learners:
Visual learners learn best by watching or being shown how things are done. Effective techniques for visual learners include:

Mind maps and spider diagrams
Colours - highlighting notes and colour-coding pages
Tables and charts
Drawings and sketches
Videos - there are plenty of instruction videos on Youtube that may come in handy for revision

Auditory Learners:
Auditory learners learn best by listening to instructions and sounds. Effective techniques for auditory learners include:

Discussions - arrange a group revision session or talk over your revision notes with friends and family
Reading your notes aloud
Using mnemonics to memorise key snippets of information
Recordings and rhymes

Tactile Learners:
Tactile learners learn best by actually doing things physically. Effective techniques for tactile learners include:

Highlighting notes
Creating index or flash cards
Writing on post-it notes and displaying these
Applying problems to real-life examples (particularly useful for mathematics revision)
Making charts

If in doubt about your revision approaches, ask someone for help! Your friends, parents, guardians and teachers are all sources of advice and information. At Studyseed CIC, we're happy to assist - join us on Facebook and pop us a PM if you have any questions about your exam preparation and revision techniques.

If you live in Northern Ireland, why don't you drop in to see us in our centre in Co. Armagh - we're always happy to help! We also have Belfast, Lisburn and Craigavon tutors for home tuition and we run group revision courses from our tuition centre in all subjects and levels.

GCSE Mathematics Revision Sessions in Craigavon

siofra@studyseed.co.uk (Studyseed CIC) — Sat, 22 Apr 2017 00:00:00 GMT

6 Weeks of GCSE Mathematics Preparation - Small Group Tuition Sessions

- Tuesday evenings from 7:30-9:30PM
- Running every Tuesday from 25 April until 30 May
- Two-hour weekly sessions
- Focused tuition with a maximum of 5 students per group

Due to requests from a number of students, we have organised six weeks of revision sessions in the final run-up to the GCSE Mathematics exams. All learning materials will be provided, along with snacks and refreshments. Tuition will cover exam preparation for CCEA T1, T2, T5 (foundation) and T3, T4, T6 (higher) examinations. Sessions will run at our centre in Bleary Business and Community Centre, Craigavon - beginning Tuesday 25 April. Students are welcome to attend any of these sessions - it is not necessary to enrol for all 6 weeks.

BOOK SECURELY ONLINE at: https://www.studyseed.co.uk/book/ or contact us by PM, email info@studyseed.co.uk or text/phone 07599 804 844 to reserve a space for any of the weeks.

Studyseed's New Location in Bleary, Craigavon

siofra@studyseed.co.uk (Studyseed CIC) — Wed, 01 Feb 2017 00:00:00 GMT

Studyseed CIC has a new home - and we're open for business.

Studyseed CIC has moved into a permanent premises within Bleary Business and Community Centre. We will be offering a range of new services from this location - including small group tuition sessions and holiday revision courses.

In searching for a base for Studyseed, we were keen to find a location that was both modern and convenient to the nearby towns of Lurgan, Portadown and Banbridge. With ample parking and disabled access, the recently-renovated, former school building in Bleary, Craigavon was a perfect match for us. We're excited to be able to offer our tutoring services in this beautiful building and to be working closely with Armagh, Banbridge and Craigavon Borough Council.

The first of our new tuition services will be starting over the Easter school holidays, when we will be running GCSE Revision Courses in Mathematics and English.

Studyseed Group Tuition and Home Tutors in Craigavon, Co. Armagh

siofra@studyseed.co.uk (Studyseed CIC) — Tue, 31 Jan 2017 00:00:00 GMT

Ethical tutoring services with Studyseed CIC. We're raising standards, lowering costs and supporting children in need across Northern Ireland.

Studyseed CIC is a social enterprise based in Bleary, Craigavon - you can find us at our permanent home within Bleary Business and Community Centre, 1 Deans Road, Bleary BT66 8TD.

Although we have provided home tuition services and tutors in Lurgan, Craigavon, Portadown and Banbridge (where the majority of our current clients are based) since 2013, we wanted to expand our service range to include small group sessions from a permanent location convenient to these areas within Co. Armagh. With our move into Bleary, we are now easily accessible from surrounding towns and villages, with little traffic congestion, ample parking and disabled access.

Our group tuition services include GCSE, A-Level and Transfer Test tutoring in Mathematics, English and a variety of other subjects. We are SEN-experienced and will also be running reading recovery classes. This service expansion will not affect our Studyseed home tuition services, which continue to be available for all subjects and at all levels.

As a registered Community Interest Company, Studyseed CIC is committed to supporting the educational development of children and young people across Northern Ireland. Our profits are used to support the work of AspireNI - a charity based in Craigavon that provides educational support to children living in poverty in the local community.

Through quality tuition services and community support work, Studyseed CIC aims to provide a support platform for students and teachers across Northern Ireland. With our new services in group tutoring, we hope to help more students across Craigavon excel in education, both in school and beyond. Together with AspireNI, Studyseed CIC aims to provide a strong and positive social impact within the local community.

We release regular updates on our group tuition sessions on our Facebook page . 'Like' us to stay informed and to get access to exclusive promotions.

Studyseed CIC | Updates and Resources

Easter 2023 GCSE Revision Classes

View our timetable of available GCSE Revision classes and Studyseed Helpdesk opening times in Portadown over the Easter 2023 holidays

Available Classes

Studyseed Helpdesk

August 2022 Seminars: How Do You Learn?

We are delivering a series of online seminars for AQE/GL, KS3 and GCSE pupils between 22-31 August 2022.

How do you learn?

Christmas Cookie Pops with Aruma Treats

We asked our friends at Aruma Treats to come up with an easy - and tasty! - Christmas activity for our younger students. Print off our Christmas Cookie Pop Planner, design your treats and then follow their instructions below to create your masterpieces!

What you need:

Step 1:

Step 2:

Step 3:

Step 4:

Printable Christmas Cookie Pop Planner:

Connect with Aruma Treats and check out their handcrafted cakes and desserts on:

Instagram: @aruma_treats

Facebook: /arumatreats

Ask an Expert: Applying for Your First Job

We’re starting a new series where we gather questions from students and parents/guardians on key topics and ask experts from the industry to answer them for you.

We wanted to kick things off with a topic that so many of our students have been voicing their concerns about - finding their first job.

YOUR QUESTIONS ANSWERED

1. How can I get around needing experience for jobs when I’ve never had a job before?

2. Can I just leave out work experience on a CV if I don’t have any or should I still include the section and just leave it blank?

3. If I haven’t got my results yet but I’m currently doing A-levels can I put this down on a job application or can I only put down my GCSE results?

4. I sell clothes and jewellery on Depop, can I put that down on my CV even though I don’t have an employer and it’s more of a hobby?

5. Who can I put down as a reference if I haven’t had a job before?

7. My older brother got his first job by going into places around the town and asking for part-time work but with all of the current restrictions is it still worth trying that or it is acceptable to ring places up to ask if they need anyone?

8. Where can I find jobs that are local to me? All the jobs in my area when I look online need university degrees and experience and I don't know where people advertise jobs for students.

Connect with Jordan on:

How to Take Better Notes for Effective Revision and Study Organisation

Note taking. It’s something that all students find themselves doing - but something that they often receive little guidance on how to do well .

Good note-keeping should be concise, structured and organised. This guide is going to walk you through each of these aspects and explain how and why you should write your notes in a way that follows this approach. You can download our FREE note templates at the bottom of this page.

KEEP YOUR NOTES CONCISE

KEEP YOUR NOTES STRUCTURED

For lectures:

For revision/research:

KEEP YOUR NOTES ORGANISED

Traditional notes (pen and paper!)

Digital notes

DOWNLOAD THE PRINTABLE TEMPLATES

Pure Mental NI’s student-led approach towards mental health

ABOUT PURE MENTAL NI

RESEARCH ON MENTAL HEALTH AND WHOLE SCHOOL APPROACHES

Only 25% of children in school receive support for a diagnosable mental health condition

HOW WE CAN SUPPORT PURE MENTAL NI

Follow Pure Mental NI’s work:

A Conversation with Singer/Songwriter Emma Horan

We sit down with music artist and former student Emma Horan to talk about how she balanced her education with her music career, her unconventional pathway into university and the advice she would give to teenagers who are trying to figure out what they want to do in the future.

I would say I found school very difficult. I loved the teachers but I just genuinely didn’t want to be there because I wanted to be in the studio every day.

Did I follow a traditional pathway into university? Definitely not! I never did UCAS. I was the only one who put my hand up to say I didn’t want to go to university.

Just take time out to figure out what you want to do. You’ll not be behind - that’s just not the case. You can study at any age.

Follow Emma Horan on:

Listen to Emma's latest singles:

Listen to Emma's latest feature on Amsterdam Trance Records:

Research Project 5 - Moths and Moth Trapping

Take part in this free research project for KS2 - KS3 students!

Watch Dakota's introduction to moth trapping here:

Some moth species that Dakota has found:

Moth Research Project - Download the PDF

Follow Dakota's work at Copper and Blue Ireland on:

Autumn Term 2020 | Bookings Open for After-school Classes

Our centre is reopening for after-school classes! 33 weekly classes now available to book for our 7-week Autumn Term, beginning 7 September 2020.

Squish Therapy Dough for Learning and Mindfulness

Locally produced in Co. Antrim and with all-natural ingredients: Squish is an aromatherapy playdough that we’ve been delighted to get our hands into!

Cryptic Crosswords for Children and Beginners

A beginner's introduction to cryptic crosswords - and a competition!

Inclusive Online Learning for Children with a Disability or Special Educational Need

Not an afterthought. Not an oversight. Accessibility is where we must begin.

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The 2020 pandemic has forced primary and secondary schools to utilise online teaching methods

Research Project 4 - Walled Gardens

Take part in this free research project for KS2 - KS3 students!

Will the Government Fund Private Tuition for Children in Northern Ireland?

Government private tuition scheme targeting disadvantaged communities in England should extend to the 100,000 children living in poverty in Northern Ireland

Is the government scheme for private tuition being extended to Northern Ireland?

What funding have we secured so far to support children with their home learning in Northern Ireland?

Do you need support with home learning?

Preparing for school openings in Northern Ireland amidst Covid-19 Uncertainty