Mayo Education Support Centre

This short course provides a basic introduction for SNAs/ANAs working with students with ADHD. It aims to help SNAs/ANAs build the knowledge, confidence, and strategies to support these students. 

Participants will explore what ADHD is, and what it is not, addressing common misconceptions and gaining a clearer understanding of how ADHD can impact learning, behaviour, and relationships in school.

The course highlights the challenges students may experience. It also encourages participants to support their students using a strengths-based approach, acknowledging their strengths and seeing the whole learner.

Grounded in the NCSE Relate Framework, the course emphasises building strong relationships, adopting a neuro-affirmative viewpoint, and discovering practical strategies to use in school. SNAs/ANAs will leave with an improved understanding of ADHD, as well as some practical tools to foster inclusion, support student wellbeing, and encourage learners with ADHD in their school. 

Anger is a big emotion, and the outbursts it can trigger are often stressful and challenging to manage in a school environment.As an SNA, you play a crucial role in helping children navigate their emotions - but knowing how to respond effectively, without escalating the situation, can be tough.

Children struggling with anxiety can find the school environment overwhelming—and as an SNA, you play a vital role in offering the support they need to feel safe, understood, and ready to learn. But knowing how to help can feel challenging.

This practical, easy-to-follow course gives you six essential tools to confidently support anxious children in the classroom. You’ll gain a clear understanding of anxiety—how it presents, why it happens, and what works to help children feel more secure and regulated.

Through simple, effective strategies, you’ll learn how to:

• Understand anxiety through the lens of developmental and brain science. 
• Recognise signs and triggers of anxiety and how to respond with confidence
• Create a calm, supportive environment that helps children feel safe
• Use six practical tools to help anxious children thrive in the school setting

By the end of this course, you’ll walk away feeling empowered, prepared, and equipped with actionable techniques that make a real difference in a child’s day.

This course is designed specifically for SNAs working in primary schools—so whether you're new to the role or looking to expand your toolkit, these six steps will give you the confidence and skills to support children with anxiety effectively.

Discover comprehensive insights into Dyslexia to empower you to provide better support for the children in your school.

• Understand exactly what Dyslexia is.
• Understand how Dyslexia can affect students at second level. 
• Discover practical strategies and resources to help deal with organisation, reading, spelling and vocabulary, writing, memory learning, notetaking and self esteem.

As an SNA you can find yourself working with children who are attending EAL classes. Learn how you can best support these children as they learn to speak a new language. 

This engaging and practical course is designed for Special Needs Assistants (SNAs) who want to deepen their understanding of sensory processing and the role of sensory play in supporting children with additional needs.

Participants will explore how sensory processing impacts learning and behaviour, learn to identify sensory sensitivities and needs, and discover strategies to create inclusive, sensory-friendly environments.

SNAs will learn about the eight sensory systems of the body and will gain confidence in using sensory play to enhance regulation, engagement, and development in the children they support.

This course offers a foundational and practical exploration of neurodiversity, with a focus on autism and affirming approaches that support inclusive, compassionate, and responsive educational environments.

Discover how play and relationships shape wellbeing in both teaching and learning. This engaging course explores how child-led play can be used in all class settings to foster wellbeing, social inclusion and nurture creativity. This course delves into social and emotional development, the nervous system and attachment—offering insights into how these elements shape our interactions, experiences and relationships. This course aims to support teachers in reconnecting with their own playful side while gaining value insights to support their own personal development. Finally, participants will be supported in devising a framework for creating a whole school plan based on Experiential Wellbeing to enhance social inclusion and in line with the Department of Educations 'Wellbeing Policy Statement & Framework for Practice.'

Learning Outcomes:

• Understand the value of child-led play through the lens of wellbeing, social & emotional development and social inclusion.
• Explore how the nervous system works and learn to identify and understand the ‘Language of the Nervous System’.
• Identify the skills necessary to nurture a supportive teacher-pupil relationship underpinned by an understanding of attachment theory.
• Look specifically at ordinary everyday interactions to foster connection, emotional balance, resilience, insight and empathy.
• Support teachers in reconnecting with their own innate playfulness to foster social inclusion.
• Explore creating a whole school plan to promote experiential wellbeing in line with the Department of Education’s ‘Wellbeing Policy Statement and Framework for Practice’, based around play and relationships (informed by educational neuroscience) in line with SSE.

The course aims to equip primary teachers with the knowledge, skills, and strategies to effectively identify, support, and challenge exceptionally able and gifted learners within primary schools. It will explore best practices in meeting the needs and interests of exceptionally able and gifted learners in mainstream contexts and provide opportunity for participants to deepen their professional knowledge, understanding and skills to create sufficiently challenging learning experiences for these learners. It will include the use of a range of pedagogical approaches and resources that facilitate differentiation, enrichment, and inclusion whilst promoting project-based and interdisciplinary learning. The course will also provide opportunity for participants to critically reflect on whole-school policies and practices that address the holistic needs of all gifted and exceptionally able learners including learners with double/ triple exceptionality with particular emphasis on supporting the development of positive wellbeing and social and emotional needs. The course will also examine ways in which teachers’ individual and collective practice can support parents and gifted and exceptionally able learners during periods of transitions.

Specific skills and practices to be developed include:

• Differentiation Approaches including curriculum compacting, acceleration, enrichment and in-class cluster models
• Universal Design for Learning
• Teacher- Learner interaction techniques to optimise challenge in learning experience
• Using digital technologies as part of a suite of enrichment activities
• Activating agency of exceptionally able and gifted learners
• Reflection on whole-school policies and practices that support holistic development of gifted and exceptionally able learners

This is not a course. 

The course is for those who wish to consolidate what they know, to put a structure on knowledge that may be scattered. It is also for those who get lost in the seeming maze of grammar. It is to simplify to what needs to be known about Gramadach na Gaeilge and will assist in teaching this. It is not for someone who already has a keen grasp of gramadach na Gaeilge.

The Explorers Education Programme online course aims to provide engaging activities, resources, and support for teachers to incorporate Marine Content through Science, Math’s, English, Geography, and the Arts into the class curriculum.

Launched in 2006, the Explorers Education Programme, funded and supported by the Marine Institute promotes ocean awareness, knowledge, and engagement, as well as supports ocean literacy and marine education in primary schools in Ireland.

By learning about the ocean literacy concepts; enabling us to understand the influence of the ocean on us and our influence on the ocean; as well as supporting engagement with the UN Sustainable Development Goals 12 and 14, teachers will be able to incorporate marine themes with a range of primary subjects and learning methodologies. Through a series of seashore focuses videos and activities participants will explore

• Biodiversity, and adaptation to the life on the shore,
• Sustainability fisheries and future of our coastal ecosystems
• Environmental awareness and care, and design and make
• Outdoor learning and planning fieldwork
• Using ICT to bring the Ocean into the classroom
• Methods for SSE and exploring work samples and self-reflection tools

The course provides teachers the opportunity to develop their individual and collective skills through the delivery of ocean literacy concepts and learning about the seashore online as well as through nature. The teachers will become proactive in:

• Assessing their own abilities as well as positively contributing to understanding the importance of the ocean
• Being able to communicate about the ocean in a meaningful way
• Using these skills to make informed and responsible decisions regarding the ocean and its resources in line with SDG14

Based over 5 modules, participants will use a range of pre-recorded video content, teacher resources, workbooks, and lesson plans to complete tasks. On completion participants can request a pack of Explorers Educational Resources to be sent to their school.

For more information see www.explorers.ie

Learning outcomes

• A broad range of cross curricular activities where they will develop their skills, ability and competency in active engagement
• Inclusive discussion and opportunities for facilitating challenging conversations though online platforms moderated by e-tutors and course director

Teaching reading is rocket science! Providing effective research-based literacy instruction that meets the diverse learning needs of all students in middle and senior classes is incredibly challenging. In this course, teachers will consider the fundamentals of literacy instruction for older students and explore how to align classroom practices and instruction with the science of reading.  Participants will explore models of reading and consider how this aligns to the Primary Language Curriculum in a practical manner. Through a blend of knowledge and practical implementation, teachers will learn how to establish routines and procedures which elevate student voice and engagement across all curricular areas.  Topics include comprehension instruction, vocabulary, morphology, differentiated instruction, spelling, writing and cultivating a joyful reading community. In all areas, participants will examine both research and practice, while also availing of high quality resources to aid in implementation in middle and senior classes.  At the end of this course, participants will be more confident in cohesively planning effective instruction that aligns with the science of reading and most importantly meets the needs of all students.

Learning Outcomes

·        Identify and explore research-validated elements of literacy instruction in the middle and senior classes.

·        Develop an understanding of an effective programme of literacy development for middle and senior class pupils and the instructional implications for informing the whole school self-evaluation process.

·        Identify and examine approaches to develop students’ oral language and vocabulary both formally and informally. 

·        Develop an knowledge of the explicit nature of Comprehension Strategy Instruction across a variety of text genres and examine its use in all curricular areas.

·        Understand how explicit writing instruction can advance thinking across all subject areas.

Consider how assessment data can be used to inform literacy instruction and identify misconceptions.

Water Safety Ireland's Summer Course aims to give teachers the toolkit to confidently teach PAWS (Primary Aquatics Water Safety) programme. The course also supports the teaching of water safety as part of the Strand Myself, Strand Unit Safety and Protection (Personal Safety) in the SPHE programme.  It aims to increase teachers’ knowledge and awareness of water safety at sea, on inland waterways, on the farm, in swimming pools and at home, through the use of factual information and local  evidence of water safety incidents.  Teachers  will explore lesson content exemplars and teaching methodologies and provide a variety of resources suitable for teaching and discussing water safety.  Learn how water safety lessons can be evaluated and assessed and how it may be situated within the context of the school self-evaluation process. The course will also enable teachers to enhance their awareness of their own safety when in, on and near water