St Patrick’s Day on the Web

St Patrick's Day, 17 March, is a great time to inject some Irish culture into your classroom, with these videos, audio and interactive activities.

Happy St Patrick’s Day – some of the figures may be a bit approximate in this promotional video, but it’s great for becoming familiar with some Irish traditions and traits, and practising numbers. Like many documents associated with Ireland, it does feature an image of beer.

 

All About Ireland
A great little film from the Irish Tourist Board which is exactly what it says on the tin: All About the Island of Ireland. (It covers both the Republic and Northern Ireland without getting into the details.) No voiceover, it’s more of an animated powerpoint with lots of practical information about geography, weather, currency, etc.

A ready-made class activity would be to ask pupils to produce a presentation on the same model about France. The language is easy enough to use as a model from A1+, higher levels could get a bit more creative. Finding the equivalent information for France is a painless way to check comprehension.

 

Irish Music
This one-minute film is a good introduction to Irish folk music. It’s a promotional film for Tradfest, a festival held in Dublin in January. There is no voiceover, just onscreen text, so the focus is on images, and commenting on them. A perfect document for practising the be + V-ing form: They are dancing, singing, clapping. She is playing the violin. He is playing the banjo, etc. Usable from A1.

This video was created for Ireland's candidacy to host the 2023 Rugby World Cup. They lost out to France, but the video is worth using  from A2. It's 1'30" long, so, used without images it would be good for training for the listening comprehension test for the Baccalauréat. At A2+ pupils can get the sense of the description of Irish past and present, and the rugby tournament. At B1, pupils should be able to understand some of the idiomatic expressions around the word "world" (edge of the world, New World, travelled the world, centre of the world, making the world smaller, special part of the world, nothing in this world we can't achieve, the envy of the world, a world of memories...)