LÉIM Project: CLIL-PE through Irish Intervention Celebration Day at the Mardyke Arena

6 Jan 2026

As part of our commitment to deepen community engagement under Barr na gCnoc — the partnership connecting our teaching and research efforts to local schools — the School of Education at University College Cork welcomed over 100 primary pupils to the Mardyke arena at the beginning of December 2025 to showcase their new use of Irish developed in tandem with fundamental movement skill development in physical education.

Building on the momentum of last year’s 5th-class Gaeilge Stretch programme, this new initiative targets 6th-class pupils across three local primary schools. In collaboration with our primary-school teachers and pupils, the project aims to weave Irish into PE lessons, not as a separate subject, but as the language of learning and doing. The project team — Dr Craig Neville, Dr Conor Philpott, Dr Diarmuid Lester, Hilary Ní Chonchubhair, and Tomás Dowling — are investigating the potential of Irish to serve as a medium for learning content, movement, and interaction.

At its core is a Content and Language Integrated Learning (CLIL) approach: by teaching PE through Irish, the intervention offers children opportunities to practise movement skills while using Irish in authentic and meaningful contexts. Rather than confining Irish to language learning alone, this model encourages children to communicate, move, and learn through Irish.

The initiative began with a one-day training session at Na Piarsaigh GAA Club where participating teachers experienced the lessons as their students would (see https://www.ucc.ie/en/education/schoolnews/teaching-pe-through-irish-ucc-project-champions-pe-through-irish-in-local-deis-schools.html). Following this, teachers returned to their classrooms to deliver CLIL-PE to their pupils. The carefully co-designed games and activities blend fundamental movement skills with key Irish terms — making the use of Irish natural, enjoyable, and purposeful. A copy of this new resource can be downloaded here:.

The project culminated in a celebration day at UCC’s Mardyke Arena, where participating schools came together to showcase their Irish language and physical skills, all ably facilitated by our 3rd year B.Ed Physical Education, Sports Studies, and Arts students, who are studying Irish as their additional subject.. Early research from teachers and learners shows that the intervention helped generated improved attitudes to Irish when the learning of the language is incentivised through gameplay.

The project team are extremely grateful to the teachers who engaged in the project so positively from the outset and for the pupils who were so willing to give PE through Irish a try. We would also like to thank the Mardyke Arena for providing us with the venue for our celebration day, our colleagues in UCC Sport for providing gifts for our visiting school pupils, and Darren O'Mahony (Dare Media Productions) for the photography and videography on the day.