Article Details

Article Details

Going beyond GLPS

Author: Richard Hill, South Ayrshire Council, on behalf of GLEANS

Lockdown brought negative challenges to language learning, but reaction to this has brought about a new series of positive challenges for Gaelic Learners Education (GLE), devised in partnership with Highland, Fife and South Ayrshire Councils.

Initially a cross-authority project for Languages Week Scotland, this is now being developed into a network for practitioners delivering Gaelic in education.

The first project challenged pupils to record a short phrase introducing themselves and sharing their favourite colour, which was posted on Twitter at #myschoollovesgaelic. We had such a great response from all ages (nursery to P7) that the organisers, Ruairidh Mackay (Highland), Suzanne Jackson (Fife) and Richard Hill (South Ayrshire), have developed further challenges and formed a new network GLEANS (Gaelic Learners Authority Network Scotland).

Gleans is a Gaelic word meaning ‘shine’ and that is what we want our Gaelic language learners to do, with our help as teachers and development officers.

An MS-Teams meeting was held in March, with teachers contacted through the current GLPS network to chat, get to know each other and to launch the next GLEANS challenge, which has gone ‘live’ for the month of May. A rewards scheme for participating classes and schools was also outlined.

This network is in its infancy but has great potential to scaffold GLE and give support by sharing resources and good practice. We would like to encourage anyone involved in GLE to join in the challenges and to build the network.

A website has been created and we hope, over time, to have shared resources and all our challenges available; there is also an MS-Teams to which interested teachers can be added. It is hoped that we could schedule a couple of meetings throughout the year to discuss our Gaelic journeys and share ideas.

Access the website

For more information about Gaelic Education in general, visit Bòrd na Gàidhlig’s website.

University of Strathclyde Education Scotland British Council Scotland The Scottish Government
SCILT - Scotlands National centre for Languages