Here's a quick introduction to the course — about a minute and a half on what it covers and how it works. It's worth a watch before you begin.
LCW arrived in Irish post-primary schools in September 2026 under the Senior Cycle Redevelopment, so it is new to everyone who teaches it. This first lesson gives you a working map of the specification so everything that follows has somewhere solid to stand.
You will be able to name the two modules, the four strands, the four Applied Learning Tasks, the experiential learning cycle, and the 60/40 assessment shape. You will also open your Professional Learning Portfolio, the through-line of this course. It is a text workspace built into this platform: you write, save and submit entries directly here, your tutor adds commentary on the pieces you submit, and you download the compiled portfolio when you finish.
By the end of today you will have your first Professional Learning Portfolio entry: a plain-language map of the LCW architecture in your own words. Later lessons introduce each additional portfolio artefact (a baseline confidence audit, a portfolio plan, a placement plan, a two-year year plan and more) at the point you need it, so there is nothing else to prepare now.
Work through this slideshow at your own pace.
Treat the specification as a map you return to across the whole course, not a document to memorise in one sitting.
Watch this presentation for the context behind the specification: where LCW comes from, what carries over from LCVP, what is genuinely new, and how the subject sits in a student's timetable. This is the framing you will draw on when colleagues, students and parents start asking what LCW actually is.
Why LCW, and Why Now
How this runs: everything you need for this task is in the table below, so it works on its own without anything having to load. The full Coding Ireland LCW student course is also linked from the activity panel if you want to browse more widely afterwards, but that is optional.
Below is one representative lesson from each of the four strands, with its Participating activity named. Read across the four rows to see how the architecture you mapped earlier plays out at lesson level, then answer the three questions and keep your notes.
| Strand | Sample lesson | Participating activity | ALT the strand builds toward |
|---|---|---|---|
| 1.1 Understanding Myself (Fifth Year) | Clarifying what I value | A values card-sort: students choose and rank what matters most to them | ALT 1: Personal Statement |
| 1.2 Understanding my Progression Opportunities (Fifth Year) | Mapping my routes | Students investigate three real routes (an apprenticeship, a PLC course, a degree) using current published entry information | ALT 2: Career Progression Plan |
| 2.1 Appreciating my Community (Sixth Year) | Reading my community | Students map the assets and needs of their local community on a shared wall | ALT 3: Reflection on the Collaborative Problem-Solving Task |
| 2.2 Engaging with the Workplace (Sixth Year) | The work-experience placement | Students complete a placement day and gather feedback from the workplace | ALT 4: Plan Responding to Workplace Feedback |
Hold these three questions in mind and jot a quick note against each:
- Looking across the four rows, where does each ALT sit, and which single ALT carries a collaborative input?
- Which strand contains the work-experience placement lesson?
- Pick one row and describe in a sentence how its Participating activity connects to the ALT that strand is building toward.
These notes are the reference sequencing you will return to when you build your own two-year year arc later in this module. You can deliver LCW with your own materials; this is one worked example of how the architecture can be sequenced.
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