PPLI Primary Guidelines - Flipbook - Page 19
Language and Languages in the Primary School Some guidelines for teachers by David Little and Déirdre Kirwan
2.2
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What supports should the school provide?
A school language policy
The Primary Language Curriculum is a matter not just for the individual teacher but for the school as a whole. It is thus
important to develop a school language policy that is endorsed by the Board of Management, shared with parents,
and regularly reviewed and updated. We recommend that a language policy document should include:
•
a mission statement that acknowledges the central role played by language in education, accords equal status to
all languages present in the school, and emphasizes the importance of helping pupils to develop integrated
plurilingual repertoires;
•
a statement of guiding pedagogical principles similar to those at the beginning of section 2.1 and a summary of
their practical implications;
•
a commitment to regular review and (if necessary) revision in the light of experience and to accommodate changes
in the linguistic and cultural profile of the pupil cohort.
In this way, the language policy document provides an important reference point as a statement of the school’s
interpretation of the Primary Language Curriculum.
A well-stocked library
Reading plays a central role in children’s language development, so schools should provide them with a rich array of
age-appropriate books (fiction and non-fiction) in English but also in Irish and EAL pupils’ home languages. From an
early stage in their literacy development, pupils should have access to age-appropriate bilingual dictionaries in English
and Irish/home languages.
Affirmation – It is important that the principal and all staff members (including non-teaching staff ) show an interest
in pupils’ linguistic efforts and achievements: regular affirmation is empowering and motivating. Initiatives that involve
the whole school community are likely to have a greater impact than those undertaken by individual teachers without
support.
Documentation of language learning and use
All languages present in the school should be seen on the walls of classrooms and corridors and heard in readings,
recitations and performances of various kinds. We recommend that teachers maintain an archive of particularly
interesting pupil work – stories and poems, projects of all kinds, portfolios, vocabulary notebooks, personal dictionaries.
These can be drawn on for displays and exhibitions and used at staff meetings to inform discussion of school language
policy and its implementation. A well-maintained archive can also provide research data for teachers who undertake
postgraduate study. There are various ways of organizing a class archive – teachers will have their own preferences –
but it is motivating for pupils to be involved in the construction and maintenance of the archive, especially in senior
classes. Individual learning also benefits from documentation: there is a sense in which what pupils write in their
copybooks is their learning. Teachers may find that documentation of learning is easier to manage if pupils use different
copybooks for different aspects of their language work, e.g. homework and classwork in one copy, insights into
similarities and differences between languages in another, a personal multilingual dictionary in a third. Teachers have
also found it useful to keep their own log, recording classroom exchanges and pupil contributions of special interest
as well as words and phrases that they learn in EAL pupils’ home languages.
Delivering
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