Ms. Forde's Classroom: Gaeilge Station Teaching (how it works in my room)

Last year, we decided to try team teaching and station teaching for Gaeilge. I have to admit I was a bit skeptical as to how it would work especially at the independent stations but the benefits were more than I ever expected. These are just a few of the advantages I found:

-development of Oral Language skills, it gave the children a chance to USE the Gaeilge they already knew in a small group setting
-confidence boosting
-alternative from book (although I did base some stations on tasks similar to the book rather than totally reinventing the wheel!)
-amount of Gaeilge covered (I would never have covered the amount of material in one whole class lesson as I did at the stations)
-FUN for the children and teachers
-opportunity to work with small groups at their pace

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STRUCTURE

1 session per week on a Thursday (as children had opportunity to learn some of the language)
4 stations
10 minutes per station (manageable and they didn't get bored as time was short)
2 teachers (this year I will be doing it by myself but it is great if you have another teacher)

Click on the image below to download free station labels.

Content of Stations

This varied each week but I always linked the content to the theme we were covering. Here are some of the stations I alternated between:

Labhairt (at least one station every week)

This station changed every week. A few of the activities we did were:

rólimirt,

board games,

poster discussion,

dánta,

nuacht,

conversation flashcards

Scríbhneoireacht

Some weeks children would practice their litriú for their scrúdú on Friday, write about a picture, put verbs into sentences etc. I usually used the whiteboards at this station so time wasn't wasted ruling copies.

I also worked on sentence structure with the children at this station. Even the older classes find it challenging to follow the correct structure of an Irish sentence. We used lots of flashcards and worked on forming sentences together.

Gramadach

I found it a really effective way to teach some grammar points and reinforce grammar already taught such as tenses and prepositions.

Luaschártaí Briathra (Irish verb flashcards)

Éisteacht (usually alternate weeks)

Either using the éisteacht activities from the class book or reading instructions myself, I did éist agus tarrraing, éist agaus scríobh

Léitheoireacht

I often used texts from the book for this station as I didn't want to bombard my class with more and more texts-the book contains a large amount already.

ICT (usually alternate weeks)

This was a great independent station, unfortunately there aren't many high quality Gaeilge websites. Check out http://www.nicurriculum.org.uk/snas_ar_sceal/ which has some great interactive games.

Resources

Our school did invest a lot in resources for the Gaeilge Station teaching. Here are some of the resources the school purchased. Click on each image to be redirected to the website.