PPLI Primary Guidelines REVISED EDITION - Flipbook - Page 3
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Language and Languages in the Primary School Some guidelines for teachers by David Little and Déirdre Kirwan
Executive summary
The first version of this document was conceived as a response to goal 2.E.2 of the Languages Connect implementation
plan: “Guidelines will be developed for teaching children whose home language is a language other than Irish or
English”. It argued that the needs of such children are best met by adopting the integrated approach to the teaching
of English and Irish recommended by the Primary Language Curriculum and by promoting the intercultural dimension
of language education (goal 2.E.3). This revised version of the document takes account of the addition of modern
foreign languages (MFL) to stages 3 and 4 of the primary curriculum.
Part I of the document is concerned with issues of general principle:
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The “plurilingual approach” to language education and its pedagogical implications
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Language development in the pre-school years
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The linguistic demands made by primary schooling
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An integrated approach to teaching Irish and English that includes immigrant languages in classroom
communication
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The intercultural dimension of primary education
Part II provides practical support for the implementation of a fully integrated approach to language education in
the primary classroom, dealing in turn with:
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The general pedagogical approach
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The supports that the school should provide
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Key elements of the approach
› Dialogic and exploratory classroom talk
› Encouraging autonomous learning
› Using plurilingual copybooks
› Developing awareness of language and language learning
› Developing pupils’ plurilingual literacy
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An explanation of how the approach can be implemented in the four stages of the primary curriculum
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