PPLI Primary Guidelines - Flipbook - Page 32
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Language and Languages in the Primary School Some guidelines for teachers by David Little and Déirdre Kirwan
A class diary
One way of giving the whole class ownership of texts in two or more languages is to keep a class diary in a hardback
A4 notebook. Each day a different pupil takes the diary home. Excused other homework, the pupil writes on a topic of
her choice in English and Irish/home language – what she ate for dinner, how she spent the evening, whether or not
her family had visitors, and so on. The next morning, she reads what she has written in the diary to her classmates.
Keeping a class diary in this way has proved to be among pupils’ favourite activities, and it engages parents in their
children’s learning – it has stimulated some Irish parents to begin re-learning the Irish language so that they can help
their children with their diary entries.
Texts in three languages
Sooner or later EAL pupils begin to produce parallel texts in English, Irish and their home language. At this stage it is a
good idea to encourage pupils not always to begin with the same language so that they learn how to move freely
among the languages in their repertoire. In Third and Fourth Class, it is not unusual for pupils to produce parallel texts
that run to several pages.
Not to be outdone by their EAL peers, some Irish pupils may produce text in English, Irish and a language that is not
taught at school – an older sister may be learning Spanish at secondary school or a neighbour may be a native speaker
of Italian. It is important to recognize that with appropriate help pupils can produce well-formed text in a language of
which they know little besides the text they have written. Even if they have no further contact with the language,
performing such a task is a worthwhile learning experience, to be set beside the learning of fragments of EAL pupils’
home languages when playing in the school yard.
Preparing to write in two or three languages
Pupils should be encouraged to collect information on the topic or person they want to write about and to compile
their own word lists in English, Irish and their home language. If this becomes a normal part of the way they work, they
will gradually accumulate a personal multilingual dictionary that reflects their language development as well as their
interests. Especially in the senior school, some pupils get interested in a language that is far from their experience and
certainly not taught at school – Korean, for example – and use the internet to add to their multilingual word lists.
Especially when it is pursued autonomously, interest in a language far removed from the pupil’s experience may not
seem to lead anywhere, but it is evidence of the pupil’s reflective engagement with language and certainly coincides
with the purposes of the Primary Language Curriculum.
Functional writing
Writing that describes familiar procedures, like how to make a sandwich or how to bake a cake, gives further scope for
trilingual work. For example, an Irish lesson may focus on the successive steps in making a sandwich, captured by the
teacher on the whiteboard and written by the pupils in their copybooks. The pupils then translate the Irish text into
English for homework. In a multilingual classroom, EAL pupils are also encouraged to translate the Irish text into their
home language. The next day, pupils read their work aloud to their classmates. Like all other multilingual activities,
functional writing presents opportunities to develop pupils’ language awareness. For example, whatever the content
of the sandwich, the word for bread is sure to be used at least once, in the same part of the procedure. Asking pupils
to identify the word for bread when the steps are being read aloud in an EAL pupil’s home language is a good way of
fostering their listening skills and encouraging them to find connections between words and phrases in different
languages.
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