PPLI Primary Guidelines REVISED EDITION - Flipbook - Page 41
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Language and Languages in the Primary School Some guidelines for teachers by David Little and Déirdre Kirwan
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
HL. 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 HL is a good way of fostering their listening skills
and encouraging them to find connections between words and phrases in different languages. Pupils’ work can be
displayed on the wall and children are asked to identify the word for bread in the various languages (Figure 23 and
24).
Figure 23: Lesson in Irish on how
to make a sandwich; procedure
translated into HL (Igbo) for
homework
Figure 24: Lesson in Irish on how to
make a sandwich; procedure
translated into HL (Illongo) for
homework
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