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“Travelling” across Europe (Writing a report)

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  Based on Unit 1 –Lesson 1 –Our multicultural class, my 6th grade students wrote reports for nine different European countries.(you can find the lesson plan here).

It was no easy task since they had to work in teams, search for information and decide which of the information would impress their classmates.

After they had written their reports they were asked  to prepare a presentation using Google Docs presentations. Our ICT teacher Mrs Agathi Dova helped the students learn how  to use the tool. The students had to choose the right pictures to accompany their reports .They worked at school during  ICT lesson while some of them chose to work at home as well using their own computer.

In the process, I had the chance to monitor their work through my drive and even write notes with suggestions or corrections under their slides.

Finally each group shared their work with the other teams and had the chance to comment and evaluate the work of their classmates in our padlet.Below you can see their report

 

 

 

5th grade – Unit 1 -Lessson 3- The United Kingdom

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I thought it would be a good idea to adapt the specific text,so that it can be read more easily by my students.It is especially adapted to suit the needs of students with learning disabilities, but it also helps the rest of the students understand the content as well as the vocabulary better.It is accompanied by pictures as well as the text fragmented so as to make presentation for the teachers and comprehension for the students easier.I hope you will find it useful.

 

6th Grade -Unit 1 – Lesson 1- Reading text (with hyperlinks)

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Unit 1 – Our multicultural class                       

                    Lesson 1 – Meeting the Newcomers

                             

(Adapted  Reading text with hyperlinks taken from
(http://ebooks.edu.gr/modules/ebook/show.php/DSDIM-F101/441/2922,11590/)

 

Read the text and click on the red words to learn more about these countries

 

Ukraine

I come from Ukraine, the second largest country in Europe. It is between Poland and Moldavia in the west and Russia in the east. I don’t come from the capital Kiev. My hometown is Odessa, on the coast of the Black Sea. Ukraine has got large plains but also high mountains, such as the Carpathians. The River Dnipo flows across the country splitting it in two parts.

In winter the weather gets very cold. Summers are warm across the greater part of the country and cool along the Black Sea, so we spend much more time outdoors.

A nuclear power plant accident in Chernobyl, in 1986, is still causing serious environmental problems which worry Ukrainian people. Today we don’t have enough drinking water supplies because of that accident.

Despite these problems, I believe Ukraine is a beautiful country with outgoing and brave people. I love it very much.

Sasha

 

  

Albania

Albania, the ancient Illyria, is where I come from. My hometown is Tirana, the capital of Albania. Albania shares borders with Serbia, Montenegro and Greece. On the west, it is bordering the Andriatic Sea  and the Ionian Sea.

The beaches are beautiful and during the hot, dry summers we swim in the clear sea, but in winter the temperature usually drops and it often rains heavily, so there are a lot of forests. We often have problems with natural disasters, such as earthquakes or tsunamis that happen along the South coast.

Mother Teresa , the popular nun and humanitarian Nobel Prize winner, is of Albanian origin.

My country is not very rich and our parents sometimes go to other countries, such as Italy, France or Greece, and work there. However, we miss our homeland.

Christina

     

 

Georgia

Do you remember the ancient Colchis and the myth of Jason and the Golden Fleece? That is where I come from, Georgia! It is in the West Asia, bordering the Black Sea, which the Greeks called Pontus Euxinos, Turkey and Russia. The temperature is mild and it is usually sunny and warm. The country is mountainous, but along the coast we grow vines, tea and citrus fruit. In this area the temperature rarely drops below zero. Many people work in copper and coal mines, or in oil wells. Others sometimes leave their hometown to find work. My uncle works in T’blisi, the capital of Georgia.

Georgi

 

 

Using the school website

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Using the school website to offer some extra digital material for my students has been on my mind since last year when I participated in Andriani Rigoutsou’s  project on Flipped Classroom.I was also influenced by Vivi Hamilou and her excellent work in her blog and by a recent seminar we had with Mrs Kotadaki about dyslexia.

 I have been thinking that it would be nice if I could provide my students with additional practice on the various vocabulary and grammatical patterns presented in the coursebooks.I also thought it would be nice to combine it with padlet platform in order to publish certain project work that my students create.

So I have started adding material  for each class in the school website, where students and parents have easy access to.

The material is available for my students for revision or further practice at home .It is designed in accordance to their coursebooks and is constantly updated by me as we move on from one unit to the other.

However , it turned out to be very useful for classroom use too. Whenever we have some free time in class we can always use the material to practice in class.After all it’s all gathered in one place!

This extra material is drawn from various websites .Below you can see some of them.

I have also used quizlet, to create flashcards and quizzes easily. Quizlet has been particularly appealing to students with dyslexia or other learning disabilities as it combines images with sound.

I still have a long way to go as I’m planning to create material for each unit  and each level separately. It’s a longterm project but from the feedback I got from the “experts”, my students that is, I believe it’s worth trying.

Here are the links to the website of my school and the links to the different grades:

English – 6th Primary School of Amaliada

2nd grade

3rd grade

4th grade

5th grade

6th grade

To be continued…

Teaching through padlet

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 Using padlet last year for applying Flipped Classroom Lessons in 6th grade, gave me a lot of ideas about how I can use this tool in many other ways too. So this year , since my timetable doesn’t allow me to use our computer lab, I’ve decided to use padlet in order to :

  • provide  my students with  digital material on each unit (that we won’t have the chance or time to watch in  our computer lab)

  • familiarize them with the use of padlet so as to prepare them for some flipped lessons later on

  • make study , revision and practice more appealing to them

  • save precious time for practicing in class

  • communicate with them through messages on my padlet wall

  • give them time and space to work at their own pace

  • make them active learners

My first attempt was to prepare and upload material for Unit 2 – Going shopping-6th bgrade and my goal is to give them extra material for each unit. Most of the material is taken from photodendro. However you can upload any material (ppt presentations for grammar, links to on line games, videos etc)that serves the linguistic and communicative purposes of each unit.

My dear colleague Vivi Hamilou has recently used padlet to publish her students’writing homework,which is an excellent idea. She has also used the website of her school to upload extra material. There’s  a great amount of digital material to enrich our coursebooks but not enough time to do it at school, so technology may be  the answer.

I hope it all goes well! I’ll be back with my students’ impressions and comments as well as material for the next units.

 

Click here to visit my padlet:   6th grade-Unit 2 – Going shopping