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St. Patrick’s Day blessings!

I absolutely love St. Patrick’s Day! With my 6th grade students we analyzed a few Irish blessings and talked about Ireland a lot, we watched videos of Irish step dancing, we listened to Danny Boy and Molly Malone, we read a little bit about Irish history and we looked up some Irish recipes. And I know they loved making these Irish blessings into cards.

Blessing I:

May the road rise up to meet you.
May the wind be always at your back.
May the sun shine warm upon your face;
the rains fall soft upon your fields and until we meet again,
may God hold you in the palm of His hand.

Blessing II:

May God grant you always… A sunbeam to warm you, a moonbeam to charm you, a sheltering Angel so nothing can harm you. Laughter to cheer you. Faithful friends near you. And whenever you pray, Heaven to hear you.

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These were some of the end products:

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And one I made for myself:

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Lá fhéile Pádraig sona dhaoibh!

Our class garden book, an ongoing project

Spring has sprung! It is still quite early to dress lightly, but spring is definitely in the air! I am so so happy that the E2 class students started a garden at the back of our school, with the help of their teacher, Angelos Michalopoulos and Mrs. Olga Venizelou-Rouva, a gardener who admins the Facebook group called Ομάδα Παραδοσιακών Σπόρων Πύργου Ηλείας.

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I was around when they first started planting the seeds, so I helped them make the labels.

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Then I offered help to make a kind of garden book, if they wanted to, and the students were thrilled! There’s a lot of artistic talent in this class, as some of the children can draw really beautifully, so this was another chance for me to try and put this side of them to good use.

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We started by making a list of what they have already planted in the garden. The students googled the items to find the English translations and see images of them. Then they drew and painted. Then we wrote a few lines about each plant in Greek and English.

 

But the project is still unfinished, as there are plenty more plants growing from seed in small plastic, reused containers, waiting to be taken outside, which is when we will add more pages to our book! We are also thinking about adding photos and leaves or flowers from the plants. We have already found a great piece of cardstock to form the front and back covers of our finished book, but for the moment we are all waiting, patiently!

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Shakespeare inspiration comics: Romeo and Juliet, King Lear and The Merchant of Venice

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My other 6th grade students, from ST2, wanted to create comics as well, around the time when we were talking Shakespeare. So they found information about several of the Bard’s plays, we discussed each one and then they voted on which one they would like to work on. I told them they only had to work on a scene, not the entire play, of course, so here’s what they came up with:

Nagia, Yiannis, Christos and Thanasis worked on King Lear. I was impressed by the way they worked, Thanasis did the drawing, the rest had created the text, Chris did the coloring and Nagia and Yiannis were coordinators. Well done!

 

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Then, three girls, Yiota, Joanna and Athanasia, were absolutely focused on doing something from Romeo and Juliet. They each worked on a particular scene and finished it separately. They had a hard time agreeing on the text, though, in the beginning. Oh, and of course, they had fun by changing the story a lot!

 

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And this is what the third team did, Zachary, Iliana and Gabriel, assisted by Thanasis and Yiannis, who were kind to help them towards the end, as they were running out of time:

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I like how one thing a class does inspires another class to do something else, I love how my idea for comics was something that touched everybody. Also, the ICT teacher today told me he was inspired to do a comic on The Merchant of Venice with the students of the 5th and 6th grades, based on the English text that I wrote, a school play for the E class -which I will ask my students to adapt to Greek, before they make their comic version on Toondoo. Perhaps we will be able to present it alongside the performance! Cool. I promise you to write more on the play in a seperate article, coming soon! For now I’m still thinking about the casting of the roles, lol! Hope you enjoyed this post!

‘Daedalus and Icarus’ comics for the English class

 ‘The art of teaching is the art of assisting discovery.’

-Mark van Doren

That means getting your students out there in the real world and finding things they can relate to (with a certain filtering). One of the things I turn to is…

…comics!!!

 

Comics can be used to teach content, values, to coax reluctant readers, for fun and also be the outcome of students’ work. Here is an example, where, to begin with, 6th grade students from the ΣΤ1 class in our school wrote the story of Daedalus and Icarus as a dialogue.

The students worked in teams to produce dialogues based on the story of Daedalus and Icarus. They also practised the Simple Past and the Simple Present. This is the first draft.

 

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After they wrote the final draft of the dialogues, it was time for them to show their artistic talents! At least one student in each team was willing to carry out the task of the actual drawing, but all the rest helped with their ideas and with how the text should be placed.

Previously, the students had been introduced to the terminology of comics and had been given some tips that would help them draw their ideas down to paper. With the aim to encourage creativity in mind, computer assisted comic making was not given as an option. For more information about comics in education, visit http://athenscomicslibrary.gr/εκπαιδευτικα–προγραμματα

Only two teams out of the four managed to finish in time (2 teaching hours), but the students of the other two promised to finish next time… You know how it goes! Of course, they all wanted to do more!

This was the result:


The Super kids team (Lydia, Theodosis, Rafaela and Mariefi) came up with this:

 

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And the Koroivos fans team (Dimitris, Maria, Panayiota and Makis) collaborated on this:

 

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Don’t you think my students are talented? Here’s a video I made to show their work (or, you can click here):

 

 

Enjoy!

 

Tutorial: How to reuse old magazine pages and make paperbags

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This tutorial was produced with the help of E class students, to demonstrate a way of reusing paper in a new project. Paperbags are very fun to make and they are also practical, as they can be adorned, filled with goodies like candies, pencils or stickers and presented as inexpensive, handmade gifts in kids parties.Here are the instructions on how to make one:1. To make one paperbag, you need: One torn page from a magazine, preferably one you find appealing (the students chose this page for the tutorial), tape and scissors. You can also use brochure or leaflet pages.

2. Turn your page with its ‘good side’ facing down, onto the desk, and the torn side at the top.

3. Fold your page like this and then tape the edges together.

4. Fold the bottom part.

5. Open the folded sides apart and push them down like this.

6. Fold each side again, so that they face each other and tape them down.

7. Fold the sides like this, then turn your paperbag over and do the same towards the opposite side.

8. Open your paperbag gently and start forming the inside creases.

It’s ready!