Best Leaving Cert subjects for Primary Teaching?

lauracx

Im currently in TY and having an insight into a primary school for work experience has made me want to do the BEd.

These are the subjects im going to take for LC: (not sure of levels yet)
English
Irish
Maths(O)
Spanish
Biology( For me, its the one I like best out of the science options)
Home Ec (Theres some social parts in the course)
LCVP

And then I have one slot left: History or Geography? Personally I liked History more over Geog in the JC but I got a C in His and a B in Geog, both higher level. Im worried about the essays in History and the length of them as I am not fond of writing essays. While in Geog, its all the same from the JC except more in depth and the problem with Geog is that in the JC I enjoyed the population, migration, the regional parts and I hated the soil, weather, rocks, and rivers part.

Out of History and Geography, which one would be most helpful for Primary Teaching?
Also, whats the difference between Maynooth Froebel and like St.Pats? I heard Froebel have a different way of teaching?

spurious

You will have to write lots of essays in teacher training.

You will need Irish at HL and as many of the others as you can at HL to get the points for primary teaching.

I can't see either LC History or Geography being better than the other for Primary teaching. Perhaps History for research skills, but you will rarely day to day need more than JC levels of knowledge of these subjects. Do what subjects you like best and ideally which you can get most points from.

dambarude

For primary science, physics would be the best of the three sciences to do.That's not to say at all that it would be required. There's a lot of physics in the primary science curriculum... Materials, electricity, magnetism, forces, light, heat etc.

Nicole.

I would agree that there will probably be no great advantage or disadvantage about picking either geography or history for primary school teaching. This is advice really for picking subjects, but good idea checking these things out early.

-I would advise you to check the exam papers too and see what they're like.

-There are lots of essays in both subjects. Geography has short questions where you can pick up marks. History has some shorter questions but they still aren't as short as geography's.

-You will struggle slightly with physical geography if you really don't like it, but most people have a preference. There is a lot of human geography too though and you should like that.

-Consider what in particular you liked about history because some of the topics which people really liked aren't covered in the leaving cert syllabus.

-If you can get your hands on a leaving cert history book and a leaving cert geography book it might help your choice.

-Talk to the History and Geography teachers for Leaving Certificate, see if they can give you an overview of the courses.

-Both have research projects which will help, they're worth 20%.

As a side note, you probably already know this but there are some overlaps between Home Economics and Biology which will help with the non social side of Home Ec but it isn't a significant crossover.

Good luck.