Welcome to Teaching LCA English and Communications. This course is for post-primary teachers delivering, or preparing to deliver, the four-module course in the Vocational Preparation element that every Leaving Certificate Applied student takes across both years of the programme.
You may be an English specialist meeting this cohort for the first time, or an out-of-field teacher who inherited the modules. Either way, you are in the right place. The course assumes you can read, discuss and write about texts with a class. It does not assume an English degree, and it does not assume you have taught LCA before.
In this opening lesson you will meet the Lead Learner mindset for a room where many students have stopped reading by choice, write the first entry in your Professional Learning Portfolio, and complete a baseline confidence audit.
Watch this presentation for an honest framing of who teaches LCA English and Communications in Ireland, a brief preview of the five course parts ahead, and the Lead Learner mindset as it applies in a classroom where public error about a text has often been the students' whole experience of English.
This is the first entry in your Professional Learning Portfolio. The presentation modelled a half-formed response built on rather than corrected, and named three moments when you may retreat into reading at the class. Use that framing now, while the exchange and retreat moments are still warm, to look at opening minutes from a student's seat.
Complete this baseline self-efficacy survey before going further. Rate your current confidence honestly across the five areas this course develops. There are no right answers. Lower ratings simply help you see where the course can make the biggest difference. You will re-take the same five statements at the end of the course so distance travelled reads item by item.
Some items name structures you will meet in full later (the four subject modules, Key Assignments, the Communication Portfolio, written and oral credits). Rate your confidence as it stands today, even if the terms are new. A low score is useful information, not a judgement; it marks where the course will teach you most.
Carry these four moves into your next opening ten minutes. Your First Ten Minutes reflection already holds the concrete change; use this strip only as a quick check before you leave.
| Framework / Principle | Why it matters for your teaching | Classroom application |
|---|---|---|
| Lead Learner — model unfinished reading with the class | Unfinished thinking modelled by you is often the first signal that participation is safe | Pause on one hard sentence and say what you notice before anyone else speaks |
| Half-formed response — treat a partial answer as material | Revoicing and asking for evidence often produces the second sentence unprompted | Revoice "he's angry" and ask what in the text makes them say that, then wait |
| LCA ethos as asset — day-to-day pressure is lower here | The programme already buys room a high-stakes Leaving Certificate class may not | Keep high-stakes framing for named exam windows; use ordinary lessons for short spoken beats |
| Existing craft transfers — you are not starting from zero | Out-of-field and first-time LCA teachers already hold wait time, scaffolding and formative listening | Aim familiar moves at what a character wants rather than what a passage "means" |
Before you leave: in one sentence, name the Lead Learner move you will try first and which of the three retreat moments it counters. Keep that sentence with your First Ten Minutes reflection.
Next you will map the subject itself: four modules, seventeen Key Assignments, and twelve of the sixteen credits awarded externally.
Enrol to take the whole course. Your work is saved as you go, and you get a certificate when you finish.