Class 3 - Magic Book (Unit 1, Lesson 1)

A very useful video to practise the new vocabulary and pronunciation in this first lesson.

 Classroom in the forest - Video

One of our students' drawings for this lesson

N.B. Children should not browse sites unsupervised.

Class 4 - Have you got a hobby?

These days we are talking about our hobbies and our friends' hobbies. Some of these are:

 

Have YOU got a hobby?

Students' Corner - Visit to the MMCA!

On Tuesday 20th November, the students and teachers of 5th and 6th grade visited the Macedonian Museum of Contemporary Art of Thessaloniki. One of our 6th grade students wrote a short text about the day:

"Yesterday we went to the MMCA with my school. We had a great time! An employee there told us about the houses. I learnt so many things I didn't know. We also built our own houses. We were asked to express our feelings when seeing a house without windows & doors and a house open to everyone. Finally, we saw an exhibition about the prehistoric monsters."
Yannis R. - 6th grade

 Snapshots

!!NEW!! Students' Corner! !!NEW!!

There is a new 'column' in our blog called Students' Corner! Here, our students will share their own material about things they like and do.

Kids, we are looking forward to your work!

Thanksgiving Jokes

Thanksgiving Day in the USA

Thanksgiving Day in the United States is a holiday on the fourth Thursday of November. This year it falls on November 22nd. 

Thanksgiving Day is traditionally a day for families and friends to get together and have a special meal. The meal often includes stuffed turkey, potatoes, cranberry sauce, gravy, pumpkin pie and vegetables. It is a time for many people to give thanks for what they have. Thanksgiving Day parades are held in some cities and towns on or around Thanksgiving Day. These festivities also mark the opening of the Christmas season. Some people have a four-day weekend so it is a popular time for trips and visits to family and friends.

History of Thanksgiving

Charlie Brown: Origins of Thanksgiving [part 1 & 2]

You Are the Historian: 
INVESTIGATING THE FIRST THANKSGIVING
This is an interactive exploration of the facts and myths associated with the story of the First Thanksgiving. Students can explore the facts and myths through the eyes of a Native American child or through the eyes of a female Pilgrim. Through the eyes of each character students discover the culture of giving thanks in the Native American and English cultures.

Scholastic has also made a compilation of Virtual Field Trips, offering information on Native Americans, English and the First Thanksgiving.

N.B. Children should not browse sites unsupervised.

For information in Greek, have a look here and watch the following video.

Universal Children's Day - November 20th

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Being bilingual 'boosts brain power'

Learning a second language can boost brain power, scientists believe.

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The US researchers from Northwestern University say bilingualism is a form of brain training - a mental "work out" that fine-tunes the mind.

Speaking two languages profoundly affects the brain and changes how the nervous system responds to sound, lab tests revealed.

Experts say the work in Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences provides "biological" evidence of this.

For the study, the team monitored the brain responses of 48 healthy student volunteers - which included 23 who were bilingual - to different sounds.

They used scalp electrodes to trace the pattern of brainwaves.

Under quiet, laboratory conditions, both groups - the bilingual and the English-only-speaking students - responded similarly.

But against a backdrop of noisy chatter, the bilingual group were far superior at processing sounds.

They were better able to tune in to the important information - the speaker's voice - and block out other distracting noises - the background chatter.
   

'Powerful' benefits

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And these differences were visible in the brain. The bilingualists' brainstem responses were heightened.
Prof Nina Kraus, who led the research, said: "The bilingual's enhanced experience with sound results in an auditory system that is highly efficient, flexible and focused in its automatic sound processing, especially in challenging or novel listening conditions."


Co-author Viorica Marian said: "People do crossword puzzles and other activities to keep their minds sharp. But the advantages we've discovered in dual language speakers come automatically simply from knowing and using two languages. 
 
"It seems that the benefits of bilingualism are particularly powerful and broad, and include attention, inhibition and encoding of sound."

Musicians appear to gain a similar benefit when rehearsing, say the researchers. 

Past research has also suggested that being bilingual might help ward off dementia.
Source: BBC News
  

Greek version of this article

 

Class 4 - My Monster!

The students drew a monster based on a description provided by the teacher. They remembered the verb 'have got' and recycled lots of words about the body and the face!

ENJOY!

 

November 17, 1973: Athens Polytechnic Uprising

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The Athens Polytechnic uprising in 1973 was a massive demonstration of popular rejection of the Greek military junta of 1967-1974. The uprising began on November 14, 1973, escalated to an open anti-junta revolt and ended in bloodshed in the early morning of November 17 after a series of events starting with a tank crashing through the gates of the Polytechnic. [from Wikipedia]

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For more information in English, you can also watch a BBC documentary called Greece - The Seven Black Years (of the military junta) on Adam Curtis blog on BBC.

In commemoration of the uprising, the students of 6th grade dramatised and presented a short extract from the book "Birthday" by Georges Sarri and sang two very popular songs of that era: 'Το γελαστό παιδί' and 'Ο δρόμος είχε τη δική του ιστορία'.

'BIRTHDAY' - GEORGES SARRI

"These red spots on the walls could also be blood
all the red in our days is blood" - Yannis Ritsos

 SONGS

 Last stanza of 
"Ο δρόμος είχε τη δική του ιστορία"

N.B. Children should not browse sites unsupervised.

Fantastic Animations!

Two fantastic animations inspired by the Greek islands!

1) The first animation is 'Mariza' and it deals with an old fisherman who faces his donkey's obstinacy. It was created by Constantine Krystallis back in 2008 for his MA in Animation at the University of Technology in Sydney.

2) The second animation is 'Oktapodi' and it deals with two octopuses fighting for their lives with a stubborn restaurant cook in a comical escape through the streets of a small Greek village. It's a graduation film, created at Gobelins L'École de L'Image, Paris in 2007 by six third-years students: Julien Bocabeille, François-Xavier Chanioux, Olivier Delabarre, Thierry Marchand, Quentin Marmier, and Emud Mokhberi. Music was composed by Kenny Wood.
 

Both animations have taken part in many festivals and have won awards.

N.B. Children should not browse sites unsupervised.

Class 4 - My favourite sport!

"Do you like sports? Which is your favourite sport?".

This is what our teacher asked us today and we all told her and our classmates, choosing from the following sports:

 

Based on our answers, here you can see which are the most popular sports in class:

Football is the winner but volleyball almost made it to the top as well!

Remembrance Day in the UK

Remembrance Day is on 11th November. It is a special day set aside to remember all those men and women who were killed during the two World Wars and other conflicts. At one time the day was known as Armistice Day and was renamed Remembrance Day after the Second World War. 

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The eleventh hour of the eleventh day of the eleventh month marks the signing of the Armistice, on 11th November 1918, to signal the end of World War One. At 11 am on 11 November 1918 the guns of the Western Front fell silent after more than four years continuous warfare. 

Remembrance Sunday is held on the second Sunday in November, which is usually the Sunday nearest to 11 November. Special services are held at war memorials and churches all over Britain and the other Commonwealth countries.

A national ceremony takes place at the Cenotaph in Whitehall, London. The Queen lays the first wreath at the Cenotaph. Wreaths are layed beside war memorials by companies, clubs and societies.

Remembrance Day is also known as Poppy Day, because it is traditional to wear an artificial poppy. They are sold by the Royal British Legion, a charity dedicated to helping war veterans.

Why the poppy became the symbol of remembrance?

Flanders is the name of the whole western part of Belgium. It saw some of the most concentrated and bloodiest fighting of the First World War. There was complete devastation. Buildings, roads, trees and natural life simply disappeared. Where once there were homes and farms, there was now a sea of mud - a grave for the dead where men still lived and fought. 

Only one other living thing survived. The poppy flowering each year with the coming of the warm weather, brought life, hope, colour and reassurance to those still fighting. Poppies only flower in rooted up soil. Their seeds can lay in the ground for years without germinating, and only grow after the ground has been disturbed.

John McCrae, a doctor serving with the Canadian Armed Forces, was so deeply moved by what he saw in northern France that, in 1915 in his pocket book, he scribbled down the poem "In Flanders Fields". McCrae's poem was eventually published in 'Punch' magazine under the title 'In Flanders Fields'. The poppy became a popular symbol for soldiers who died in battle.

Why do we wear a poppy?

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In 1918, Moira Michael, an American, wrote a poem in reply, 'We shall keep the faith', in which she promised to wear a poppy ‘in honour of our dead’. This began the tradition of wearing a poppy in remembrance.

N.B. Children should not browse sites unsupervised.

Source: projectbritain.com

MIDWAY: a film by Chris Jordan

The MIDWAY film project is a powerful visual journey into the heart of an astonishingly symbolic environmental tragedy. On one of the remotest islands on our planet, tens of thousands of baby albatrosses lie dead on the ground, their bodies filled with plastic from the Pacific Garbage Patch. Returning to the island over several years, our team is witnessing the cycles of life and death of these birds as a multi-layered metaphor for our times. With photographer Chris Jordan as our guide, we walk through the fire of horror and grief, facing the immensity of this tragedy—and our own complicity—head on. And in this process, we find an unexpected route to a transformational experience of beauty, acceptance, and understanding. 

We frame our story in the vividly gorgeous language of state-of-the-art high-definition digital cinematography, surrounded by millions of live birds in one of the world’s most beautiful natural sanctuaries. The viewer will experience stunning juxtapositions of beauty and horror, destruction and renewal, grief and joy, birth and death, coming out the other side with their heart broken open and their worldview shifted. Stepping outside the stylistic templates of traditional environmental or documentary films, MIDWAY will take viewers on a guided tour into the depths of their own spirits, delivering a profound message of reverence and love that is already reaching an audience of tens of millions of people around the world. 

Production of the feature film "MIDWAY" continues through 2012. 

Chris Jordan - Director/Producer 
Stephanie Levy - Producer 
Terry Tempest Williams - Writer 
Jan Vozenilek - Director of photography 
Rob Mathes - Composer 
Jim Hurst - Location sound 
Joseph Schweers - Camera 
Manuel Maqueda - Advisor 

For more information: MidwayFilm.com

N.B. Children should not browse sites unsupervised.

What do English teachers do when they retire?

Source: blog.grammarly.com