Oral language is our earliest form of communication, and it is essential as we use it daily to communicate our needs. Language is crucial to learning as it gives a child entry to a world of knowledge, unlocking the world of the imagination, reading, providing skills to write and helping us grow as individuals. However, without language, a word gap ensues and with children being away from the classroom for the past few months, the ‘word gap’ between some pupils, unfortunately, will have widened.  It is imperative to close this gap, but as teachers, how can we help prevent this early catastrophe? We can help by expanding children’s vocabulary. Through this Webinar, I aim to provide teachers with practical ideas on how to build and expand upon primary children’s vocabulary at this crucial time. It is based on my resource ‘Language for Living’, but all ideas are adaptable to all class levels, including EAL/ SEN without the resource.

Biography

Julieanne Devlin is a teaching deputy principal. She is currently teaching a multigrade classroom of 2^nd, 3^rd and 4^th classes. She qualified with a Bachelor of Education from St. Patrick’s College in 2002, a Postgraduate Diploma in Education from St. Patrick’s College in 2004 and a Master of Science from Dublin City University in 2007. She specializes in the area of oral language and vocabulary development. She has spoken internationally on the topic in addition to delivering CPD training and seminars in numerous Education Centres countrywide and talked about ‘closing the word gap’ at the IPPN Conference in Citywest January 2020. She also hosted a popular home-school blog throughout the pandemic with up to 2000 unique visitors per day. (www.julieannedevlin.com). Julieanne is the author of Language for Living (Tip of the Tongue), a whole school oral language and vocabulary development programme for primary schools which is being used throughout the UK and Ireland published by TTS Education in the UK. In recent years Julieanne has been working on developing Nibbler’s Aistear Adventures, the only full programme for Aistear developed, thus far, in Ireland and is published, designed and illustrated here in Ireland by www.eduhub.ie. Julieanne is passionate about teaching, the progress of her pupils and the resources she has created for other teachers and their classrooms.

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