Istek Kasgarli Mahmut Schools celebrated the Foreign Languages Week from the 10th to the 14th of January 2011. Students from grade 1 to Prep participated in a variety of activities throughout the week. You can read about what each grade did below as well as watch a video of the activities in action.

Grade 1

Our teachers read a story to their classes without telling the students its title and showing them the cover of the book. Then, they had the students draw pictures about what they thought the main topic of the book was. After that, the students guessed what the title of the book was, and wrote their titles on their drawings. These were then hung up on the bulletin boards in our primary school corridors under the titles ‘Reading is Snow Much Fun!’, and ‘Reading Leaves You Smiling!’ The kids loved it!

Grade 2

To celebrate Foreign Languages Week, each of our students in 2-A chose a short poem to recite to the other grade 2 classes. In preparation for this, we had them make themselves crowns with a picture that went along with the poem drawn on it. They also wrote the letters mentioned in the poems out on a large piece of cardboard that they carried in front of themselves while presenting their poems. Their teacher then helped to prepare a class bulletin board with the title ‘Our Class Does it the WRITE Way!’.

Students in 2-B and 2-C decorated their classroom doors to celebrate the Foreign Languages Week. 2-B students chose Italy and focused on its map, culture, food and so forth. Students in 2-C gathered information about England and created its map, putting lots of other decorations around it. The students did research on the internet about the country they picked, found its flag, drew and painted its map, and gathered pictures of its famous people, food, places and more. They learned a lot about these countries!

Grade 3

Our grade 3 English teachers asked their students to bring their favorite items or toys to school to present them in a ‘show and tell’ activity. As an example, the teachers brought their own favorite items to class and presented them to their students. Then, students asked their teachers some questions about the items that they had brought.

Later, the students did a brainstorm activity to decide what kind of item they could bring and how to present these to their friends. The following day, they then presented their favorite items first to their classmates and then to the other students in the same grades. These activities, which helped our students to improve their thinking and expressing skills, gave them so much joy and excitement.

Grade 4

Our 4th grade students did a brainstorming activity with their teachers to define classroom rules, expressions that we often use in our daily life and basic numbers. Later, the students found out how to write and pronounce these words and expressions in English, German, French, and Italian. They learned how to say these things in all four languages and then played a guessing game, in which they translated a phrase into one of the languages when prompted by the teacher. They then used all these phrases and expressions to prepare a bulletin board comparing all four languages.

Grade 5

Our Grade 5 students watched films during Foreign Languages Week, before which they were asked general questions about the title of the film by their teachers, and made to guess what the plot of the film would be. The teachers then asked different questions about the setting and characters and wanted the students to guess what was going to happen during the film, allowing the students to draw some assumptions. At the end of the film they asked students to write a summary of the film and talk about its moral. The teachers gave cards and little awards to the students whose summary was describing the film best.

The students really enjoyed watching the films and they were so eager to write its summary. As a wrap-up activity they were given home assignments to think of a different ending for the film and write about it. Students then read their own film endings aloud in class.

Grade 6

Our Grade 6 students did some research about the Berlin Wall. Their teacher divided students into 3 groups and each group had a leader that was in charge of procedures. The first group researched the Berlin Wall and its history. Some students were in charge of collecting information, whereas others wrote the information on the computer.

The second group was responsible for preparing a slide show about the Berlin Wall with the help of their German teacher, which they subsequently presented to the whole class.

The third group decided on the decorations and the title of the task and prepared a bulletin board on this interesting subject.

Grade 7

Our 7^th graders took to the kitchen for Foreign Languages Week. They found different dishes from all over the world and wrote recipes for those dishes, cooked those dishes and then brought them to school for everybody to taste.

The students took pictures while making the dishes and presented them to their classmates afterwards. They handed out their recipes and talked about how the dishes were made. At the end, their teachers helped them to create a cook book using their wonderful recipes.

Grade 8

8^th grade students prepared posters to celebrate the foreign languages week. Working in teams, they first discussed different ideas, decided what kind of messages they wanted to give to the other students and how their poster would look. Then they brought materials to the classroom and prepared their posters. After creating them, they presented their work to their classmates, explaining the message of their posters and all the students voted for the best poster of the class.

All the posters were displayed on the bulletin boards in the corridors. The students were proud of their work and had fun working together.

Preparatory Class

Each of our 24 Prep students picked a country from a list at random. We asked them to research their chosen country and find out what they are famous for. They looked into each country’s history and culture and chose the things which they felt symbolized those nations the most. Then they presented the information they found and their own ideas to our grade 9 classes.

Here at Istek Kasgarlı Mahmut Kindergarten in the 2010-2011 academic year, we started to participate in “e-twinning” projects for the first time. E-twinning is a social network where foreign languages teachers share their knowledge, ideas and materials through different kinds of projects.

Teachers meeting at this social network participate in projects and activities choosing the most effective and beneficial ones according to the needs of their school’s curriculum, classes and students. They even have the chance to go abroad to meet their partners.
As Istek Kasgarlı Mahmut Kindergarten teachers we have had the chance to share our experience and ideas with other teachers in Europe. Besides, we participated in the preparation of a Comenius Regio Project about art and culture. Moreover, we found three partners in Europe, Spain, Poland, and Slovenia, to build up the school sistership. A demo lesson we prepared to show how we teach English here at Kasgarlı Mahmut Kindergarten was given a “Quality Label Award” by Bulgaria, Romania, Poland and Lithuania.
ISTEK Kasgarlı Mahmut Kindergarten and Przedszkole Samorządowe, Poland, started the school sistership project by sharing materials, videos and pictures of the English lessons at kindergartens to see the similarities and the differences between the schools in teaching English to very young learners. We are planning to get our students together on the internet to talk in English to each other and let the students understand how useful to learn a foreign language is.

Very young learners can learn a foreign language better than adults, but it is not enough to be successful. If we want to support our students to learn the language efficiently, we should make them realize that they learn the language for a purpose.

That’s the reason why the kindergarten teachers in our school decided to show the students at kindergarten how they can communicate in English outside the classroom.
To provide them with the opportunity to practice the target language and understand the necessity of learning a foreign language, our students were given the chance to meet a Japanese teacher, Tetsuo Kasashima, online. They talked to Mr. Kasashima about themselves in English using simple sentences. After this meeting, the students have become more eager to learn English and more open to meet the new cultures.
This term, Mr. Kasashima’s students met with the kindergarten teachers at our school online on 26 October 2010. They talked about themselves, food, weather and animals they like.
After the meeting, we received an e-mail saying Japanese students were extremely happy to meet us and their attitude towards the English lesson has changed. As İSTEK Kaşgarlı Mahmut School’s Foreign Language teachers and students we are proud to represent our school and Turkey in other countries.