The ‘Story behind the animal’ is a collection of stories that our b senior students wrote inspired by the book “If you loved me just a little bit” by Adespotoulia Xanthis. The money raised from the book, will allow the shelter to build the 1st nursing home for disabled animals in Greece.

https://www.facebook.com/Anligomeagapouses

The trip

My name is Lia and I am a dog living on the street. One day, I had a family that loved me very much. We always played together and I really loved that family!

One my dad said that we would go on a trip in a van! I was so excited! When mum packed our bags I was so hungry that I went to dad and told him that…. but he got angry with me for some reason and he didn’t feed me.

When we set off, dad told us that we were going to New England. I didn’t know that place so I was really happy! But when we went to a restaurant, my family left me outside and I was sad. I waited for them for the whole day. Then I looked inside and realized they were gone! They just wanted to make this trip for one reason…to leave me behind.

I have been there for 5 years and now I have babies. Life in the street is very hard!

Anna

The Fire

I’m Elisa and one month ago I lived in the street. I was hungry and thirsty but one day, a girl, Anna, took care of me. I loved Anna and Anna loved me.

One day Anna invited her friend over but she was allergic to dogs. Anna picked me up and took me out of the house. I was really sad. I walked and walked until I saw a house. The house was on fire! I got scared. I saw people running out of the house. One family couldn’t run. They were trapped. I got scared but I ran into the house. I showed them the exit.

The family ran outside the house. When the firemen arrived, they saw me and took me to the fire department. I became a fire-puppy!!!

Niki

A new home

(a real story!)

Hi! My name is Lily and I am 1 year old! Chloe’s dad found me and took me to their home! He gave me a bath and gave me some food! Now I am a house cat!

I am so happy about that!

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The exam period is looming on the horizon, while practice tests, vocabulary lists, and more exam-related instruction begin to intensify. You are flirting with the idea of incorporating some extra slots of “teaching” the test while assigning some extra homework sounds like a good prescription for bridging those “last learning gaps”. “Now, it’s time to push”.

Still, little progress is made. You see your students’ motivation, productivity, and psychology being sabotaged. “It’s just a few weeks”.

No, it’s not supposed to be easy.

But neither is learning in general. When it comes to language learning, exam performance is one thing, communicating in real life is another. If educating our learners is included in the equation as well, then one should keep in mind that building life skills, discovering the world in the foreign language, and learning how to learn is what really matters. The exam period should not make us forget that there is no fixed timeline for (language) education.

Do not get me wrong. Of course, students should familiarize themselves with the test format, do some practice, work on some exam-related strategies, and learn how to manage stress. But exam anxiety is already difficult to cope with. Why add to that an extra dose of negativity and the unnecessary burden of cramming things into your students’ heads?

Well-being and progress go hand in hand, so here are some things to keep in mind if you are teaching an exam class this year:

1) Plan ahead and allocate wisely:

The fact that your students are sitting for a language exam does not mean you should spend the whole year “training” them for the test per se. There is no point wasting your and your students’ time and energy on something that is fixed and does not necessarily help retain information. Besides, it’s quality over quantity! Having said that, a couple of months before the exams, you can spend 1/3 for exam prep, 1/3 for feedback and reflection, and 1/3 for some fun, educational activities that will help both teachers and learners to wind down.

Consider the following example!

Mr. Smith is teacher of a B2 class this year. It’s February and he must start preparing his students for the upcoming exams that are taking place in May. It’s Mr. Smith’s first year of teaching an exam-prep class and he feels that “experimenting” will do more harm than good so he is going all-in for an old-school approach; tests after tests, going over some important answers, highlighting, and note-taking. Mr. Smith loves his job but he feels that he’s losing his students and bringing back the lost spark of learning onto his students’ faces appears to be more difficult than ever.

He decides to do something “riskier”, “less conventional’, something “braver”.

He will spend one lesson for exam-prep (this means 1 test/per 3 weeks), one for feedback and reflection, and one for something fun and educational!

For this third lesson, he chooses an interesting topic and asks himself how his students will think deeply about it, work on it in English, and collaborate.  He ends up bringing in class an interesting video about social media and its effects on teenagers! His students are asked to find a teenager from the video whose perspective is very similar to theirs. After a fruitful discussion on how social media has been affecting teenagers’ lives followed by some language-based activities, Mr. Smith goes on to introduce the next task; a debate.

His students are given different roles and they are asked to shift their perspectives according to their allocated role. They get so caught up trying to synthesize their arguments and interact in English that Mr. Smith is now a happy facilitator whose only last mission is to observe, give and ask for his students’ feedback!

2) Resist the temptation of reviewing in a ‘meta’ way:

Metalanguage is for linguists. Our students are language learners. As language teachers and most importantly EDUCATORS, our role is to provide meaningful interaction in the foreign language and create the right conditions for new, educational, and fun learning experiences. Giving in the temptation of talking ABOUT the language not only is unnecessary but also counterproductive as it will deprive your learners of the opportunity to actually USE the language in a communicative and meaningful way.

3) Show you care:

Doing daily check-ins with your students to find out how they feel and why, must be your go-to opening routine. Feeling heard is fundamental. Very often your students will confess to you that they hadn’t done that exercise you had assigned the other day because they had been feeling overwhelmed with something else. That’s perfectly ok. Student-teacher relationships, like all relationships, must be based on some core values, like honesty and mutual understanding. Consider this confession as a sign that your relationship is actually working.

4) Give them space:

When students’ motivation is at risk invest more in communicative lessons, give them more choice, gamify some activities, and sometimes, compromise. Afterall, a successful lesson is an engaging one, where everyone is actively involved. Find what FEELS right for this last week before the exams; it may be a speaking lesson, a roleplay lesson, a video-based lesson, a project-based lesson, or even a fun workshop. Do not be afraid to ask your students’ opinion and let them choose from the available options. Not only will they feel more involved in their learning but also more independent.

5) Be there:

Building rapport from day one is key. Your students are human beings who need you to keep being patient, caring, and supportive. It’s a tough time for everyone, but building resiliency is not something we should expect only from others, but from ourselves as well. Life is difficult. Finding ways to decompress before and after the lesson is highly recommended.

Finally…

6) Be consistent:

Do not let yourself be carried away by that colleague or parent who sees last-minute exam prep as a panacea. Trust your guts, stick to the true essence of education and listen to your students’ needs. Above all, do not be afraid to try something new, learn from your mistakes, and let your students learn too!

DISCLAIMER! The views presented are my own and do not represent the opinions of any entity with which I have been, will be, or am currently affiliated.

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Picture by Anna Emmanouil

The Old Man with the Wings

by Anna Emmanouil

Once upon a time in a beautiful and magical village north of Russia, it had been raining for 3 days.  The cold wind was blowing so hard that the people of the village stayed into their houses. But the next day was a different one.

It was so warm and sunny that one man, named Paul, went out and started cleaning the fields from the weeds. Suddenly, an exotic and old creature with wings fell from heaven to earth. Paul got scared and felt curious about this mythic creature. He noticed that his wings were wounded. Then, when he came back home, he confessed to his wife about the incident with this creature. Paul’s wife said that she would help this wounded old man and would help him to fly again and return to his home.

 But when the people from the village saw this monstrous creature, they started running to the center of the village with the fear etched on their faces praying to God to save them from the disaster.

 Paul and his wife kept him in the attic and they healed his wounds. They named him Chiron because his wounds healed their wounded hearts with love. All the other people were charged 10$ to look at him. He stayed with them for the next 3 days. Then he made a wish for the village, which was named “BeCHa”,  that there would be only spring from now on. And so, ever since every day was a sunny day, full of life.

Paul told Chiron to return to his home, to the paradise of the sea. Both of them were so sad but the old man finally flew away and returned to the north sea of Russia.

Then the winter never came back to their village and they all lived happily ever after.

The end!

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Detective Story #1: The Beach Murder

by Stathis Skrimponis

It was one sunny day in the city on the  30th of May 1:36 at noon when the mayor, Lord Smith was killed by someone at the beach.

No one was at the beach except for one fisherman who was fishing in his boat. The body was found dead by his wife who wanted to tell him it was time to leave the beach. She got very upset and she called immediately the police.

The policeman asked the mayor’s wife who she thought the killer was. The wife answered that the two main suspects would be the car driver and the fisherman. The police told her that the main suspect would be herself!

Then the mayor’s wife said to the policeman that at the time of the murder she was shopping with her daughter.

After that, the policeman went to the mayor’s car driver and asked him if he was at the murder scene because he was the last person who drove Lord Smith to the beach. The car driver answered that he had an alibi and of course he wasn’t the killer because he wanted to give a lift to the mayor’s son to his guitar lesson. So he wasn’t alone. The only suspect who was left was the fisherman.

After the policeman found him at the port, the police asked him where he was at the time of the murder. The fisherman told them that he was the only person who saw who killed the mayor.

The mayor was killed by his lovely butler because the mayor owed money to him. The Fisherman heard the butler, the mayor screamed and suddenly he heard shooting from a gun. In the end, the policeman put the butler to prison for the rest of his life.

Any truth is better than indefinite doubt!

Sherlock Holmes

Story # 2 The Great Revenge

By Lydia Georgatzi

Last night the mayor of the city, Lord Smythe was murdered. Someone killed him with a knife in his office at the city hall. The detective, Mr Johnson had to find the killer. He did not tell anyone that the Mayor was killed with a knife.

The 3 suspects were his wife, his daughter, and his old friend. The detective asked the same questions to everyone: where they were at the time of the murder, if they heard the sound of the gun, who killed the Mayor and which was the last time they saw the Mayor.

The wife said that he saw him last time when they were out for lunch. At the time of the murder, she was in the garden so she did not hear the sound. The daughter said she saw him during the lunch, at the time of the murder she was in her car, outside of the city hall but she did not hear the sound. And his old friend said he did not remember the last time that he saw him, he was in his house, and of course, he did not hear the sound of the gun because the Mayor was killed with a knife.

The detective understood that the killer was his old friend because he was the only one who knew how the Mayor was killed. His motive was that he wanted to be the Mayor of the city.

“Every murderer is probably somebody’s old friend. You can’t mix up sentiment and reason!

Hercule Poirot

The post Creative Writing: Detective Stories appeared first on Αγγλικά Σπύρου.

In our journey to fight racism and inequity, teaching about social and racial injustice is essential. In their book Making Poetry Matter, Sue Dymoke et al talk about the role of poetry in class, stating that poetry is ‘a vehicle for exploring and describing the real world” offering “an opportunity to test the limits of self-knowledge in a social context”. To answer our question “poetry matters for it is one form of writing that touches students deeply and keenly by engaging their interests and emotions”.

Why the topics of Tolerance and Diversity?

The 2019 poetry workshop was dedicated to the issues of Tolerance and Diversity to spark fruitful discussions and ultimately allow our students to learn how to defend the values of respect, peace and non-violence. During the poetry workshop, our elementary students were encouraged to express their feelings on these matters in a creative and thought-provoking way.

Here are some of the poems that were exhibited at the school premises for the end-of-the-year school party!

  Equals

Rare world, hard to find

I feel happy proud,

I hear laughs

I see equals

Different, altogether, friends

No racism

No stereotypes.

-Jim-

Everyone together

With equals,
good, rare
everyone together
we are all people
all heard as one
holding hands, the whole world.

-Catherine-

All Together

Tolerance
Happy
Different people, friends, colours
We are all equal
Peace.

-Rafaela-

All Equal

Love
Movement
Happy friends
Wonderful
No war, respect

– Krisilda-

People

Equal
Same, different
Happy, good
Peaceful, friends

– Kostas-

References

Dymoke, S., Lambirth, A., & Wilson, A. (2015). Making poetry matter: International research on poetry pedagogy. London: Bloomsbury.

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This blog post was written exclusively by our B senior (CEFR A1) students Mary, Bill, and Angel for the needs of our Blog Bost Competition entitled ” The City We Love”. The competition took place among the B senior students and following the presentation of their projects, the winning post was chosen to be published on our school’s website. Well Done to all!

The activity is based on the PBL (Project Based Learning) method according to which students work actively and collaboratively to produce a final outcome in a meaningful way.

Beautiful City

By Mary, Bill and Angel

Volos is a great city because it has fantastic sights, a beautiful mountain, great beaches and of course hospitable people and tasty food! There are shops, parks, museums and cinemas. In the summer, all people go to the beach. In spring, we usually ride our bikes and go for a walk to the promenade of the city. In winter, we can make a snowman and play snowball fights. In autumn, we go to cafés and fast-food restaurants in the city centre. What we really like, is going to Pelion and Makrinitsa.

If you ever come to Volos, you can visit the Panthessaliko Stadium and watch a football game. The port of Volos is also beautiful and you can take a boat to go to one of the beautiful islands of Skiathos, Skopelos or Alonnisos. You can visit the mountain Pelion to admire the beautiful view of Volos, too!

We love Volos!

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What is extensive reading? Where does it take place?

Extensive reading is the act of reading texts as in books, graded readers, comic books e.t.c. in sessions varied from 20 minutes to 1-hour long in order to ensure that everyone gets to read as much as possible in a relaxing and of course quiet setting. This can take place inside or outside the classroom.

To get an idea of how we have incorporated an extensive reading activity into our lessons, our Readathon event is a good example!

Why extensive reading?

Researchers highly recommend extensive reading programmes since they make language learning more effective.

The aim of extensive reading activities is enjoyment! Engaging students in the actual act of reading authentic or adapted books and graded readers that diverge from the type and style of coursebooks used in an English language class presupposes that the material must appeal to the learners. That is why students should be responsible for selecting their texts by themselves.

When all students are motivated to read, the gains are immense!

According to researchers, extensive reading allows students to:

• become fluent and confident readers
• improve their reading speed and skills (skimming, scanning) 
• boost their vocabulary
• develop a liking for reading and
• build good reading habits

The materials & the Self-Selection Process

The materials must be comprehensible and interesting to the readers! The use of dictionaries must not be extensive and the types of reading texts can vary from graded readers to comic books, magazines etc. With some guidance from the teacher, the selection process is led by the learners themselves. To put it simply; as long as they like it, they read it!

The Principles of an Effective Extensive Reading Program…

An effective extensive reading program must be: pleasurable, uninterrupted, stress-free, independent, fast-paced, silent and of course performed on a regular basis. Testing and follow-up activities are excluded! In case students lose interest, the process stops and they choose an alternative book.

This approach aims at drawing on students’ intrinsic motivation, which is the most powerful kind of motivation. Students’ driving force for reading does not emerge from a tangible reward. Instead, their will to read comes from within.

“We learn to read by reading”.

Paulson and Bruder

REFERENCES

BENETTAYEB – OUAHIANI, A. (2015). EXTENSIVE READING IN THE EFL CLASSROOM: AN APPROACH TO READING AND VOCABULARY INSTRUCTION (Ph.D). BAKR BELKAID UNIVERSITY OF TLEMCEN.

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In this blog post, Elias talks about “Asterix: The Secret of the Magic Potion” whereas Joanna about the “Fantastic Beasts”. Have you ever watched these movies?

Read to find out what the two students have to say!

Asterix: The Secret of the Magic Potion

by Elias Petroulias

Last week, I watched at the cinema “Asterix: The Secret of the Magic Potion”. It’s a comedy cartoon directed by Alexander Astier and Luis Clichy. The main characters are Asterix, Obelix, and Panoramix. In the Greek version, Asterix is voiced by Kostas Dralassis, Obelix by Dinos Sioutis and Panoramix by Tasos Kostis.

One day Panoramix breaks his leg and thinks that his death is coming! He tries to find someone to give the formula of his magic potion. But if it passes to the wrong hands? It could be the end of the word!

Asterix and the Secret of the Magic Potion is one of my favorite movies because of the great graphics, the nice plot, and scenario but most of all the lesson that it teaches us. I strongly suggest it to you and I think you will have fun, too!

Fantastic Beasts

by Joanna Mekka

Fantastic Beasts is a fantasy film directed by David Yates. It is based on a book written by J.K. Rowling. Some of the actors are Eddie Redmayne, Katherine Waterson, Dan Fogler, Alison Sudol, Johnny Depp.

In 1925 Newt Scamander, a wizard arrives at New York City. He encounters Mary Lou Barebone, a non-magical woman, who says that witches and wizards are bad people. A Niffer (fantastic beast) escapes from Newt’s magical suitcase and all the other fantastic beasts escape too! Newt and his friends try to help him with this problem but witches and wizards’ hunters will stop their plans!!! What will happen in the end?

I like this movie because it has got very good special effects and the acting is realistic and excellent. I recommend it to everyone who likes Harry Potter and magic.

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What is Active Learning?

Active learning is a prerequisite for lifelong learning which in turn leads to success beyond the school and university context. For this reason, students must learn to become independent and active learners at an early stage. Towards the definition of active learning, it is important to contrast it with popular misconceptions about the nature of successful learning. Such erroneous beliefs are related to the way knowledge is acquired, the role of mistakes and the innate abilities thought to be directly linked to high levels of achievement.

Mistakes and errors are often misinterpreted by students as factors that hinder progress and take a toll on their performance. Nevertheless, according to scientists like Professors A. Lee and K. Mattingly “making errors is often an essential element of effective learning”. In addition to that, Bjork et al (2013) point out another erroneous assumption, namely that learning should be easy. On the contrary, as A. Lee and K. Mattingly declare, “it’s the mental struggle that frequently creates deep learning”. Finally, as opposed to innate abilities and talents, it is the amount of effort we put that plays a major part in attaining a goal.

Once these misconceptions are discarded, embarking on the role of active learner only presupposes to “learn how to learn”, i.e. learn the necessary strategies that apply to the triptych of successful learning: 1st processing the new information, 2nd connecting it to prior knowledge and 3rd saving it in the long-term memory for later retrieval.

The focus of this article rests upon the role of memory and its implications as a crucial factor in learning. Other factors, such as motivation, feedback and errors will be further discussed in one of our next articles.

The Role of Memory

When we refer to ‘memory’ we have to make a distinction between the working memory and the long-term memory. The working memory is responsible for holding the information only for a few seconds and unless this information is somehow manipulated and transferred to the long-term memory, it is lost. Therefore, the capacity of working memory is limited and cannot cater for the consolidation of knowledge, the basic prerequisite for successful learning. In fact, in order for learning to take place, the information must be retained for long periods of time that is to be consolidated and consciously accessed when needed. This is where the long-term memory comes into play. The transfer of information from the working memory into the long-term memory (the stage in which knowledge is stored indifinitely) is the desirable effect for our students.

What’s the catch?!

This process involves a lot of STRUGGLE and PERSEVERANCE! That is why, according to Cognitive Scientistics the first step to successfully engage learners with the process of effective learning is to familiarize them with the concept of “struggle” and assure them that hard effort pays off!

“Focused mind power is one of the strongest forces on earth.”

Mark Victor Hansen

But How can we create the necessary conditions for long-term learning?

The Strategies:

The following strategies are suggested by the Columbia University and are intertwined with the learning process:

1. Retrieval Practice

The most familiar and popular way students choose to memorize new information is by reading through their materials, then making notes and finally revising these notes. What the research community proposes instead, is hiding our notes, trying to recall what we have written down and at the same time reflect upon why they were important to keep a record of in the first place. By this way, learners manage to make robust connections among the new and the old information and create new, shorter paths in their minds that lead to the new knowledge faster and more easily. This technique is based on the concept of free recall, in which learners are responsible for recalling the information on their own without relying on other sources, such as on their notes or their teacher’s prompts and questions.

Students can practice free recall by talking aloud, sketching, writing down or even embodying the role of the teacher!

  2. Spaced Learning

Another particularly useful strategy is to break down studying into shorter intervals.

Letting students study for short periods of time is ideal, since interval studying allows opportunities for further processing the information through reflection and the retrieval practice technique. At this stage students can pose questions to themselves, such as: ‘How is this new piece of information connected to my prior knowledge?”, “Why?”, “How?” and also practise rephrasing (i.e. restating with our own words).

Both reflective questions and rephrasing foster deep learning and expedite comprehension.

3. Interleaving

Finally, scientists have risen our awareness on a technique, which no matter how confusing it may seem, it works miracles!

Interleaving means varying our studying with different subjects and devoting a short amount of time to each one successively. For example, half an hour studying Maths, then half an hour History and then half an hour Geometry. After that, back to Maths and so on. (Devoting less than 30 minutes each time may not have the desirable effects, though)

Enduring memories are worth it!

All these techniques are difficult, yet effective ways for creating enduring memories which can in turn maximize students’ academic performance. Once students familiarize themselves with these strategies and start applying them in their everyday life, they will embody the role of an active and independent learner. 

References

Benassi, V. A., Overson, C. E., & Hakala, C. M. (Eds.) (2014). Applying science of learning in education: Infusing psychological science into the curriculum. Retrieved from the Society for the Teaching of Psychology web site: http://teachpsych.org/ebooks/asle2014/index.php

Bjork, R. A., Dunlosky, J., and Kornell, N. (2013) Self-regulated learning: Beliefs, techniques, and illusions. Annual Review of Psychology 64: 417-444.

Lee A., Mattingly K. Research Summary: Misconceptions and Learning Strategies. Retrieved from https://prod-edxapp.edx cdn.org/assets/courseware/v1/9d06964786875c25af2baf169d99bcb5/asset-v1:TeachersCollegeX+EDSCI1x+1T2018+type@asset+block/EDSCI1x_3.5_Lee_and_Mattingly_Research_Article_Summary–Elaboration_and_Self-Explanation.pdf

Teacherscollegex: Edsci1x The Science Of Learning – What Every Teacher Should Know https://courses.edx.org/courses/course-v1:TeachersCollegeX+EDSCI1x+1T2018/course/

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The Teacher’s role is limited to that of a facilitator, thus boosting students’ critical thinking and problem-solving skills in an independent way.

Students’ work is the product of their own effort and innovation so that they can develop their own understanding of how science applies in our daily life.  Through their participation and involvement in robotics, engineering and other STEM related topics, they will embody the role of the INNOVATOR while their subsequent presentation of their product and engagement to reflective discussions will further enhance their presentation, communication and social skills.

STEM lays a good foundation for active learning, boosts logical, intrapersonal and interpersonal intelligence and along with the other skills acquired (organizational, communication, cooperation, leadership) its certification will qualify students from an early start as competitive figures in their future, professional career.

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