Inspiration
for
SingFónaic

Where did I get the idea and inspiration for SingFónaic? I was teaching Third Class for a couple of years in a national school. I noticed that most of the pupils were unable to pronounce the common Irish sounds correctly i.e. ‘th’, ‘ch’, ‘sh’ agus ‘bh’.

The students were drawing on their English phonics store rather than on their Irish phonics store when they attempted to decode Irish words. The Department of Education published a new Primary Language Curriculum in 2015 for Junior Infants up to Second Class and a revised edition for all class levels in 2019. The new language curriculum focuses on phonics instruction and the teaching of phonological awareness to primary school children from the infants classes upwards.

I contacted the County Meath Local Enterprise team. They recommended we pilot SingFónaic with three national schools. Click here to learn more about the pilot study from 2019.

I decided to create an Irish phonics programme that is aligned with the new Primary Language Curriculum. One of the main aims of the SingFónaic team is that the children will learn the Irish alphabet and the Irish sounds through characters such as Bobaí Broc, rhymes, songs, poems, phonics levels, games and ebooks.



The SingFónaic team understand that fun is an integral part of any educational programme for children. We have designed fun and interactive games based on the fun characters and on the phonics levels.

There is no doubt that SingFónaic will be successful and that childrens’ reading, writing and conversational skills will progress and develop.

SingFónaic abú!