Today was seminar day! At the hospitable 2nd Primary School of Pyrgos, our School Advisor Ms. Sophia Kouzouli and our colleague Ms. Aspasia Papadimitriou encouraged all English teachers to create an English library in our schools. Here are some pictures from this lovely event. And many thanks to Ms. Kouzouli, for highlighting my translation of Beatrix Potter’s Tale of Benjamin Bunny, published in the monthly magazine, Hartis!
On the 29th of March I was fortunate to have been invited to present at the “Language and Culture” one day seminar, organised by our School Advisor, Ms Marianthi Kotadaki. The 1st Junior High School of Pyrgos is a very hospitable place for seminars, plus I got to know some remarkable people, and attend some amazing presentations.
Speakers included:
Marianthi Kotadaki, Sophia Christopoulou, Tita Terzi, Stella Anastasiou, Stavroula Sotiropoulou, Stergiani Dimopoulou, Dr. Maria Stathopoulou, Maria Vigli and myself.
My presentation was entitled “Literature in the EFL Class: Can literature and English language teaching exist happily together? Get inspired!”. I had to re-write it in Greek though, to accommodate for certain attendees, so here is where you will find it in Greek (I will be putting up the link in English shortly).
Overall, a great experience!
This New Year’s Day I celebrated with my family. The next day I received a message from Ms Marianthi Kotadaki, our School Advisor, that the Teaching English to Dyslexic Students course I had signed up for was starting.
It was a “short and intensive 4-week professional development course, addressed to teachers of English who wished to acquire the basic theoretical background, as well as methodological insights to the teaching of English to students with dyslexia. The course content was drawn from material developed in the framework of the European Erasmus+ DysTEFL2 project and the related e-learning course delivered by the university of Lancaster, Britain, and contained articles, websites, videos, scheencasts, weblinks, worksheets and other originally designed documents”, to quote Ms Kotadaki.
We began with the definition of Dyslexia, its identification and the challenges it presents to the EFL teacher. We moved on to teaching phonological awareness, vocabulary, grammar, reading and writing to dyslexic learners of English. The next stage was listening and speaking. We finished with ways to accommodate dyslexic learners of English during assessment, a very sensitive subject.
This course was quite realistic and hands-on. I deeply appreciated the chances we got to approach dyslexia more and to design activities that we can actually use in the classroom. I used to have fear regarding this subject, and now I definitely feel more into it. Knowing it is a difficult matter anyway, I feel more equipped with tested knowledge, and therefore more relaxed, to do something to help.
I can’t thank Ms Kotadaki enough. Teachers really need such a School Advisor.
In the hot summer month of July I was fortunate enough to have been invited by the School Advisor, Ms Marianthi Kotadaki, to present the work I did on Beatrix Potter during 2016-17 with my then 3rd grade students. The presentation took place at a seminar meeting on September 7, in Pyrgos. This is where you can have a look at it, if you are interested in obtaining a general picture, instead of reading all my blog posts about the project. Enjoy!
This semester I was very lucky to have entered a seminar that I have been after for three (3) years! It’s an online seminar, combined with two meetings, called “Digital Storytelling” – and I have to thank Ms. Marianthi Kotadaki and many good colleagues for being our tutors.
After getting acquainted with all the theory and then the many tools for digital storytelling, we each had to create a story. I was so happy to see many amazing stories, but mine was this (and it’s the first time I am posting this outside of the seminar environment. It has only been shown in class):
Then, I translated the scenario of my story into English and left all the verbs out, asking my students to complete the Simple Past tense. We then carried on to thinking about “What happened next?”, a popular question in Φιλαναγνωσία< and one of my favourite questions to trigger children’s imagination. These were the results:
In the story by E1 class, the girl finds her voice…
And in the story by E2, the deer is transformed into a handsome prince!
I am so happy because my students not only created beautiful stories, but because we also got to discuss concepts like diversity and identity. Feels like a good day’s work!