MariaVlachopoulou

Tampering with the famous Shakespearean quote I feel that many of you may agree with me that trying to teach reading to students, in a world that students do not read anymore, may turn out to be a very challenging venture! Because the sad truth is that most students do not like reading, either because they don't know what to read, or because they don't know how to read or even because they read for the wrong purpose! So, it is widely accepted that students do not generally read long texts. They read in the social media. Bits and pieces- short posts, messages, comments, twits. They read, yes, but do they do any serious reading, even in L1? And how can we, teachers of English, expect them to not only cope with long reading texts in a foreign language  but also do tasks on these texts, under these circumstances? It must sound crazy to them! "It is often difficult to convince students of English as a foreign language that texts in English can be understood even though the...

I started the lesson with the video of the song "Happy" by Pharell Williams (feat.Minions)! The video is colourful with lyrics so pupils could sing along and get into the mood of the day easily! As a listening activity I asked them to count how many times the word "Happy" is heard. This was actually fascinating as the word is actually mentioned about 50 times in the song. After the counting had finished, I asked them how they felt listening and singing along-because they had been singing along! They said they felt happy! This is when I wrote on the board: Happy International Day of Happiness evrybody! And the fun began! This is where you can find the video:   https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MOWDb2TBYDg We went on with colouring the happiness colouring sheet . Students had to pick up their favourite colours and notice how they felt as they coloured in their happy word. Other students chose another worksheet in which they had to design their own T-shirt of h...

We have used Voki with my 6th graders for our etwinning project last year, too!So you could say we had already been familiar with it and maybe-just maybe-we wouldn't find it as exciting anymore!  But, no,  this year, we have found a new way to use it, a way that made it the most exciting, entertaining and successful activity of the project. Students had a great time and Voki is still on the top of the list with their favourite web tools! Those of you who have used Voki would know that students love making up characters and they could spend hours choosing the right eyes, nose or mouth, the appropriate background for their characters and they could go on forever experimenting with voices and  accents when they give their characters a voice to speak! This happens everytime! They are never bored because they have a large number of alternatives! The title of the activity was "Famous people in disguise" . Specifically, what they had to do was the following: Students w...

I have been working as an EFL teacher in the public sector for about ten years. I never really taught exactly what I had to teach-that is, the books set by the Ministry-I always liked to supplement them with materials of my own. And still that was not enough. There was constantly this feeling of inadequacy in me. I thought that to have the privilege to be around children every day and just teach them the language was not enough. I had to change something.  I gave it a lot of thought till I decided that I wanted to teach my students the same things I teach my children. I didn't want to give them solely knowledge. I wanted to teach them values, I wanted to raise their environmental awareness, I wanted to teach them about Human Rights, about Citizenship and Digital Citizenship, about bullying and racism and stereotypes. And many more... So a couple of years ago, I started having these "special days". A day raising awareness against bullying, a day raising awareness ag...

This is the presentation of our project for Teachers for Europe 2016: HUMAN-RIGHTS-REFUGEE RIGHTS-SOLIDARITY.

During school year 2016, Grade 5 (E2) of the 1st Primary School of Amyntaio, Greece worked on the theme of Human Rights and Refugees Rights within the frame of our project for TEACHERS4EUROPE 2016. At the beginning of the activity students read a poem written by a student  from Canada who won the first prize in 2010 in the first Refugees and Human Rights Child and Youth Poetry Contest, organised by the UNHCR Toronto Office and COSTI Immigrant Services in commemoration of World Refugee Day, June 20. The title of the poem is "I am". The student describes how he thinks being a refugee may feel. In spite of being only 12 years old the student uses very strong images of torture, death,slavery, war, sorrow, despair, lonelinessin the poem. We tried to discuss the meaning of the poem and the feelings it evoked. I have to admit it touched them a lot. Then the students were asked to compose their own poems based on some phrases taken from the poem such as, I am..., I am looking ...

Martin E.P. Seligman, an internationally known psychologist, of the Positive Psychology movement, introduced the PERMA model of well-being (2011), in which psychological well-being is defined in terms of five elements: positive emotions (P), engagement (E), relationships (R), meaning (M), and accomplishment (A). According to Seligman having PERMA equals flourishing.   According to Peterson (2006) schools are ideal institutions to provide opportunities for these elements and they should start focusing not only on academic learning but also the promotion of character and well-being. Let’s see what the acronym PERMA stands for and how we can link each element to our teaching:   POSITIVE EMOTIONS (P) Positive emotions are directly linked to happiness. Positive emotions coming from positive thinking and optimism help us feel less depressed when bad events occur and focus on the good things, make us feel better about ourselves and thus stronger and more confi...