VIDEO-CONFERENCE DONE FOR SAVING ENVIRONMENT

We have had a video conference between England, India, China, Ireland and Hong Kong last month aiming to illustrate the ways of saving our environment mainly. It took two hours full of enjoyment and practice for my students. At the end, I have witnessed how my pupils became more confident. It was a very important experience for them since it was the first time they met different peers from all over the World. They asked their questions and answered the ones asked by their peers from other countries. They shared their ideas for a better future. These type of international connections will go on since they are very effective way of teaching internationalism. We have connected to the schools by flash-meeting which also allows recording the meeting and broadcasting for future purposes.

English Club Welcome Party

Fortunately, we have begun working on English Club activities which I have scheduled carefully in order to increase the awareness and interest of the students towards English Language. There are three groups and they each come one day of the week. The Club is on Mondays, Wednesdays and Fridays. Students choose the suitable day for them and follow the syllabus. There are a lot of interesting subjects we will handle this year. Shotting a movie, writing sceneries, short plays and poetry, reading stories and poetry, declamation contest, song and karaoke contests and so on. All the joint students are enjoying the club activities and as I have observed, students are really happy during the Club hour. They enjoy the things they do and share. I am also doing this work voluntarily. My only aim is to teach the students how to speak properly in English Language.

TWO INTERNATIONAL PROJECTS IN A YEAR

            As Hanım Ömer Çağıran Primary and Middle Schools, we are planning to run two projects which were decided last year and worked on before. One is for the Primary School which is about EcoSchool and it includes  activities about environment and recycling in it. The second one is for  MiddleSchool and it is on Positive Digital Citizenship including ICT activities mostly. In November, there will be a preparatory visit in England and me and mr. Batmaz, the Head of the School, are going to join the meeting and give the final shape to the projects. We have some European partners such as England, Poland, Romania, Estonia, Czech Republic,  Greece, Germany, Sweden and France. We believe that we will manage all these work and supply our students with a high quality international education by the help of our partner schools and our experienced and equipped colleagues in our both school (Primary and Middle). 

A NEW BEGINNING....

 

I have been appointed to a new school, Hanım Ömer Çağıran Middle School,  in Antalya Province. The school I have started working is an academically successful public school with its number of facilities. I have constitute and put into action most of my projects covering European values and even the whole World since I found an active school environment. The first thing I will do is to join a preparatory meeting which will be held in England in November. Then I will start another Comenius multilateral project work just after I arrive Turkey. I have also prepared the schedule of the English Club. We will start working with the participant students next week. I will write about the opening and welcome party later.   

4+4+4 is a New System... Is it the one?

Let's have a brief look to Turkish Education Revolution.
During the Ottoman Empire, there were schools like Elementary Schools, Madrasas (Moslem seminaries), Enderun Schools ( Institutes to educate the people who planned to work in the Palace) Military Schools and so on. The education system was often intervened by the state to meet the needs of the times.
When it comes to the establishment of the republic, Atatürk (the founder of modern Turkey) renewed the system from scratch especially by bringing Latin Alphabet instead of Arabic Alphabet. Compulsory Education was 5 years in Primary Schools. Village Institudes was established to educate villagers efficiently. Then, For the first time, compulsory education was 8 years in 1961. National Education Basic Law was adopted to the system and accordingly, education divided into two groups as "formal" and "common" in 1973. Primary education was divided into two groups as non-compulsory and compulsory. Compulsory ones were elementary-5 years and Primary-8 years and non-compulsory ones were preschools, coaching courses and classes. In 1998, Compulsory Education was 8 years again. With this decision, the books, the program and the materials changed. During the last 13 years,  There were often the Military and Political interventions seperately on National Education System. It even became a battlefield between these two groups.
Finally, the government changed the compulsory system into 4+4+4 (Elementary-4, Primary-4, Secondary-4).
As teacher, we are going to see if this is the solution of the problems of Turkish National Education System. Time will show us if this will suit our educational goals. I wish the ministry would ask our ideas, thoughts and suggestions about the new system. There is only one thing we can do. Wait and see politics (like politicians). I hope it creates a well-educated Turkish generation.

Intern Students in İncekum

Intern students from Türkler Anatolian Teachers Training Highschool got a one-week training at İncekum Primary School attending the lessons in their branches and they had an opportunity to get to know the working environment. At the end, they performed a program and gave presents to the students participating the competitions in the program. They said it was a wonderful experience for them to meet the students and to teach them and they all decided to be teachers in the future.

Series of Friendly Football Matches between İncekum and St. Petersburg Primary Schools

The last week of March, there was a series of football matches between İncekum Primary School and a school from St. Petersburg of Russian Federation. They were here for a football camp and our students accompanied with the Russian school. This facility turned into a real opportunity for our students and Russian students vice versa to understand each other and to think globally.

MANY THANKS TO THE HAYES SCHOOL.

In today's World, people are mostly in need of caring each other. Sharing is a very important way to get virtuousness. As teachers and students of Hayes School and İncekum Primary, we know that happiness comes after sharing something. With this in mind, the Hayes school has promoted our Toy Collecting Company for the children in Van Province where there was a very bir earthquake 4 months ago. They have sent 7 boxes of toys. This was the last part of our international campaign. We are going to deliver them to Erciş District of Van where there are still people in tents.

NOTES FROM DYNED MEETING

DynEd (Dynamic Education) meeting was held by Mrs. Bilge Arslan in Antalya to evaluate the work of the first term and to roadmap for the second term. DynEd coordinators from all the districts attended the meeting. Almost all coordinators participated in the meeting. It was actually helpful for us because we had a chance to see what we had done so far and we shared our ideas to bring it a step forward in our schools. We decided to organize urgent meetings in our region to inform the DynEd officers of the schools about decisions taken at the meeting and in this way, to broaden its impact among the students since it helps English learning. We asked the questions derived from the experiences we had faced and got immediate and clear answers so we provided motivation on the task. All the coordinators left the meeting satisfied with adequate knowledge about what to do next. Moreover, coming together and sharing information with colleagues having similar point of view is really fun.

POSITIVE DIGITAL CITIZENS

Recently, ICT is being used at schools as an educational tool. We use technology on a daily basis-instant messaging, posting & watching videos, gaming and networking. That’s we are now actually digital citizens.

At this point, as Turkey, Poland, Estonia, Romania, England and Sweden, we have decided to create a Comenius Project for 2012-2014. The project “Positive Digital Citizens (PDC)” is a key to supply safe, appropriate and healthy usage of ICT both at school and at home. The project will lead pupils to become conscious European citizens having responsible behavour with regard to technology use. By implementing the project, we aim to get rid of the harmful effects of technology and to highlight the beneficial aspects of its. Especially, Pupils will be taught effective ICT usage, criticizing and being selective. We will mainly focus on digital communication, literacy, responsibility, information exchange, etiquette and security and the activities will be created accordingly. In brief, the project will give plenty of opportunities to pupils to share their interests and individual works in a digital media and to comment on, to communicate, to have fun and to gain information positively.

The potential broader impact of the project will be the change of pupils’ habits positively about using ICT. The project results will be shared with Europe-wide schools thanks to our web site and blogs to promote greater understanding and it will encourage teaching, training or other learning opportunities by the help of improved ICT skills among the target groups. The local societies will also benefit from the project results by taking active roles in most of the stages of the project by joining the online surveys, exhibitions, some activities and decision-making mechanism. As a result, pupils, teachers and community will gather technological knowledge which will be handy for life.

THE ENGLISH CLUB

The English Club was opened and started its activities on the 4th January, 2012 Wednesday in the English Classroom. I invited some students to the welcome cocktail and introduced the schedule of the club. The first day was just an acquaintance for the students and they all filled in the application form individually. There will be lots of enjoyable and productive activities throughout the education year. Some of the activities are karaoke, reading a scenery, story telling contest, making a short movie to arise the awareness among the people about environment, declamation contest, poem writing contest and so on. Opening the Club, I initially wanted to improve students' oral skills of English so I prepared the program according to this. This year will be the first and I will see my mistakes during and after the process and I will have a chance to alter those mistakes.