European Year of Volunteering 2011

2011 has been designated by EU as the "European Year of Volunteering" in order to promote and improve the quality of volunteering, raise awareness of its importance and to empower such organizations.

So how can our students become motivated with respect to Volunteering?

I have thought of contacting PRAXIS, a non-governmental and non- profitmaking cultural organisation in Serres, which is both sending and hosting volunteers from all over Europe.
Anna Alevra, journalist and vice president of Praxis,
Kaiti Emmanouilidou, president of UNESCO Serres
and two volunteers, Tomas from Sweden and Nadja from Greece
have come to our school today to deliver a speech on how young people aged 16-30
can travel in Europe and benefit from such opportunities.
The pupils were enthusiastic and really motivated. They listened attentively and wanted to know
more details and information on EVS (European Volunteers Service). Moreover they had the chance
to communicate using English in an authentic context, since they wanted to discuss with the volunteers. 


For more information visit the following sites:


http://europa.eu/volunteering/ 

http://www.serresforunesco.org/

www.unescoserron.blogspot.com

Greek Crisis-From protests to pocket money

How do young people perceive the economic crisis?
What is their view of the world they live in?
Pupils from Pentapolis Senior Highschool have expressed their opinions,
desires and fears in an interview for BBC Worldclass, in the World News for Children.
You can find out more in http://www.bbc.co.uk/worldclass/world_news_for_children.shtml

Mymagazeen

A magazine for teenagers from all over Europe.
A place for interaction and communication.
Free exchange of ideas and opinions for both teachers and students.
This is why 5 European countries have decided to create an e-magazine
for youth, mymagazeen. Greece, Bulgaria, France, Spain, Poland and UK
have joined forces in this e-twinning project for the school year 2010-2011.
Check it out on http://mymagazeen.blogspot.com/

Remember having penfriends when you were teenagers?
Would you like to have your pupils correspond with children from all over the world?
The benefits are innumerable. To mention some, for the students:

• authentic context for real communication,  
• meaningful use of foreign languages, 
• boosting of students' confidence in using the target language,
• raising cultural awareness, 
• development of social skills

and for the teachers:

• interaction with teachers from other countries 
• exchange of knowledge on educational issues
• as well as ideas and practical tips

The best part though is writing actual letters, sending little gifts and stickers, anticipating the envelope
with our friends' letters, learning about how children live in the USA.
The school we are corresponding with is Decorah Middle School, in Iowa.
If you want to find partners to launch an international project you can visit and register
on one of these sites:

http://www.globalgateway.org.uk/
http://www.epals.com/
http://www.elanguages.org/
http://www.britishcouncil.org/learning-connecting-classrooms.htm  (only UK schools can sign in)

Mind maps

Brainstorming: a technique designed to generate a large number of ideas.
Cmaps: A useful tool to put these ideas on a diagram and share it with colleagues and pupils.
While attending the session Reflection and Practice on Virtual Education of the Electronic Village Online, a professional development project and virtual extension of the TESOL Convention, I have created this cmap about the roles of the teacher and learner in Blended Learning.
The Cmap tool was used to design this concept map. You can download Cmap Tools for free from http://cmap.ihmc.us/download/

Blended learning

View more documents from doragk.

Christmas Cards to our Penfriends in USA

This year we created our own Christmas cards to send to our penfriends
in Iowa, USA.
Pentapolis High school pupils brought their own materials (carton, pens, glitter etc), we
revised useful Christmas vocabulary and wishes and while listening to music we
produced our cards. A few days later we sent them to Decorah Middle School, IA.

So this is Christmas..

Christmas Holidays have arrived again and at school we had a nice celebration before closing.
The pupils staged a play about Christmas traditional stories from Greece and we finished with a
popular John Lenon song, visualised by one of our pupils, Sakis Grigoroudis (3rd grade of Junior High school) as part of a Christmas project for the English lesson.