Ar Aghaidh Leat by Dr Yvonne Fahy

Hi everyone,

I recently received Ar Aghaidh Leat and other Irish resources , including wall charts and flash cards to review from 4Schools.

Ar Aghaidh Leat is a bilingual reference book designed for teachers in primary schools or parents supporting their child in developing the Irish language in the home. It provides a compilation of vocabulary, grammar, comprehension, writing and presentation skills to support the delivery of the Primary Language Curriculum.  It was developed by an experienced primary school teacher with the aim of enabling teachers to plan Irish lessons that reflect the diversity of their students’ language experience.

Ar Aghaidh Leat aims to consolidate aspects of the three strands of the New Primary Language Curriculum.

Ar Aghaidh Leat is a sizeable book at 514 pages long, it’s something I feel I will use throughout my teaching career when teaching in mainstream, and one which can be used with any class level which is a huge selling point for me. It is a diverse resource which could be used for any class and for any lesson. I will admit that Irish is probably my least favourite subject to teach! I was always on the lookout for resources to support me in teaching and planning for Irish, especially when the new curriculum came out, when I was in mainstream.

All your Irish planning could essentially be based on this book if needed. That’s why I happily agreed to review this book once I had a good look through it. It’s created by a teacher with over fifteen years experience. Real teachers on the ground so to speak, just get it, they know exactly what is needed in the Irish primary classroom. The book includes all the grammar concepts we need to cover, and has a really helpful vocabulary section at the start of each chapter. It has everything you could ever need for teaching Irish!

One thing I worried about when receiving this book was the price, when I saw the size of it and how valuable it was , I thought it would be really expensive. I couldn’t believe it when I saw it priced at under €30! I think it’s such good value . It must have taken so long and so much work putting it together. A huge well done to Dr Yvonne Fahy for creating this resource.

You can also buy Irish wall charts, which have important times in Irish history, presidents of Ireland, etc on them. You can also buy grammar posters.

I really love the bilingual flash cards though! I’ll share photos here. I know from making my own resources how expensive it is to make resources ink wise etc so I think these are actually great value for the quality of them and for all you get. The flash cards include all the themes for Irish, including spring, summer, autum, winter, Christmas, Easter, Halloween, the doctors, at home, the vet, shopping and St Patrick’s Day. You could actually use these in Irish or English as they are bilingual. They would be perfect for aistear too!

I’ll attach a link here if you’d like to have a look! https://4schools.examcraftgroup.ie/product/ar-aghaidh-leat