Anyone with teens in a Gaelcholaiste?

[OuiOuiKitty]

A bit of a weird questiom but do your children have textbooks? I have 2 teens in a Gaelcholaiste and they learn exclusively from power points and I'm wondering if this is normal? Ds was fine learning this way but dd is struggling a little bit. I pay €120 a year to the school for 'textbook rental' so I'm a bit about the fact they don't get any. Are textbooks even available as gaelige so I can buy them myself?

How bizarre. Are they doing novels, poetry etc? There must be physical copies of the same surely. The Leaving Cert book An Dtuigeann Tú as used in English medium schools might help. Even uni students doing Irish would keep hold of it like a security blanket. Been a few years ....it may be called something else now.

Thanks for your reply. They do novels, in fact I've just been asked to buy one for dd but they don't have a history textbook or a fench textbook etc. Dd is in 2nd year and ds is in TY so we haven't gotten to the leaving cert curricular yet. Ds is fine and did very well in his JC exams but dd is chaotic and could really do with a book to refer to.

Oh Tuigim anois. Perhaps they should be writing text books on French , German , history, geography etc - instead of translating mounds of documents we don't even read as Béarla!

Hi, Op,

I'd call them out on that rental fee if you dont think it matches what they are getting in terms of books.

I would feel adrift without textbooks tbh, as am dinosaur. In fact, I've just ordered a pre loved (or pre despised!) copy of An dtuigeann tu? on Ebay for a third of the price. Treated myself for an Nollaig. Thanks for the recommendation there Abhannmor.

(I need to get aligned to how it is taught in schools as Duolingo only goes so far and am hoping to get on a Gaeltacht course next year and not be floundering.)

Tbh it would concern me that a teacher and powerpoint are the sole sources for learning. You/dc need something tangible to refer to when they are not available.

I would find it hard to believe there is not an as gaelige history text book for schools. Maybe you could ask the teacher and source one yourself if you feel dd needs extra back up.

As for French, Duolingo is much better here than Irish/As gaelige on Duolingo. It's way more fun and has characters and stories. So that could be back up to a degree, tho is online still.

Good Luck with this.

Just thought, maybe you could call up a book shop, say An Siopa Leabhair and ask what the curriculum texts are for those subjects for teens/Leaving Certs.

An Siopa Leabhar is a good plan. I'm on Duolingo Irish. It does seem to be a bit stuck? The audio is sometimes a bit 'muddy'.
PowerPoint presentations are great but I always think of them a a supplement to books - a great revision aid. Books are not an optional extra in my opinion.

Thanks for the replies. Their parent teacher meeting is next week so I just wanted some clarity on whether or not this is the norm before I raise the issue. Between the lack of books and the lack of teachers(she has up to 6 free classes a day due to teacher shortages) I'm not really sure if the school can offer dd what she needs going forward but changing schools is a massive thing for a 14yr old Ds is absolutely thriving there so I never anticipated dd having such big problems.

Why such a big difference in their respective experience though @OuiOuiKitty ? It does sound quite unsatisfactory tbh.

It sounds like those fourteen year olds are teaching themselves.
Is there a shortage of supply teachers too?
Good job there's a meeting coming up.
Might be an idea to ask the other parents in this year group for their impressions as it's a really important age in terms of being more focused and for getting with the programme.

The teacher issues have only just come up this year, 3 teachers went on mat leave, others left and none have been replaced and there has been no sign of substitute teachers. For example Dd went from getting 89% in her business studies exam last summer to getting 43% in exams they just did, I don't think that it is a coincidence that they haven't had a teacher since theirs went on mat leave in mid-September, one of the other teachers has very occasionally been giving them lessons but it is rare. Feeling like she is failing is then affecting her confidence and it all feels like a bit of a rotten cycle. The teacher shortage doesn't really affect ds because he is in TY. Ds is autistic and the small class sizes and quietness of the gaelcholaiste suit him, he is very fastidious. Dd is more chaotic, she is struggling to find the info she needs in amongst all of the power points, struggling to keep her focus with everything being on the laptop and just seems very lost tbh. I don't know what the answer is but I feel like at least having a book she can refer to rather than having to search through everything and find the right PowerPoint on her laptop would be a good start, maybe I am grasping at straws though.

It's definitely worth a try though @OuiOuiKitty . Do you know anyone who does Irish grinds? They might have more info on resources.

I'm so sorry this is happening Op.
The colaiste really needs to step up big time.
It's great that your daughter has such a supportive parent and you're trying to help here.
Let us know how you get on.

Good advice

@OuiOuiKitty that sounds very strange. Our kids went through primary and secondary in Irish speaking school. DH and I are English (but I'd spent some years in Ireland as a child, did Irish in school, and was actually very good at it at the time).

ALL of the text books were available in Irish (at least for the subjects our kids did for Leaving Cert). We helped the kids with Maths and Chemistry, and since DH has ZERO Irish language ability, then we purchased those books in English as well. We also had both Irish and English versions of exam papers.

Please make sure you have both the English and Irish language text books. Having went through the school system our kids are all very fluent Irish speakers, but we needed to support for both higher level Maths and Chemistry, the only way we could do this was having both the English and Irish text books.

One other observation is that some kids and teachers do not use the full text book much. They work on a summary of key points, selected with likely exam questions in mind and are focused on that (rather than a deep "understanding" the topics as a whole, i.e., sam experience I had with school in England).

Memory triggered, slightly off topic - My sons memorised chunks of material about 2 topics that were a dead cert to come up in the oral exam. The Recession and the election of the first block POTUS. Alas it backfired.

'She kept interrupting with short, boring questions ' said one , 'like what I had for breakfast!' He scraped through with honours though. Examiners are obviously wise to these stratagems now.

There are textbooks in Irish for most subjects. The history one in my DCs school is a privately published one, something O’Ceilleachair, but the rest were fairly easily available, through normal school book shops. This is another website that we got books from https://www.cogg.ie/

I did find that in a small no. of subjects, teachers did basically create their own class text book - bound - so I suppose a bit like the PowerPoint approach. Could you print off the PowerPoints and bind them, so there’s a physical ‘book’ to help your DD.

Our Gaelcholáiste has the booklists on their website, for each year. I’m sure lots do, so maybe you could check out a few schools lists and see books by subject that you could order. Also adverts.ie etc often have second hand ones, once you have the name.