Christmas 2024

Two weeks before winter holiday have been pretty busy.

Class 1 and Class 4 pupils enjoyed making their cards for our friends from Lithuania, Romania, Spain, Taiwan, Türkiye and the USA.

Together with their friends from Croatia, Greece, Romania and Türkiye, Class 7 pupils created a digital card. They added some lights and the gingerbread man to the Christmas tree and put the image of the elf's legs in the snow. They also added some spring images to April in the collaborative calendar.

Class 1 pupils learned the famous song about Santa with ease.

 

They also joined the GSA contest and designed their baubles as a group. Everyone put their unique touch on them.

We organised online meetings with our friends from Mallorca and the Canaries on 10 December and New York on 17 December, shared how we celebrate Christmas and New Year, and sang We Wish You a Merry Christmas song.

As part of the Festive Coding activity, Class 4 pupils had fun coding in Scratch and drawing using Pixel Art while as part of the Eco-Coding Wonderland activity, Class 7 pupils enjoyed collaborating on the design of a virtual sustainable city with a Christmas theme. With their project partners, they also created and played a digital escape room game and decorated a virtual Christmas tree with eco-friendly ornaments.

SDG 2

The topic of food waste really captured my Class 7 pupils' interest. Zero hunger was the first sustainable goal they focused on as part of the Sustainable Future eTwinning project.

They created surveys on food waste at school and at home and conducted them among Class 5-8 pupils. Then, they analysed and presented the results to their peers.

They also used AI Music Generator to create a rock song about food waste at home called Wasted Plates and a disco song about a balanced diet called Healthy Vibes.

They got creative with recipes that use leftovers and local products, which helped them understand how important it is to reduce food waste and make the most of available resources. 

SDG -No hunger

Click to read this book, made with Book Creator

read.bookcreator.com

The Little Engine

 In our story lesson, my Class 1 pupils joined in with the story cards, enjoyed the short, animated video, drew their favourite moments, and shared them in the guessing game.

Most of them liked the part when the small engine bravely pulled the train, showing that even little ones can do big things.

Teodora, I2

Iva, I2

Aron, I1

 

Bojan, I1

Lenka, I2

 

Neda, I2

 

Transport

 In Class 1, we began exploring the means of transport with lively drawings and colours. I drew a car, a bike, a train, a plane, a lorry, and a boat on the board, and the pupils copied them into their notebooks. I also included the easy ones to remember in English because they sound almost the same in Serbian, like helicopter, bus, motorbike, and scooter.

We used a colour dictation to make the activity playful. 

Teodora, I2

Lenka, I2

Neda, I2

Aron, I1

Iva, I2

Helena, I1

Afterwards, I asked if they had ever travelled by plane, train or boat, and which was their favourite means of transport. Most of them said bike and car, which made the lesson even more personal and engaging.

Cultural Quest

 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.

Sustainable Future

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.

Where is?

Whenever I want to introduce my youngest pupils to the rooms of the house, I play this song. With memorable moves and yeahs, it always proves to be a success.

Where's Grandpa?
In the dining room.
What's he doing?
He's eating fish.

Where's Simon?
In the living room.
What's he doing?
He's watching TV.

Where's Suzy?
In the bathroom.
What's she doing?
She's having a bath.

 Where's Stella?
In her bedroom.
What's she doing?
She's reading a book.

Where's Grandma?
In the hall.
What's she doing?
She's opening the door.
And going to the kitchen.

 

How many?

This is yet another old song which is great for learning numbers and plurals. It's always enjoyed by my youngest pupils:

How many, how many, how many?
Ten girls, ten girls.
How many, how many, how many?
Nine boys, nine boys.

(Eight windows, Seven doors, Six footballs, Five bikes, Four chairs, Three tables, Two rubbers, And one ruler.)

Iva, I2

Neda, I2

Lenka, I2

Teodora, I2

Thanksgiving Day 2024

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.

Thankful Tunes

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.