Over the next few weeks I am going to be working on Irish verbs with the children. I know this is something that some of them are assuming will be very difficult so I will be posting helpful pages and links on the Irish Page of the class blog. But if they spend a little time each night on the pages I post they will probably find that they will be able to understand them quite quickly. this will help them in writing stories, etc in Irish, something we will be focussing on over the coming months.
I use a book called Briathra na Gaeilge. It’s a book I used myself in school and in fact all the way through college and have always found it especially helpful. I had been told it was recently updated but when I got it it seems the only thing that was updated was the cover. The verb pages simply didn’t need any updating. There is no need to go buying it as when I showed it to the children today many of them were asking about it. I will be posting information from it that they can access at home any time they like.
Much of the work the children will be doing at Secondary level is based around the use of verbs. If they can grasp the basic rules of these over the coming weeks and months it will make life a lot easier for them in the years to come so I am asking that as part of their homework each night they spend a little time learning the rules.
The verbs are broken into Regular and Irregular verbs. I will be using a mix of the two but will be starting with the Irregular Verb Bí (to be). There are 11 irregular verbs in total and they are often the most used. There is no easy way to do this other than to simply learn them as they would their tables in maths. The regular verbs have rules which, once learned, should help them to be able to write any verb in a variety of tenses. I will be focussing for the time being on the present, past and future tenses.
Please encourage them to look at these at home each night. I know I found Irish in secondary school difficult until I had a solid foundation in the verbs and the various tenses. Almost all sentences start with a verb and very often once the sentence has been started the rest follows. For the next few weeks I will be giving them sentences in class in one tense and asking them to translate this into another tense. This will also help build up their vocabulary so that they can begin writing more independently.
Any help or encouragement you can give them with this will be great but I understand that for many of you Irish is also a new language so if you are unsure of anything please feel free to send me in a note and I will do my best to help.
On the pages starting from tonight you will find an image of the verb for the next few days, I will also be adding a short video where I will read the verbs out as this may help some who might not have any Irish but will also be helpful if you can’t quite remember how to pronounce them.
A helpful website (even though its aimed at Secondary level) is available at
studycentral.weebly.com/irish/na-briathra-neamhrialta-irregular-verbs
I use a book called Briathra na Gaeilge. It’s a book I used myself in school and in fact all the way through college and have always found it especially helpful. I had been told it was recently updated but when I got it it seems the only thing that was updated was the cover. The verb pages simply didn’t need any updating. There is no need to go buying it as when I showed it to the children today many of them were asking about it. I will be posting information from it that they can access at home any time they like.
Much of the work the children will be doing at Secondary level is based around the use of verbs. If they can grasp the basic rules of these over the coming weeks and months it will make life a lot easier for them in the years to come so I am asking that as part of their homework each night they spend a little time learning the rules.
The verbs are broken into Regular and Irregular verbs. I will be using a mix of the two but will be starting with the Irregular Verb Bí (to be). There are 11 irregular verbs in total and they are often the most used. There is no easy way to do this other than to simply learn them as they would their tables in maths. The regular verbs have rules which, once learned, should help them to be able to write any verb in a variety of tenses. I will be focussing for the time being on the present, past and future tenses.
Please encourage them to look at these at home each night. I know I found Irish in secondary school difficult until I had a solid foundation in the verbs and the various tenses. Almost all sentences start with a verb and very often once the sentence has been started the rest follows. For the next few weeks I will be giving them sentences in class in one tense and asking them to translate this into another tense. This will also help build up their vocabulary so that they can begin writing more independently.
Any help or encouragement you can give them with this will be great but I understand that for many of you Irish is also a new language so if you are unsure of anything please feel free to send me in a note and I will do my best to help.
On the pages starting from tonight you will find an image of the verb for the next few days, I will also be adding a short video where I will read the verbs out as this may help some who might not have any Irish but will also be helpful if you can’t quite remember how to pronounce them.
A helpful website (even though its aimed at Secondary level) is available at
studycentral.weebly.com/irish/na-briathra-neamhrialta-irregular-verbs
Briathra Neamhrialta-Bí from Cormac Cahill on Vimeo.