Life, Community & Work

Beginner

60 mins

Teacher/Student led

+65 XP

What you need:
Chromebook/Laptop/PC or iPad/Tablet
IWB/Projector/Large Screen

Welcome to LCW: Set up Your Digital Portfolio

Explore the structure of Life, Community and Work, understand the experiential learning cycle, and set up your Digital Portfolio with folders for each strand and a baseline self-description.

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1 Getting Started
2 Your Course Journey
3 Key Terms
4 Set up Your Portfolio Folder
5 Think About It

1 - Getting Started ~5 mins

Welcome to Life, Community and Work. Over the next two years this subject works with your real questions: who am I, what am I good at, where am I going, and how do I fit into the community and workplaces around me? Today you're participating in the very first step by setting up the Digital Portfolio that will carry everything you make in LCW. Think of it as the folder that future-you (in Sixth Year, staring down a real application) will be very glad you started well.

Teacher Notes

Open with a quick show-of-hands: who has ever kept any kind of collection or record over time? (Sport stats, a music playlist, a phone camera roll, a game save.) Use it to frame the portfolio as something they already know how to do.

Reassure the class that LCW is a full Leaving Cert subject graded at common level, 60% portfolio and 40% written exam. Set the tone that this is real work, not filler.

👇 Mark your steps as done as you complete them.

+5 XP

2 - Your Course Journey ~8 mins

Before you build anything, see where the whole course is going. This slideshow previews the two modules, the four strands, the four Applied Learning Tasks, how Portfolio in Action is assessed, and the experiential learning cycle that every lesson sits on. You don't need to memorise it, just get the shape of the two years in your head.

Teacher Notes

Walk the class through the slideshow on the IWB. Pause on the ALT slide and name each one plainly: Personal Statement, Career Progression Plan, Reflection on a Collaborative Problem-Solving Task, Plan Responding to Workplace Feedback.

The key idea to land: the portfolio is not submitted for marks itself. Students respond to an SEC-issued brief in Sixth Year using their portfolio. Everything they make now is fuel for that.

👇 Mark your steps as done as you complete them.

+15 XP

3 - Key Terms ~5 mins

Three terms you'll use constantly from here on. Read them once now; you'll meet them again in almost every lesson.

Term	What it means for you	Real example
Digital Portfolio — a growing folder of your own digital evidence (text, audio, photos, video) built across the two years.	It's the home for everything you make in LCW, and the source you draw on for the Portfolio in Action brief in Sixth Year.	A folder on your school cloud account with one sub-folder per strand
Applied Learning Task (ALT) — a sustained piece of work at the end of each strand where you apply what you've learned.	Four across the course; the first one you'll build is your Personal Statement in this strand.	ALT 1: Personal Statement
Experiential learning cycle — the Participating → Reflecting → Applying rhythm the whole course runs on.	Knowing which phase a lesson is in tells you what you're meant to be doing: trying something, making sense of it, or using it.	—

Teacher Notes

Keep this quick. Point out that the cycle phase is named at the top of every lesson so students always know where they are.

+10 XP

4 - Set up Your Portfolio Folder ~27 mins

Now you build the thing that carries the whole course. You'll create your Digital Portfolio, set up one sub-folder per strand, and write your first entry: a short, honest baseline of who you are right now. In two years you'll read this back and see how far you've moved.

Teacher Notes

Circulate and confirm every single student has a portfolio location set up on the school's chosen cloud (or a paper-plus-digital equivalent if a student has no account yet). This is the foundation for the full LCW course (a minimum of 120 hours of class contact time across Fifth and Sixth Year), so leave no one without one.

Concrete fallback: if a student has no cloud account on the day, have them create the same folder structure in the device's local Documents and note it clearly for migration next lesson, or set up a folder for them inside a shared class drive named for them. No one should leave without a portfolio location.

The baseline note is deliberately low-pressure and private-feeling. Reassure anyone who's unsure about their post-school plans that "I don't know yet" is a perfectly honest and useful thing to write. There is no right answer here.

+15 XP

5 - Think About It ~5 mins

Talk these over in pairs or as a class. You don't type anything here; if you want to keep a thought, add it to your portfolio in your own time.

Future-you is the audience. Why might the version of you sitting the Portfolio in Action brief in Sixth Year want to read what present-you wrote today? What would you want to have said?
Where do you hope this takes you? Name one thing you're hoping LCW gives you over the two years. It can be practical (a real application ready to go) or personal (more sure of what you want).

Teacher Notes

Run a 60-second paired share on the second prompt, then take three or four voices from the room. Do not push anyone to disclose career plans they're unsure about; keep it about hopes, not commitments.

Optional Digital Portfolio note (out of class): students may write a short paragraph to their Sixth Year self about the moment they first opened their portfolio folder.

+10 XP

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Welcome to LCW: Set up Your Digital Portfolio

Teacher Class Feed

1 - Getting Started ~5 mins

2 - Your Course Journey ~8 mins

3 - Key Terms ~5 mins

4 - Set up Your Portfolio Folder ~27 mins

5 - Think About It ~5 mins

Unlock the full learning experience

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