The Minister for Education and Skills, Ruairí Quinn T.D., and the Minister for the Arts, Heritage and the Gaeltacht, Jimmy Deenihan T.D., today jointly launched new History lesson plans for primary schools. The History lesson plans are based on A History of Ireland in 100 Objects, the collaborative project involving the National Museum of Ireland, The Irish Times and the Royal Irish Academy (RIA). This is also available as a mobile app which featured on this site last March.

The lesson plans focus on 14 of the 100 objects from 5,000 BC to 1926. They include the Tara Brooch, King William’s Gauntlets, Daniel O’Connell’s “chariot”, an Emigrant’s Teapot and an Eileen Gray chair. The full list is available online at www.100objects.ie/education and includes curriculum links, teaching ideas, lesson plans, worksheets, videos and activities for primary school children. The lesson plans are supported by a wide range of audio and visual material. The development of the lesson plans has been funded by the Department of Education and Skills, and the process was supported by Educate Together.

Launching the lesson plans today, Minister Quinn said:

“I would like to commend the RIA for its work in developing the lesson plans. These lesson plans will help to bring history to life for our primary school children and will stimulate them to look into their own family and local history. In this respect they complement other recent initiatives by my Department such as the all-island schools history competition that I launched last month. The lesson plans are also an excellent example of integrating ICT into the classroom.”

Minister Deenihan welcomed the new resource as a practical illustration of how to strengthen the link between the arts and the classroom.

“These lesson plans are an excellent example of integrating our heritage and the arts into the classroom. I would like to acknowledge the generosity of those individuals, museums and libraries that have donated photographs, images and videos that help to bring the selected objects to life. I hope that the natural curiosity of our primary school children will stimulate them to visit the museums in which these, and so many more, exciting artefacts are housed.”

The lesson plans are being introduced under the Arts in Education Charter launched by Ministers Quinn and Deenihan at the beginning of this year. One of the commitments in the Charter is to promote visits by school children to cultural institutions. The lesson plans facilitate this by including a direct link to the particular museum in which each of the 14 objects is housed.