Spotlight on Schools

Showcase nationally what your MFL Department is doing in your school.

Spotlight on Schools is an initiative that seeks to showcase the great work of MFL Departments and teachers from across Ireland. Every term we will publish a new spotlight item created by teachers for teachers. Each spotlight is laid out in a practical way to communicate to teachers what the initiative is, how it was set up, and the impact that it had. The rationale behind this initiative is to share good practice among the teaching community in a succinct way and to encourage MFL departments to learn from each other and to adapt some of the highlighted practice.

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If you think that you have something that you would like to share with the MFL teaching community in Ireland then please contact us Chang Zhang (chang.zhang@ppli.ie).

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NEW! Welcome to a Japanese World!

Ichiyo Shibata and Yumina Asakura, two foreign language assistants in Japanese, showcased their methods for organising and using Culture Box.
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Creating Authentic and Cross-Curricular Learning Experiences

Hee-Jung Lee, a Korean teacher at Ardscoil Rís, demonstrates her approach to creating authentic and cross-curricular learning experiences in a Transition Year.
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Let’s Speak Ukrainian

Áine O’ Donnell and Pearl Heneghan, teachers at Summerhill College, Sligo, demonstrate a whole school approach to welcoming Ukrainian students to the school community.
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A Treasure Hunt as a Whole-School, Awareness-Raising Activity

Tiantian Wu, a teacher at Kishoge Community College in Dublin, adopts a whole-school approach to raise the awareness of the presence and learning of Mandarin Chinese as a foreign language.
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Differentiation and Inclusion in the MFL Classroom

Joanna Lydzinska-Boldbaatar, teacher at Merlin College in Galway, aims to tackle differentiation and inclusion in the MFL Classroom by creating meaningful class activities for language learners from different backgrounds: heritage and ab initio.
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Tackling Educational Disadvantage and Promoting Inclusion

Kristina Jankaitiene, a teacher in Beech Hill College, aims to tackle educational disadvantage in languages by promoting inclusion through the celebration of culture, language, and heritage.
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Virtual Exchanges

This project showcases PDLS Bagenalstown’s Virtual Exchanges with schools in Cuxhaven and Kassel, Germany.
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Language Exchange on Borders

With this project, Language Exchange on Borders, the focus is on a language exchange between Irish students and native speakers, using debating and spoken language skills.
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Incorporating numeracy into the MFL classroom

In this project, Wanlin presents her activity in which students play with numbers in the target language and she discusses how this could promote numeracy.
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Using peer teaching in TY: MFL Lessons for 1st and 2nd Years

In this project, Catherine McAuliffe presents her TY project in which her students deliver short MFL lessons to first-and second-year students during a carousel activity and discusses the potential positive impacts on both student cohorts who take part.
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Pictograms in the MFL classroom: Using a visual stimulus

Dorota Polatyńska, a Polish teacher, describes how she uses visual stimulus cards to encourage students to use the target language and also to improve oral communicative competencies.
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Heritage Language Maintenance - Lithuanian Short Course

PPLI always emphasise the importance of heritage language maintenance. View a video on a Lithuanian Short Course.
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Peer and group reflection 'in the cloud'

Our spotlight on schools for this term looks at Peer and Group reflection ‘in the cloud’ practised by 2 MFL teachers in Limerick Educate Together Secondary School.
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Open Day Language Taster Activity

Languages taught in the school: Irish, Spanish, German, French, Mandarin, Italian & Polish
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Plurilingual School Environment

In this project, teacher Narell Byrne, aims to develop an inclusive and plurilingual school environment where all the languages spoken by the schoolcommunity are valued; show how the student’s mother tongue can support their learning; and to provide practical guidance and resources to support both teachers and students.
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