The act of listening is perhaps the most underrated skill there is in education. Right now teachers are multi-tasking: teaching, preparing engaging online resources and activities, checking in with their students and families.
Category: Courses
Courses for children with Spanish background
Instituto Cervantes is the largest international Spanish teaching organization in the world, established by the Spanish government to teach the Spanish language around the globe and to promote the Spanish and Latin American culture.
In September, weekly children and teenager courses will commence and will take place on Saturday mornings and afternoons in the Instituto Cervantes in Dublin, in Lincoln Place, just between Trinity College and the National Gallery. Enrolment is now open.
Instituto Cervantes offers courses full of fun for children and teenagers with Spanish background, from pre-school to secondary school. Participants will enjoy while improving their spoken and written Spanish in a friendly atmosphere where everyone can gain a new experience different from their daily activities.
These courses are designed to meet the creative learning needs of kids. Games, songs, multimedia, arts & crafts, science workshops, visits to the library, projects… will encourage children and teenagers to improve their oral and written communication skills. In these courses, the kids not only learn about the language but also about Spain and Latin America.
The teachers hold advanced degrees and are experienced professionals in child education.
To know more about our courses and timetables, as well as other activities organized by Instituto Cervantes in Dublin, please visit: www.dublin.cervantes.es
New half day course for parents of bilingual children in Malahide
Do you have a bilingual child and many questions? Do you want to find out how to best support the home language alongside English? Are you a parent of a child in an Irish speaking setting? Then this course is definitely for you!
Dr Francesca La Morgia, researcher in child language acquisition and Karina Pereira, speech and language therapist with expertise in bilingualism will lead a practical course for families in Malahide on 18th May. This unique half-day course equips parents with the knowledge and skills they need to support the successful development of two or more languages in their children. The class is ideal for expectant families and for parents of children under the age of 6. Through small group discussions and exercises with videos and worksheets, parents will learn about bilingualism/multilingualism, how to overcome difficulties and how to support the development of their child’s languages. The classes have a limited number of participants to allow time for discussion and questions.
Mother Tongues is a non for profit organisation. All proceeds from this course will go towards Mother Tongues’s activities in 2019/2020.
About the speakers
Dr Francesca La Morgia is assistant professor in Clinical Speech and Language Studies in Trinity College Dublin. She has been involved in research on child language acquisition since 2008 and she has published in international journals. After many years working in research and in the community, in 2017 Dr La Morgia founded Mother Tongues to share her knowledge and experience. Since then she has delivered courses on bilingualism all over Ireland to more than 1000 families.
Karina Pereira, speech and language therapist, graduated in speech-language disorders by University of Sao Paulo (Brazil), where she carried out research in child language disorders. She is currently working in Dublin with Brazilian families and their children through activities and workshops to promote bilingualism in Ireland. She also runs a project called “Brazil Clowning Project” that aims to connect children and the elderly through clowning, in a joyful and empathetic way.
You can click HERE to book the Malahide course via Eventbrite
You can’t make this class? Check out our last class before the Summer break HERE!
Summer Mandarin Chinese Immersion Camp is now enrolling!
12th to 16th August 2019 from 10:00-15:00 at NWETSS on Putland Road, Bray.
Chinese curriculum will be ready as a leaving certificate subject for beginners/5th-year pupils in Sept 2020 and pupils can take Chinese as a leaving cert subject in June 2022.
Each year, Dublin School of Mandarin Chinese designs a brand new theme based Summer Mandarin Immersion Camp to entertain the students and the theme for 2019 is learning all about the 16 indigenous tribes in Taiwan. We would be keeping the old tradition too as pupils love them – activities such as X factor, calligraphy, Chinese painting, Chinese culinary art, arts & crafts, outdoor games and sound mapping project.
Cost: €150 a week including fruits, snacks, water, lunch and all materials (10% sibling discount).
Heritage Languages in Post-Primary School
Cultivating the languages of the different communities living in Ireland is one of the goals of Languages Connect: Ireland’s Strategy for Foreign Languages in Education. Post-Primary Languages Ireland (PPLI) have put in place several supports for languages including Polish. Lithuanian and Russian. These supports are addressed to students in post-primary education both at Junior and Senior Cycle level.
Heritage Languages in Post-Primary School
A Junior Cycle Short Course for Lithuanian and Polish has been developed and schools who wish to incorporate this course in their programme of studies are supported by PPLI. These courses are already being taught in several schools.
Funding is also available to support students interested in sitting Lithuanian, Polish or Russian Leaving Certificate exams. Where there is a critical mass lessons funded by PPLI can be delivered in schools. PPLI also run Saturday classes in Dublin, Galway, and Limerick for Russian. Interested students can register on the PPLI website.
The NCCA are currently preparing a new specification for Leaving Certificate for Lithuanian, Polish, and Portuguese. This means that these languages will be offered as curricular languages for examination in 2022. Russian is already a curricular language.
For more information and queries on any of this initiatives please contact kenia.puig@languagesinitiative.ie
Transition Year is an opportunity for students to sample the world of work.
At the PPLI we encourage students to reflect on the role of languages, including heritage languages, at work – no matter where the work experience takes place.
We have developed a TY work experience activity pack to suit any workplace and any language. Also, It includes activities for heritage language speakers to reflect on the importance of heritage languages in the workplace.
The National Skills Strategy 2025 lists foreign languages and cultural awareness among the cross-sectoral skills which improve an individual’s employability and enable occupational mobility.
The PPLI TY activity pack ‘Working with languages’ will be available from September 2019. Contact kirsi.hanifin@languagesinitiative.ie for more information.
Summer camps
Under Ireland’s Strategy for Foreign Languages in Education Languages Connect funding is also currently being provided for a pilot scheme for heritage language summer camps. We are hoping to run summer camps for speakers of Polish, Lithuanian, Latvian and Romanian. The aim of these camps will be to offer post-primary students an opportunity to engage in different activities while maintaining and developing language skills in their home language. If you would like to organise a camp or would like more information on this initiative, see http://www.languagesinitiative.ie/news for more information.
Home language materials in our public libraries
PPLI is collaborating with the library services to develop a home language toolkit which libraries can use to access materials in different languages. This toolkit will also promote the importance and value of having a diversity of materials in our libraries.
PPLI carried out a survey among communities with home languages other than English and Irish to ask what kind of materials families are interested in accessing in libraries. While books are still considered the most important thing to have in libraries, 60% of those surveyed were interested in films as well. Comics, magazines and audiobooks are also something families would like to access.
Summer School on Cultural Diversity and Collaborative Practice
For the second year Create and Counterpoints Arts are delighted to offer the Summer School for up to 15 artists, held this year in mid-July in the West of Ireland.
The Summer School is open to artists from a Black, Asian or minority ethnic background, including members of the Traveller community, migrants, refugees and people in need of international protection, as well as artists with a collaborative practice who are working in or interested in questions of cultural diversity.
Find out more at http://create-ireland.ie/aic-residencies/2019-summer-school
Techniques to improve communication in the home language
Building on the success of our courses on bilingualism for parents, we have developed a new practical class for parents who want to practice some of the tips and techniques to promote the active use of their languages. The first class will take place on 17th April at 7:30 in the Outhouse, 105 Capel Street, Dublin 1.Parents will learn about strategies to encourage children to use home languages more regularly by using games, stories and other tools. We will show you games that promote adult-child interaction that suits toddlers, preschoolers and primary school children.
The course is aimed at parents of bilingual/plurilingual children, but it would also suit early childhood educators and teachers who have an interest in supporting parents in developing their children’s language skills in the home language.
Places on this course are limited. Book yours HERE
The course is FREE for Mother Tongues Members – To find out more visit https://mothertongues.
If you are a member and you want to book a place, please email Francesca at francesca@mothertongues.ie
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