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.
My Class 1 pupils have recently enjoyed the story of The Very Hungry Caterpillar.
We started our lesson with a fun guessing game about food. Then, I asked them if they had ever seen a caterpillar - Was it big or small? What colour was it? What superpower has it got?
Next, I asked them to draw a big, happy caterpillar in the middle of their page. We started watching and listening to the animated story. Whenever the pupils spotted the food the caterpillar ate, they drew it in their notebooks. Soon, their pages were filled with colourful fruit and treats, and they weren't able to hide their surprise at how much food that tiny creature could eat!
Helena, I1
Aron, I1
Mirna, I1
Ivan, I1
Iskra, I1
Tea, I1
They all wowed when the caterpillar transformed into a beautiful butterfly. Inspired by that moment, they created their own butterflies. They were proud to present their work to their classmates.
As a follow-up, I asked them to explain the caterpillar's journey and name the food they had drawn. We finished the lesson with the well-known Do you like bananas? song but mentioning the food the caterpillar ate.
My Class 1 pupils have lately enjoyed the story The Little Red Hen. It turned out that only few of them had heard it before.
We started the lesson by meeting the characters of the story. Then, we watched the parts of the animated story, and, after each part, we discussed what they saw and what they thought would happen next.
After watching the last part, I asked them about the message of the story, and they agreed that it is important to help others and work together.
We also listened to accompanying songs, including the one about the hen finding another seed the following year.
As a follow-up, I asked the pupils to illustrate their favourite scenes. They did it while listening and humming along to the songs. Then, they proudly presented their colourful drawings to their classmates.
My Class 1 pupils have recently enjoyed discovering farm animals in a fun way.
We started our lesson by imagining a visit to a farm. I asked if they had ever been to a farm before, what animals they had seen there, and what sounds those animals make. Then, I asked them what a farmer looks like. I drew one on the board and asked them to draw the farmer's head in the middle of their page.
Next, we watched several animated videos and listened to the famous Old MacDonald Had a Farm song. As each animal appeared, they answered the questions about its sound (What does a pig say?Woof-woof? No!). They giggled as they corrected the silly answers.
Helena, I1
Neda, I2
Teodora, I2
Iva, I2
Lorena, I2
We drew all the animals around the farmer's head in the order they appeared in the song. At first, everyone joined in singing E-I-E-I-O, but soon, they started repeating the names of the animals and their sounds.
Finally, the pupils coloured everything and proudly showed their cheerful drawings to their classmates.
As a warm-up, I asked my Class 1 pupils what made them happy and what they were thankful for in their lives. Their family members who always spend time with them, play with them or make some delicious food for them, their home, toys, pets, food, water and air were just some of the things they mentioned.
Then, I asked them to imagine we had a holiday to give thanks for all the things we've got and asked them to share how they would celebrate it.
Later, I showed them a short video about how the Americans got the idea to start such a holiday, and, since in two groups I only had my tablet with me, not everyone was able to see everything at the same time, so we compared what we saw and completed the story.
As a follow-up, I asked them to draw their hand and use each finger to draw what they were thankful for in their lives, and here's how they did it.
Iva, I2
Aron, I1
Lenka, I2
Neda, I2
Teodora, I2
PS We've shared the videos with our eTwinning friends.
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.
As usual, the lesson about Hallowe'en was a lot of fun for my pupils.
First, I introduced my youngest pupils to the holiday. Then, I asked them to imagine we celebrated Hallowe'en and to think about what kind of costume they would wear.
Lenka, I2
Teodora, I2
Aron, I1
Iva, I2
Finally, we learned the Knock, Knock song and used their drawings to record our own version.
In teams, my Class 4 pupils wrote short poems on the topic. First, each of them wrote down 4 things that came to their mind when they heard the word Hallowe'en. Later, in their chosen teams, they compared the words and used the most common ones to write 3-line poems. Each group read their poems aloud and received feedback from their peers.
On this day come scary ghosts, Jack-o’-lanterns made from pumpkin, Mummies are giving sweets.
Beetlejuice is in front of the doors, Zombie wants some candycorns, Wednesday goes trick-or-treating.
We love watching horror movies, Pumpkins are all around the house, We dress as ghosts and go trick-or-treating.
As a warm-up, I asked my Class 2 pupils what comes to their mind when they hear the word Easter. Of course, everyone said colourful eggs, bunny and chocolate, so I asked them to open their notebooks, draw a big egg, write Happy Easter inside, and, then, make a mind map. We drew and added some of the key words, such as: chick, bunny, eggs, basket, chocolate, flower, but also egg hunt and egg roll. Some of them decided to try these games at Easter, too.
Later, I taught them a chant about Easter bunny, and gave them cut-outs, so they enjoyed colouring a paper Easter basket and eggs.
II2
After a similar warm-up and the talk about Easter games in English-speaking countries and our country, my Class 3 pupils learned a modified version of the well-known Easter song about hot cross buns:
Hot cross buns, hot cross buns, One a penny, two a penny, Hot cross buns!
If you have no daughters, Give them to your sons. One a penny, two a penny, Hot cross buns!
If you have no sons, Give them all to me. One a penny, two a penny, Hot cross buns!
III2
III3
III1
Everyone, including my older pupils, enjoyed playing the online board game:
