Monday, June 24, 2019

#8weeksofsummer: How are you both a follower and an leader in your career?


This post is week 3 of 8 in the 8 Weeks of Summer Blog Challenge for educators.
I believe I have written more about this in one of my previous posts
In my opinion, a teacher is more or less both a leader and a follower.
A leader because we are the person who instructs in class. We have to plan lesson, create strategies, make a timeline, inspire our students, support them, show them the way to do things.
But we are also followers, since we haven't inherited the knowledge, we acquire knowledge studying, reading, attending seminars, adopting techniques and ideas from others and not only our own.

A small post from me today!



Monday, June 17, 2019

#8weeks of summer: What has contributed to the educator you are today?


This post is week 2 of 8 in the 8 Weeks of Summer Blog Challenge for educators.
I have to say that I love learning languages. And I owe this to my teachers and mentors. If you click on the words, you can find out more about them.
If you click here, you can get an idea how it is to learn a foreign language in Greece. 
When I graduated from the University, my training to teach was almost nonexistant. Back then (since I consider myself a disanaur) there was no practical methodology or teaching practice at my school (stydying German lit. and language)
I started teaching with one single class, beginners and I was struggling to find ways to make my lessons more interesting. In the meantime I saw my colleagues who taught English practising songs and games and things that were never mentioned in my school. So I decided to do some training at the British council and learn new things about organising projects, games, chants and how to adust them in my German teaching. My teacher trainer, Olha Madyluswas so inspiring that I liked this so much and decided to study and be an EFL teacher as well. 
Of course I didn't stop there. 
I have never liked "the coursebook". I use it as a tool but I always try to find new ideas and things to do with my students. 
I kept searching, I wrote on my blog, I read other blogs and articles, I met other educators, I participated in webinars, seminars, conventions, I still do. 
I believe that most of all my nature and the fact that I am a curious person has led to me being the educator I am today. And when I am not happy with what I am and how I teach, I am sure that I will change it. 
That's all for today.
Can't wait for the next one!

#Edublogsclub: My Blog Story


I have recently found a blogging challenge that dates back to 2017, but I liked it so much that I wanted to start writing.
Summer is a "dead" period for me, so blogging keeps me focused and gives me a sense of purpose.
Well, I am not a new blogger.
I have started this page 12 years ago, when blogging was not that popular, especially in my country, Greece. Now I see lots of webinhars, seminars, presentations happening especially from people who have just started and it seems really funny to me that everyone presents themselves as experts. I know I am not, although I have been writing for 12 years now.
My first post was on February 2007.
It was not clear to me back then if it was going to be a professional or a personal blog, so my first posts were a little bit of both. I had to experiment for some years and then I separated my personal thoughts to another page and I used my language (Greek) to write. My personal blog does not have so many followers and this is not its purpose anyway.
Writing about my students' projects and my ideas has helped me in many ways.
  1. First of all, there is an archive with everything I have done and I can easily find it again to use with another class.
  2. Secondly, this blog has helped me network. Not so much with clients, but it has helped me connect with other educators, exchanging ideas, talking about problems that we face and making new friends. Blogging challenges have played their part - my students and I have cooperated with students from around the world, learned about new cultures, experimented with new technologies and all this gave me a chance to present my work to conventions (online and face to face) and the networking goes on. 
  3. This is also a kind of portfolio for potential clients (students) in order to get to know me and my work a bit more, which could also be called "advertising" - but as I said before, this is not the main reasin.
  4. Finally, blogging keeps me sane. It gives me a sense of purpose, especially in the summer, when I don't work. Since our job has to do with our mind, I am a person who has to keep the mind occupied. I cannot rest for more that 4 days, so the teacher's long holiday does more harm than good in my case. 
Of course nowadays, things have moved on. Blogs are more technlologically advanced, more apps, more animations, some people don't write anymore and have "evolved" this into vlogging or Instagram. I have accounts in most social media, Instagram is a representation of my personal and not my professional life (which is good, since I am not only a teacher and to tell the truth, since I don't sell something, I don't believe that I could become a "teacher -influencer" on Instagram. This media suits more to make-up artists or models in my opinion.). I would like to try vlogging, though starting from my personal blog in my mother tongue first. We'll see how it goes. 

How is your Blog Story?



Saturday, June 15, 2019

Breakfast anyone ?

Tired of using the coursebook all the time? I am sure that we've all been there and that we always try to find new ideas to present new structures to our students.
Sometimes they get it, sometimes they don't. Sometimes you need more and more practise. What a better way to do so in a more "experimental" way?
With this lesson plan, your students (elementary level or lower)  can practise food vocabulary, colours, countries, present simple, present continuous, compare adjectives, express likes and dislikes and also learn about other cultures.

  • Ask them what they have for breakfast, brainstorm vocabulary about food, utensils, quantities (a lot, a little, a few, many) on the board
  • Ask them to draw / paint their favourite breakfast. When they are done, they show it to the student next to them and he / she can guess what it is. 
  • Ask them to present their drawing to class and describe it: e.g. "I like big pancakes with red cherry jam"
  • Show them the video with children tasting breakfast from all over the world. 



  • Stop it when the food changes. Ask them if they know the names of the differents foods, explain to them how it tastes.
  • In higher levels you can use Present Perfect (Have you ever tasted / tried coffee?)
  • Experiment with tastes. Prepare 2 or 3 things that are eaten in other countries (you have to ask parents first in case of allergies) and have the children try them. Ask them "how do they taste?", "what colour are they?", "Do you like it?"
  • Have them compare the foreign foods with the Greek ones. 
  • You can also prepare a Power Point presentation describing and comparing the food from the differents countries (if students don't know how to do it, you can help them in class with the technical stuff)
  • This presentation can be shown to the parents for example at the end of the year (along with some food)
For more pictures and information about breakfast around the world:

Wednesday, June 12, 2019

Planned Professional Growth - What are your professional learning goals this summer?


This post is week 1 of 8 in the 8 Weeks of Summer Blog Challenge for educators

I had found out about this blog challenge last year. I took part! I was the winner!
I am taking part again! It's not about the prize. (If I win again, I would like to donate the prize to someone who really needs it.)  It's about the fact that blogging makes me keep my mind occupied. I don't particularly like the summer because I have nothing to do. I find things that keep me busy until the school year beginns.

Let's begin with our first task.
I live in Greece. Some time around May, before the school year ends, most of Foreign language publishers organize events to promote their books and materials. It is not only book presentations, I have been to a lot of interesting lectures lately.

  • Oxford University Press day - Teaching for Life with wonderful sessions about storytelling and how to involve students in the stories. 
  • Express Publishing event - Introducing Generation C: A new generation of parents, students and teachers
  • York Press Day - Connecting with the video generation / Changing managerial mindset / Innovation the correct answer to most questions (the last one was performed by a very well knwn Greek marketing manager and it was very refreshing)
  • Burlington books: The implications of self-awareness in teaching (by a very well known educational psycologist)
All these face to face events are indeed very informative, you can get new ideas, take a look at new books that you might need for your next school year and it also gives you the chance to "mingle", have some coffee and snacks, meet colleagues and exchange thoughts and opinions. I highly recommend these events to colleagues and they take place all year round, not only when summer beginns.
But I can understand that we don't always have the time to go to events that need our physical presence, so there are also various online events, courses and seminars.
Here are some that I am going to attend (or watch recordings):
  • For German Teachers here are the recordings of DaFWEBCON with lots of interesting ideas about teaching German.
  • For English Teachers who couldn't attend (like me), here are the recordings of IATEFL 2019 In my opinion this is an event that nobody should miss, It's definitely an experience. 
  • IATEFL also holds webinars every month. Check our their site over here
  • Wonderful ideas and tutorials, information, webinars on the German language could also be found on the derdieDaF portal (by Klett Verlag)
  • Another wonderful site with recording of webinars with teaching ideas is National Geographic. 
  • A way to continue your professional growth is to keep studying. You can find wonderful courses, a space of collaboration in the Teacher's room,  a very interesting blog and lots of interesting material in the itdi page.
But professional growth doesn't always have to do with teaching. Maybe you would like to learn a new language. Or aquire a new business skill like using Social Media for your work. Or learn about a new culture. For this purpose, I recommend Future Learn. I am sure that you will find something that suits your needs and your likes.

So this was my first post for this challenge. Until next week. 

Featured Post

Teaching online through Lockdown

Some months ago, when I wrote a blog on online Teaching for iTDi , I could never imagine that the teaching world would turn digital overn...