First of all, I'd like to welcome you to my blog. My intention's to make it a place for cherishing great memories of working with school children.
Here you'll find some tips, projects done by my pupils, their essays and poems, video clips (I don't know if it's me, but my pupils really enjoy singing), and things that can be interesting and useful.
All the photos, videos and pupils' work are published with permission.
All media are either original, free for use, or include credit to the source.
As part of our Celebrate with Us! eTwinning activities, I challenged my Class 4 pupils to spin the wheel, research, and create an infographic about a festival. They agreed to spin the wheel until one remained, so they finally landed on Hallowe'en.
Using trusted online resources, they explored key facts and selected images for their collaborative infographic.
Later, they teamed up with their international friends to use shared infographic details in creating an interactive escape room game. Playing it in our last lesson was a lot of fun.
In our latest lesson on sustainability, Class 7 pupils explored what makes a sustainable school.
As Eco Agents and Eco Avengers, some joined forum discussions exchanging ideas on how schools can become more eco-friendly:
In schools we can use drainage to collect rain water for plants because that water is better for plants than tap water.
In schools, students and teachers use paper and a lot of it goes to trash. We can renew old paper and use it many times.
The teachers can organise the class where students will learn how they can contribute the eco schools and the sustainable future of the schools.
The technologies will be eco and use electricity. There will be solar panels which collect energy for all electricity in school for better future.
For every tree cut down, we should plant a new one. We should replace normal trash bins with recycling ones. We should encourage others to recycle and care for plants.
I think the perfect green school would be if pupils followed a few rules.
Number one: instead of throwing away the paper bags from their lunches they would recycle them. Number two: pupils would receive a back-to-school kit from recycled bottles, plastic bags etc. Pupils and Teachers would certainly not be turning on the lights when its daytime, when the sun sets, they can turn on their power-saving LED lights. In every classroom will be open windows for natural sunlight and a plant for more oxygen.
and how we can set composting stations in our school gardens:
We can find a place in the shadow and put some compost bins there. Then, we can put our leftovers and orange and banana peels in the bins.
Younger children have lunch at school, so we can ask the woman who works in the kitchen to put stale bread or leftovers in the bins too and help us make compost for our school garden.
They also shared their ideas of small actions to help the environment:
First step to help the environment is when we cut trees, for each tree we cut down we plant a new one. Also, every school should add a recycling bin instead of normal bins and encourage students to throw their trash into those bins. These changes could help increase the number of trees and there will be less trash on the ground in school yards. I think politicians should start encouraging ppl to start throwing their trash into recycling bins. These small changes could really help the environment and clean up school yards.
I personally think that if we stopped cutting trees and instead planted more would help the environment. At home I could turn the lights off when not needed, close the tap water when I'm not using it, so I can save water. A new habit I could start today is to start a charity work, many people would gather up and clean the streets, lakes, rivers, cleaning the whole city and planting plants like trees, flowers etc. I would personally call it the Plantvengers.
Others imagined themselves in a sustainable school, described classrooms and wrote diary entries describing a day in such an eco-friendly environment. They also designed accompanying images using AI.
Pupils then brainstormed their ideas and came up with 5 highlights of a green classroom. Finally, they used GravityWrite to write the lyrics, and Suno AI to create a pop, uplifting song.
Hopefully, these activities, inspired by our Sustainable Future: Our Actions, Our Impact eTwinning project, helped pupils think critically about their role in creating a better, greener tomorrow.
In our lessons about extinct and endangered animals, we usually discuss those living in other countries. This time, I asked my Class 7 pupils to turn their focus closer to home.
Working in teams, pupils researched and designed infographics and posters showcasing Serbia's endangered animals, including the griffon vulture, brown bear, and otter.
Some enjoyed working on our collaborative acrostic poem. They added three lines (Earth is our home, let's keep it clean! Inspire each other, every day; Create a world where every new day looks bright), created accompanying images using Canva, and recorded their messages using Chatterpix Kids.
Later, we used AIMusicGen.AI to transform the acrostic lyrics into a catchy pop tune.
Finally, as members of an international team, they imagined themselves as animals facing various challenges and expressed their feelings. They also suggested solutions to solve certain problems. You can find their ideas in the collaborative e-book Saving Our Earth: Problems and Solutions.
Talking about animals is always fun for my pupils. Each year, I try to introduce fresh activities to keep them engaged and help them learn and use new words.
As a warm-up, I asked the pupils to look at the poster on the board and guess which animal I was describing. We recalled our last year's lessons, where they worked in groups to create animal habitats. We mentioned where different animals live and what they eat.
Next, two volunteers read a short text from our book about turtles. We discussed their size, colour, habitat, and what makes them special.
Then, I drew a large mind map on the board and asked the pupils to do the same in their notebooks. We brainstormed what to include in their writing, and agreed on: name, size, colour, habitat, food, abilities, and fun fact. To support weaker pupils, I wrote sentence starters as well: My favourite wild animal is ... . It lives in ... . It can ... . One interesting fact about it is ... . The pupils used the information from their mind maps to write a short paragraph about their favourite wild animal.
To wrap-up, a few volunteers read their paragraphs and received feedback.
In the next lesson, pupils designed infographics showcasing their favourite wild animals, using the information from their mind maps.
My Class 7 pupils got very inspired by the topics of clean water and its importance, as well as the animals living in the water.
While one group focused on different aspects of the water cycle, others suggested tips for saving water, shared slogans discouraging water waste and designed posters with slogans shared by other partners.
Later, I asked my pupils to imagine themselves as animals living in the water, so they explored their lives and explained their choices to their international friends in a joint presentation.
Some wrote poems about the sea and the ocean and left comments on the Underwater Poetry Wall.
The activities were suggested by the partners of our Sustainable Future: Our Actions, Our Impact eTwinning project.
Gender equality was the next topic for our Sustainable Future: Our Actions, Our Impact eTwinning project.
As part of my Class 7 research, we brainstormed different jobs and looked at how many women and men do them. In our school, for example, there are more female teachers than male. The situation is more or less the same in other schools, but also in health care, shops, banks and other services. However, there are still more male employees in agriculture, industry and construction.
We also talked about famous Serbian women and why their work is important. In teams, the pupils created infographics and posters introducing these successful women.
Later, the pupils thought carefully what to include in their prompts and used Canva's AI to create images of boy and girl characters for our collaborative books. They voted for the best designs and added paragraphs to complete the books: Leo's Family Team: A Chore Adventure and Breaking Barriers: Lily's Journey in STEM.
Class 5 pupils tried out Story Wizard app to create their story about a girl called Meena who makes her dreams come true when she becomes a pilot. After reading the story, they discussed it and answered comprehension questions. They felt disappointed when they realised that the app only allows one free story.
I've recently invited my Class 5 pupils on a cultural quest. Their mission was to spin the wheel, do research, and design an infographic about the chosen country.
First, they decided to spin the wheel until one country remained, and it turned out to be Türkiye. By using suggested safe webpages, they started exploring and decided which key facts and images to include in their infographics.
Later, they shared their work with our friends in the Cultural Bridges Across Europe eTwinning project.
But the journey didn't end there. They used the information shared in the infographics created by other partners to collaborate on an interactive escape room game.
To inspire my Class 7 pupils to explore environmental issues and sustainable practices, I decided to involve them in the eTwinning project Sustainable Future: Our Actions, Our Impact.
We started by completing pre-surveys and discussing the SDGs in the lesson and online, on the forum.
In teams, my pupils designed logos and later voted for the best ones in their opinion. We also created a video introduction for our project.
This autumn, we've joined the eTwinning project Thankful Tunes: A Thanksgiving Celebration. I thought that it would be interesting for my pupils to learn more about Thanksgiving while collaborating with their peers from different countries and improving their language skills through music.
First, we completed pre-surveys, then designed and voted for logos. Teams from three different generations of my pupils got creative and had a lot of fun.
We used words like family, gathering, pumpkin pie and cranberry sauce to create a word cloud in WordArt.
We also joined online meetings, introduced our schools, congratulated the logo contest winner (a girl from Spain), and sang our well-known song about cherries.
Both Class 1 and Class 5 pupils enjoyed the letter drawing activity. In groups, my youngest pupils drew Thanksgiving symbols on letters P and T, while the older ones coloured the letters in ScrapColoring.
My older pupils left a few comments on the forum, including their favourite tongue twisters on the topic and their pumpkin pie recipe.
My Class 7 pupils added a few lines to the collaborative acrostic poem and tried several AI-generated music tools before choosing a country song they really liked. They also agreed that all the versions sounded pretty similar. Finally, they added the audio to the document.
My Class 5 pupils also created a chain story together with their Spanish friends. First, they discussed what to include in the story, added the text, and then chose the scenes for each page, designed characters and added the speech bubbles.
Our last activities were sharing one word that best describes our project and completing the final surveys.
We started the lesson with a guessing activity. The pupils looked at the poster and answered questions like,
Where do you go when you want to see a film? Is there a cinema in our town?
Where do you go when you want to play with your friends, ride a bike or swing?
Where do you go when you want to buy some bread? Is there a bakery near your house?
In this way, we revised different buildings and their locations.
Then, I informed them that we would switch to the station rotation activity and reminded them what it includes.
In teams, the pupils sat down at different desks with tasks. I informed them that they had to finish their task before moving to the next station clockwise:
Online Spelling Game: Play an online game to check the spelling of different places.
Building Description: Read descriptions and stick different buildings where they belong on a map.
Place Guessing Game: Play an online game to guess the correct place based on clues.
Dialogue Practice: Order the dialogue and act out a situation in the street to practice giving directions.
Neighbourhood Design: Design a perfect neighbourhood in 3D or as a physical poster.
Finally, I asked my pupils to use small pieces of paper and write something they liked on one side, with a heart or a plus, and something they would change or improve on the other side.
As a follow-up, I asked them to complete the tasks in their books related to places in the town.
PS Here are the links to my pupils' 3D neighbourhoods: V1, V2 and V3.
