Its maps and local places change to show each school's own area: its streets, hills, castles and old workplaces. Pick your school to see the lesson as your class would.
Its maps, and the words in yellow, are that school's own local places.
Choose another schoolWelcome to this short, practical course on running the Junior Cycle Geography Classroom-Based Assessments. You already know your geography. These four lessons focus on the part that is hard to run: three weeks of inquiry for a whole class, keeping the work the students' own, judging it on balance, and getting through SLAR.
This first lesson covers, in order: a confidence baseline for your Professional Learning Portfolio, the current arrangements and this year's date windows, both CBAs at a glance, and planning the weeks back from the SLAR meeting. By the end you will have your class's CBA dates sketched and the CBA class planner ready to adapt.
Complete this short baseline confidence audit before you go further. Rate each statement honestly on a 1 to 5 scale. There are no right answers. You will retake the same five statements at the end of the course so you can see how far you have come. Your responses become the first entry in your Professional Learning Portfolio, which compiles into a downloadable record when you finish.
Watch this short presentation for the welcome, the four lessons ahead, the current arrangements and date windows, both CBAs at a glance, and the planning move of working back from the SLAR meeting.
Read this filled CBA class planner for an invented second-year class running Geography in the News. It uses week numbers, never calendar dates, because real dates depend on each school's calendar and holidays. Study the annotations: each names a choice and why it matters. The week-by-week split of the three weeks is our suggestion; the guidelines give the order of the inquiry, not a week-by-week plan.
Download the blank planner to adapt for your own class: CBA class planner (Word).
Use the planner you have just studied to start a plan for your own classes. Download the blank template if you want the full week map beside you: CBA class planner (Word).
For third years this year, My Geography must be completed by Friday 9 April 2027, and Easter Sunday is 28 March 2027, so check where your school's Easter holidays fall before you place the three weeks. Provisional descriptors are due by 16 April and SLAR by Friday 23 April, and the meeting takes place no more than a month after the CBA is completed. If the three weeks end on 9 April, your judging time and the SLAR meeting fit into two weeks, not the three the planner shows.
On screen, answer one question. It saves to your Professional Learning Portfolio as My Class's CBA Dates.
In this lesson you set a confidence baseline and mapped how the geography CBAs run now.
| Key idea | Why it matters for your teaching | In your classroom |
|---|---|---|
| Current arrangements: for third years in 2026/27, a minimum of one CBA, the school chooses one or two, and there is no Assessment Task | The 2018 guidelines still describe two CBAs followed by an Assessment Task; planning from that older design sets the wrong workload | Confirm with your department which third years do My Geography this year, since CBA 1 closed in May 2026, then build each class's calendar against this year's dates |
| This year's dates: second years complete CBA 1 between 19 October 2026 and 30 April 2027; third years complete CBA 2 by 9 April 2027 | SLAR and final descriptors are due by 19 May 2027 for second years and by 23 April 2027 for third years, and the SLAR meeting falls no more than a month after the CBA is completed | Our suggestion: agree the SLAR date with your colleagues first, then place the three weeks and your judging time before it in the CBA class planner (Word) |
| Three-week structured inquiry: both CBAs run through the key geographical questions and the elements over three weeks | A CBA is completed within the time its guidelines allocate, three weeks for each geography CBA | Agree the event or aspect in Week 1, research or gather data across the middle, and present responses at the end of Week 3 |
Next you will run Geography in the News in detail: choosing the event, the key geographical questions, sources beyond the first, formats, and pairs and groups.
Enrol to take the whole course. Your work is saved as you go, and you get a certificate when you finish.