Background & Aim of the Project
The aim of this research was to support a collaborative Mathematics reasoning project involving a network of Irish-medium and English-medium schools. The project brought together six teachers who collaboratively planned (in person and online) and taught the same reasoning lesson across a range of school contexts. Three teachers delivered the lesson through Gaeilge in Irish-medium settings, including Gaelscoileanna in Crosmaglen and Mullingar, while three teachers delivered the lesson through English in schools in Cork, Sligo and Leitrim.
The digital artefact documents some of this professional learning journey, capturing the process of collaborative planning, classroom implementation, pupil discussion, mathematical reasoning tasks and teacher reflection.
The central aim of the project was to explore how Content and Language Integrated Learning can support pupils’ mathematical reasoning, while also extending the meaningful use of Gaeilge as a language of communication and instruction beyond discrete Gaeilge lessons. By teaching the same lesson across different linguistic and school contexts, teachers were able to compare pupil responses, consider the role of language in mathematical explanation, and identify effective supports such as visuals, sentence stems, teacher modelling, careful pre-teaching of key terminology and structured pupil talk.
The project also sought to build teacher confidence, strengthen professional collaboration across schools, and deepen our collective understanding of how pupils explain, justify and develop mathematical ideas through both Gaeilge and English.
Reflection
This project significantly deepened teachers’ understanding of the pedagogical principles underpinning Content and Language Integrated Learning. It highlighted that CLIL is much more than simply teaching a lesson through another language; it requires careful planning for both the subject content and the language needed to access, discuss and express that content.
As three teachers taught the mathematical reasoning lesson through Gaeilge and three taught the same lesson through English, we had a valuable opportunity to compare how pupils engaged with, discussed and explained the same mathematical ideas in different language contexts. This comparison helped teachers to recognise the importance of identifying both a clear content objective and a clear language objective when planning CLIL lessons.
One of the key findings from the Irish-medium lesson context was the importance of explicitly teaching and clarifying mathematical vocabulary before beginning the lesson. For example, some pupils initially misunderstood the word “cothrom” to mean “equals” rather than “fair”, which would have affected how they interpreted the reasoning task. This highlighted how even familiar words can carry different meanings depending on the mathematical or everyday context. As a result, key terminology had to be carefully explained, discussed and modelled before pupils could fully engage with the Mathematics lesson.
Pupils benefited greatly from carefully planned language supports in order to participate fully in the reasoning task. Sentence stems, teacher modelling, visual representations, partner talk, vocabulary clarification and repeated opportunities to explain their thinking all supported pupils in using Gaeilge as a genuine medium of communication and learning. Gaeilge was not approached as a separate language lesson, but as the language through which pupils explored mathematical ideas, justified their answers, listened to the reasoning of others and responded in a purposeful and meaningful context.
For teachers, the project demonstrated that CLIL can support both subject learning and language development when the language demands of a task are made explicit and appropriately scaffolded. It also reinforced the value of collaborative planning and professional reflection. By comparing the Irish-medium and English-medium lessons, the six teachers were able to identify how language, questioning, modelling, vocabulary development and scaffolding can strengthen pupils’ mathematical reasoning, confidence and ability to communicate their thinking.