Junior Cert 2011: Environmental and Social Studies

spurious

Friday, June 10th
9:30pm - 11:30pm

All questions and discussion about E.S.S. go here.


Good luck everyone!

Desire.

Does anyone here even do this subject?

spurious

Yes they do thanks and I am the national support for it.
Any other questions?

TheRedDevil10

So some schools do it instead of geography ?

Desire.

spurious wrote: »

Yes they do thanks and I am the national support for it.
Any other questions?

Yeah, it's similar to Geography with some History and other stuff thrown in, yeah?

spurious

Yes, it can be taken instead of History/Geography.
About a thousand candidates take it every year, in about 50 schools or so.

It's a much more interesting approach to the subjects. There is a lot of cross over between the syllabi, but the main thing with ESS is there is no text book, you learn by doing, not reading about. 40% of the terminal mark is for project work - almost like mini-versions of the projects in LC History and Geography.

spurious

Desire. wrote: »

Yeah, it's similar to Geography with some History and other stuff thrown in, yeah?

It's integrated History and Geography. The use of IT wherever possible is encouraged.

It has a few extra modules that History doesn't have and is much more like LC Geography in its approach than standard Geog. It's very wide in what you can cover, so it's great when a student has a particular interest in something historical or environmental.

It's one of the few subjects that is actually as intended in the JC, in that it has a major emphasis on active learning and project work.

History for example, was meant to have a 120 mark project in it to go with the 180 mark paper, but it never happened.

It's hard work to teach as you have to think on your feet all the time and can't do the old 'read from the textbook' trick, but at the same time it's a lovely subject to teach once you get into the swing of it.

Doublechinlolz

Im jealous now, sounds kinda fun.. Is the exam easy? And what did you have to do for the project?

spurious

MarkD09 wrote: »

Im jealous now, sounds kinda fun.. Is the exam easy? And what did you have to do for the project?

I'm the teacher.:)
You can see the past exams on http://www.examinations.ie if you like.

I'd rather not discuss this year's projects, since they have yet to be marked, but previous projects have been - for the Field Study, land use in an urban setting, patterns of transport to a local shopping centre, urban renewal, a river study, a beach study, inputs and outputs in a factory or farm, that sort of thing. The Field Study is done as a class activity.

For History the most popular one is always a project on the candidate's family (or an elderly neighbour), where we look up the old censuses (sp?), electoral rolls, school and Church records and use only primary resources. Various Irish people such as Collins, Pearse, Larkin etc. are always popular, but the family project scores much better because it is primary research. Michael Collins with the best will in the world tends to be googled or looked up in books. It's rarely the candidate's own work.

I remember a project many years ago where a candidate did it on a local graveyard, researching some of the 'residents' and who they were, soldiers killed in the various wars and buried in Ireland are also a good project. It's really quite open as regards the History project which is done individually.

Anyway, I hope it goes OK for them all in the exam tomorrow.

Cakes.

The course looks really interesting judging by the exam papers. It also looks to contain a bit of classical studies, i.e Ancient Greek

spurious

My gang seemed happy enough with it, though I didn't react when I heard some of the wildly wrong answers they put down.
Not to worry, overall they will be fine when their projects are added in.

Nice to see the Irish role in WWI came up.

P H A 7V T O M

Can you do this subject for LC? Sounds far more interesting, particularly in that it's "Social Studies", which sounds like it deals with the human aspects of life in Geography. No one I know does it.

Do you know how many people do it annually (just a rough figure).

lol up until now, I thought Spurious was a veteran LC student or something. Your a teacher? Do you mark exams, too? I noticed you have a rather good knowledge on the subject, more so than any of my teachers!

spurious

The original plan was for it to feed into the LC 'Politics and Society' subject that would have been a History/CSPE/Social Studies type subject, but while that subject got to an advanced stage in the planning process, when the money dried up, so did the plans to pilot it in schools.

At the moment ESS students transfer to standard History and Geography at LC, or to Social Education at LCA.

About 1000 candidates do it annually (and rising). It tends to be spread by teachers or principals who have come in contact with it elsewhere. Teachers are not fond of change and the thought of no textbook absolutely terrifies some people, so it spreads in places where people are used to taking risks, or where the children they deal with are already badly served by the textbooks.

A large number of non-standard centres do it (traveller centres, detention centres etc.), plus schools with children with special needs. The ironic thing is that it originally grew out of a subject called Humanities, developed in the early 70s by TCD in conjunction with the CDVEC Curriculum Development Unit and the Shannon Curriculum Development Centre to address the needs of gifted children who were bored parrotting back what they had been given in textbooks and who wanted to explore topics by themselves. Any subject where there is project work attracts teachers of weaker students as they can spend extra time getting as many marks as they can.

I have marked JC History in the past (and Group and Inter beforehand), so I know the procedures involved with the SEC.

Cakes.

I would love to do a Politics type subject. I have a really big interest in Politics !

Could environmental and Social studies students do History as well sine they're on different times ?

spurious

Cakesofrice wrote: »

Could environmental and Social studies students do History as well sine they're on different times ?

No, you either do History and/or Geography or ESS.

Colm!

Any chance that ESS will become more "mainstream" in the near future, or does it look like it will take quite some time for that to happen? Just interested in that.

spurious

Colm! wrote: »

Any chance that ESS will become more "mainstream" in the near future, or does it look like it will take quite some time for that to happen? Just interested in that.

That's up to teachers. It's available for any school to do.
There are perceived shortfalls in the syllabus - unless the Field Study is done on physical geography, an ESS student 'could' be a bit short of Physical Geography going into LC (though they would be ahead on social geography). This is often a stick people use against the subject. My response would be 'So teach them something new in 5th year', but I realise teachers in the main are quite reluctant to change and like to have things 'as they were in my day', I know I do.:)

It's spreading slowly but surely. I wouldn't like to see a situation where it replaced History/Gengraphy because it's not just History/Geography it's a different way of doing things. If it became the subject all schools did, I would worry that next thing there would be a textbook with the dreaded 'sample answers' and everyone would end up learning things off. That would destroy it.

shadowninty

Thanks for all the info Spurious.
Sounds like an interesting subject and I hope your class does well

spurious

A couple of them had readers and some of the reports I got back about them launching enthusiastically into Section A of a question where we had covered Section B have me a bit worried, but they were hugely positive going in and coming out, so sure let them, it'll be fine in Sept. come results day.

siofraban

I have taught Ess for the past three years and lovw it. The students love it and enjoy the project work. I would advice any teacher to consider doing higher level with their group even if they think they are v weak. I had a particular weak group last year. All of them would have donexa mixture of ol and fl subjects. They did hl ess for me and out of a class of 10, 9 got B's and 1 A. :-)