Author and translator: Anna Ganjalyan
Editor: Yura Ganjalyan
According to the syllabus of the English language for the 2012-2013 academic year for Grade 4 and the foreign language standards for primary schools, the learners have acquired the following knowledge of the language and communicative abilities on the themes mentioned below: Greeting and saying good-bye They can use expressions of greeting and saying good-bye which are typical for different hours of the day. For this theme the website http://genkienglish.net/greetings.htm has been used as an additional teaching material. At the beginning of the school year I taught my 4th graders the song «The Goodbye Song» which comprises both numbers and commands for performing different actions. While listening to this merry song the children sing and perform different actions simultaneously. My family and I, my friends They can introduce themselves, their families and friends using the personal and possessive pronouns and also make up short conversations with general and special questions in the Simple Present and Present Continuous verb tenses. In their speech they can use the following adverbial modifiers of time: always, every day, now, yesterday, last year, last week, last month. The seasons of the year The learners can name and describe the seasons of the year. During the lessons I have used the following song for children as an additional teaching material. My house (flat) They can describe their flat using prepositions of place. While teaching this theme a special attention was paid to the formation and usage of plural forms of the countable nouns both in oral and written speech and also to the usage of some and any. This theme was also suitable for introducing the simple constructions of comparison of adjectives. When our lesson was about the rooms of our flats and different objects in them, an idea occurred to me to make a karaoke by changing the words of a song “Guessing Words” . With this song my class took part in the merry Media Friday at the end of the year. Later we could always use the music of this song with new contents by changing the words. “Meals” and “Time” The learners can say what they like and what they don’t like to eat. Teaching the names of different foods, fruits and vegetables was accompanied with using such transitive verbs as: give, take, eat, drink. Time expressions were used while speaking about breakfast, lunch, dinner and supper. http://genkienglish.net/doyoulike.htm ; http://genkienglish.net/vegetables.htm My School The learners can name and introduce the School garden with its classrooms, big hall, swimming pool, gym hall and green garden. The ability of communicative writing The learners can fill their short autobiographical data in a form mentioning their names, parents’ occupation, address, and their school name. Taking into account all this we have refused to use standardized tests at the end of the school year, instead we have wanted to reveal the learners’ communicative abilities by using ICT. Checking the language competency of our 4th grade learners My 4th grade learners present their short CV and short “My Day” descriptions. I chose this topic because it is connected with all the other topics the learners have studied this year. Every day children have meals, go to school, mix with their family members and get busy with their favourite occupation. Their language knowledge is also used to fulfill this task. The presentation is done in Power Point program. Each learner’s voice has been recorded and attached to the text with a photo. In fact the stressfull examination has been replaced with a festive business card which is very much like a language passport. According to the syllabus of the English language for the 2012-2013 academic year for Grade 6 and the foreign language standards, the learners have acquired the following knowledge of the language and communicative abilities on the themes mentioned below: My friends and relations (description of a person) The learners can comprehend by listening and also can make up simple extended sentences when introducing the family members and when giving a short description of a person’s appearance. The teaching of this theme was accompanied with using the comparative structures of adjectives. After having studied the theme the learners wrote compositions with the title “My Friend”. My preferences (music, computer games, reading, sport) The learners can listen to and comprehend simple extended and also make up their own sentences with the Simple Present, Simple Past, Simple Future, Present Continuous, Past Continuous and Present Perfect verb tenses when speaking about own preferences. The can make up and conduct conversations with general, special, alternative and disjunctive questions. The seasons of the year Besides describing the seasons the learners can also use the prepositions of time with hours, dates, week days, months, seasons of the year and years. The video video lesson which had been made with the learners of Grade 5, was used during the lessons of Grade 6. My School “Mkhitar Sebastatsi” Educomplex The learners can speak about their primary school-garden. The film lesson made by me and the learners of Grade 5 was used as an additional teaching material for the learners of Grade 6. http://anulganjalyan.wordpress.com/category/films/ Checking the abilities of the 6th graders I fulfilled a short term project with the learners of Grade 6. The project is called “Farewell to School-garden”. This project is in fact creating primary school-garden leaving package in which each learner tells us what the school-garden has given to them. The short stories differ from each other with their contents: “What subjects did we do at School-garden?”, “Morning General Training”, “Educational Trips”, “In Addition To Our Classroom Lessons”, “The Computer and We.” http://anulganjalyan.wordpress.com/category/presentations/ A ten-point system is used for evaluation For correct pronunciation – 3 points, for the vocabulary and contents of the speech -4 points, for the correctness of language structures -3 points.