Teaching Irish to the Junior Classes

Hello everyone,
As promised, here is a post on teaching Irish in the junior classes. As I may have mentioned before, Irish is my favourite subject to teach. Here’s a few ideas/pointers I have picked up from watching my sister teach Irish, from teaching practice and from teacher resource books. Word of advice, Sin E resource books have whole lessons planned Monday-Friday, which if you change up a bit you could easily use throughout TP. Maybe ask the teacher for her log in details for Folens/CJ Fallon on-line and you can access the books that way. It’s great for giving structure to the lessons.

  1. Start with a game- the small ones love Deir O’Ghradaigh or Cluiche Kim.
  2. Use lots of oral language at the beginning of the lesson, the weather is a good place to start. e.g. ‘Cén sort lá atá ann inniu? An bhfuil sé fliuch, gaofar agus mar sin de.
  3. Use a chart, the whiteboard or flashcards to illustrate the weather terms for the children who are unsure.
  4. Use puppets for oral language in Irish! Pretend the puppet cannot speak English and can only communicate via Irish. 
  5. Use the on-line posters on the aforementioned website ( which require a log in). One could do a whole lesson based on a poster. Talk about the colours in the poster, what the people are wearing, how many people are in the poster etc. Always relate the poster to the current theme in irish of course.
  6. Always try do one song or action poem in Irish, like ‘head.shoulder, knees and toes’. I posted a link on my facebook page a while back which has loads of songs and poems on lovely colourful power-points.
  7. Introduce the new vocabulary in a really fun way for the children, for example use a ‘magic box’.
  8. Eist agus tarraing= listen and colour activities. E.g. a picture of a dog. ‘Cuir sron ar an madra’.
  9. If you are learning about Bia, for example, call one child up and give him/her an apple. Then get the children used to the phrase ‘Tá — ar Sean’. This will help with basic sentence structure.
  10. I found these two games on Education Posts and I can’t wait to try them when subbing:
    Colour Game – Cut up coloured card and make a set of little cards for each child.  Have  a race with the children “Taispeain dom dearg/bui etc. 
    Vocab Race – When doing theme of “Bia” I had various items in a hulahoop on floor and picked two children to come out an race.  I would say “faigh ull” etc. 
    And not to forget, the good old ‘Cad ata sa mhala’!.

http://www.neelb.org.uk/teachers/cass/languages/resources/irish-language-resources/?assetdet124=10086&categoryesctl47634=1402

Hope this helps! Comment below if you need tips for any other subjects.
Valerie

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3 Comments

  1. Hi Valerie, thanks for the great ideas! I’ve been scrolling through your FB page for the link to the irish songs you mentioned above. I can’t seem to find it. Can you remember the date you posted it? Thanks 🙂

  2. Hey Valerie, I see you’re trying to create a photo story for different themes. At the moment I’m trying to create one for 2nd class with an aimsir as the theme…I really need some inspiration as right now I cant think of what to do. Any tips would be much appreciated 🙂

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