BY DECLAN VARLEY
A Galway city national school has been backed by the School Excellence Fund to explore the role of storytelling in language enrichment in schools within linguistically diverse communities.
Scoil San Phroinsias, Tirellan, Headford Road, Galway has been successful in its application to this fund and will lead a very exciting and innovative project over the next three years. The title of the project is “The use of storytelling for language enrichment in early years’ service and primary schools within linguistically diverse communities.”
The School Excellence Fund-DEIS (SEF-DEIS ) is an innovation of the Department of Education and Skills which aims to support schools to address the gap in attainment between the most and least educationally disadvantaged children.
It allows schools to trial creative interventions with the intention that the learning from successful approaches will be shared across the school sector. Schools in this project are challenged to promote innovation by adopting new evidence-informed approaches to teaching, learning and assessment in classrooms .
The aims of the project are to promote and support literacy (including family literacy ) through promoting oral language and storytelling. It aims to introduce innovative teaching methods to enhance oral language skills and to introduce creative approaches to positive and meaningful integration of pupils with special education needs.
It also aims to create close relationships between early years’ service, DEIS schools and the lecturers from NUIG Speech and Language Department, who are among the world leading experts in the area of multilingual language acquisition. It is also envisaged that a community of practice be established over the 3 years of the project.
Tirellan NS will lead this project but there will be a cluster of educational settings involving other schools/pre-schools and NUIG. Scoil Bhríde, Shantalla, Sunny Meadows Pre-School, Headford Road and the NUIG Speech and Language Department will all be heavily involved in exploring how storytelling can support and enrich the learning experience in both the pre and Primary School settings.
Deputy Principal Pat Keane will lead the Cluster and will be supported by Matt O Connell from Scoil Bhríde, Shantalla and Elaine Keating in Sunny Meadows. Stasha Antonijevic-Elliott (NUIG Speech and Language Department ) will lead the Continuous Professional Development for all the teachers involved and she has been heavily involved over many years in supporting Scoil San Phroinsias in a range of initiatives and research.
The cluster is also fortunate that two members of the Department of Education (DE ) Inspectorate, Anne Fitzpatrick and Colm Ó Murchú, will provide advice and assistance to support the success of this project.
All the educational partners involved are very excited as this initiative will be rolled out in the classrooms in Tirellan NS, Sunny Meadows and Scoil Bhríde Shantalla starting in January 2021.
