Leading Little Linguists
Development of a cross-phase school partnership
St. Patrick's Academy, Edendork Primary & St. Patrick's Primary, in Dungannon, were chosen. The post-primary school is leading the project with two feeder primary schools- one urban and one rural. The aim is to research a practical way forward for modern languages education and the whole school issues of internationalisation and leadership of transition from Key Stage 2 to 3.
HOW WILL SCHOOLS BENEFIT?
- Introduce or enhance a modern language from Primary 5 to Primary 7
- Develop in-house capacity to delivery a language at primary level
- Develop more meaningful relationships with local schools, NICILT and Queen's University Belfast
- Contribute to taught sessions on the PGCE in Modern Languages
- Develop post-primary pupils as language leaders
- Become a model of good practice, contributing to research and policy in the field of primary languages
- Contribute to the literacy and numeracy strands of the post-primary PGCE programme at Queen's University Belfast
- Develop the skills of teachers to co-author an academic paper for submission to a peer-reviewed journal in education.
KEY MILESTONES
2016 – 2017: initial meeting of project team; development of primary teacher capacity to teach primary languages; requisition of resources; initial research with pupils as part of a Children’s Research Advisory Group; begin teaching language in term 2 to P5; identify post-primary language leaders; opportunities for teachers to contribute to QUB PGCE.
2017 - 2018: continue to develop primary teacher capacity; teach primary languages in P5 and P6; begin work on a co-authored research paper about study; consolidate post-primary language leaders; share good practice at a regional conference.
2018 - 2019: teach primary languages across KS2 (P5 to P7); evaluate programme; consider transition to post-primary education; plan for the future; submit research grant applications to external funders to further develop project.
The project is now finished. Information about the evaluation report will be published here soon.