The learners of all my classes and I have carried out interesting projects this year. As compared with previous years the development was that the parents’ involvement in our educational work increased significantly. We may say that a big project was realized, English in the Family.
Let’s begin with the first graders. The work with them seems to be easy, but actually it is rather difficult as I have to make them love me, the English Language and gain some knowledge at the same time. We began learning the ways of greetings, colors and fruit names. The sequence of topics was chosen so that the learners might be able to make up short dialogues matching colours with fruit names, telling the difference between domestic and wild animals and also saying which of them they like or dislike.
During Mkhitar Sebastatsi Days the first graders of New School began realizing a project the aim of which was to summarize all the words and expressions they had learned for two months. By using the program Paint Each learner was to draw himself/herself, his/her favorite fruit or a domestic animal, and then to make a film describing his picture.
The result: a video film in English with the first graders participating in it. We staged a a song dance on colors and presented it during Media Friday. On the Mother’s Day we recorded a series of radio wishes. The parents enjoyed it very much.
We have made a Merry Video Film about animals and their babies. The learners have drawn animals with their babies using the program Paint a recite quatrains dedicated to them.
The second graders carried out a project called My Family. The aim of the project was to make a video film where each learner was to draw the picture of his/her family and to enter a small text about the family.
The third graders began carrying out the project About Myself in their blogs. Each learner was to write a small text about themselves using the vocabulary they had already learned. Here are examples: Haik Nahapetyan, Slava Mirzoyan, Arev Sukiasyan, Nane Sargsyan, Astghik Hakobyan, Haik Ghazaryan, Irene Karapetyan,Ruzan Babajanyan, Yeva Zilfimyan, Aren Hakobyan.
The learners’ next in turn creative work was making up dialogues with already learned language structures and vocabulary. The third graders wrote a letter to Father Frost in English and published them in their blogs.
I’d like to mark the project “English at Home” realized by the third graders. Each learner was to involve his/her parents in this project. The learners were to speak about their favourite animals, toys or lead a conversation with their sisters or brothers, and the parents were to record their voices or shoot a video film. The project was a success during the period of distant-online teaching in January 2016. For example, Mary Mailyan made toys using Play-Doh (plastiline) so as to make her story more attractive. Her mother made this video film using the AVS program, and Mary tries her best to pronouce English words in the right way. Angelina Simonyan is teaching her younger brother to speak English in their family video film. Davit Khachatryan is telling about his friend. Davit’s mother says they shot the film very quickly in their kitchen. The film shooting turned out to be very funny thanks to Davit’s younger sister. She kept repeating Davit’s English sentences, and when the film shooting was over, she already knew Davit’s whole text by heart. The film was made by using the program Pinnacle Studio. Yeva Sahradyan and Ruzanna Babajanyan visited each other’s places to shoot this conversation.
The 4th graders realized the project “The New Year in my Family”. Each learner was to make a film or Power Point presentation and publish it in his/her blog. Here are some examples: Lira Khachatryan , Satine Ter-Petrosyan. Our next project was realized during Tumanyan Days. With the help of their parents the learners made films or radio performances on the Tumanyan’s tales The Death of Kikos and The Black Kiddy. During Easter holidays the learners made Power Point presentations how they marked Easter in their families.
Making radio materials for the Radio Sebastatsi has been a new educational activity for us.