21-12-2017, Amaliada (Photos by Ms Kotadaki)
On 21st December, 2017, our school advisor, Ms Marianthi Kotadaki, asked me to present creative activities that I have included in the lessons, as part of the day event entitled “Teaching English in the Technical School. Designing activities that foster learners’ motivation for all skills”.
My presentation was mainly about 3 activities, one per sector: Economics, Agriculture and Health.
It was a great chance to exchange ideas with dear colleagues!
A dear colleague of mine, Stella Dimopoulou was placed in the year 2016-17 at the 1st Vocational High School of Lechaina, a town close to Amaliada. She suggested preparing a collaborative project between our schools. We finally decided to teach our (Management and Financial Services) students dialogues that take place in a bank and let them fill in the word clouds in a comic strip prepared by us.
Comic created by 2nd EPAL of Amaliada
Comic created by 1st EPAL of Lechaina
Both comic strips were created by using the website storyboardthat . First, my students took the role of the teller and filled in the relevant word clouds, I scanned the comic and sent it to Ms Dimopoulou, who gave it to her students to fill in. Then, her students prepared and sent us another comic strip. Here is the result:
I have also created this short video, which describes our schools’ collaborative mini project!
I often use comics in the last 15 minutes of the lesson, as it is a creative and fun activity.
www.storyboardthat.com allows one to make his/her own comics, by using the given background and characters, and then download and print them. I either gave my pupils-who were in groups of 2 or 3- the freedom to write whatever they thought that the characters said or I gave them a set situation e.g. they are looking for a holiday destination. Even the weakest and most bored pupils found this activity fascinating and were helped by the other members of their group in expressing themselves in English.
A short text about the story of Romeo and Juliet also inspired me to use a comic with these famous characters, which I took from www.grammarmancomic.com .I erased the characters’ lines and my question was: “What were their real thoughts?” My teenagers’ ideas surprised me. .
Romeo and Juliet comic