OZEL TARSUS TOROS ILKOGRETIM OKULU
Contact person:
Ece ERDİNÇ
eceerdinc23@hotmail.com
Tarsus Toros Primary School is an academic co-educational school which is located in Tarsus (an urban area between two big cities Mersin and Adana. We have a sister school in Mersin and also a university called Toros University which operated by the same organization. There are currently 188 pupils in Grades 1,2,3,4,5,6,7,8. We don’t have students from different countries. As well as other educational successes foreign language teaching is one our mission. The main focus of our school is integrating all skills like social , humanistic, scientific..etc. In order to achieve this, lots of extra curriculum activities occur in the school. The project will be a new context for us as an extra curriculum activity , the students will learn new things by discovering. Also our school organizes and takes part in activities such as science fair projects, language contests, sport tournaments.. The only lackness is that our pupils don’t have the chance to meet foreign people or internationalize. So we need a variety, motivation to arouse our pupils’ curiosity. In this project, teachers will be involved by exchanging their experiences with colleagues in the foreign schools. Also, we will be able to share our efforts with other European schools and utilize more experienced schools or teachers. Involving in this project in terms of making our pupils aware of technical knowledge in the European context is important for us because it will have a lasting impact with different cultures, people and experiences. Also making technical boxes by ourselves is a new concept for us. It will give a variety to our studies. As a private school bringing new aspects to learning is our inevitable effort. Bringing technology to our classes is another way of making students learn in our school. So we use i Tools for on interactive boards in our all classes.
Integrating all skills is the key of real learning and adopting this idea is important for our institution and staff. During the education year, we are given different kinds of seminars as a teacher for this aim. Attending this seminars, we add new experiences to our knowledge and share what we have with others. On the other hand, in our school we have well informed teachers who can reflect their ideas into the classroom, through this project we will have the chance to share our knowledge and exchange our ideas in addition to put theoretical knowledge into more practice.
Considering the fact that different learners learn in different ways, the ideal materials for learning is an important issue. Toros Schools use design and technology context as an instructional tool to make young learners more creative not only in language learning but also other subjects. Tarsus Toros Primary School organizes science and invention challenges annually and encourages students to participate in such organizations. So, the activities develop students’ creativity and motivation to learn new things. Projects are also important for us, each term students prepare their own projects using their creativity like making up a story by illustrating it and take part in contests in that way our teachers always cooperate other teachers in different schools to gain more information. Our school supports the teachers considering ”the more they know the more they can share information” so this project is also a chance for our teachers and school to share what we have as a teacher.
As a modern school, we all aim to give chance to each of our student to discover their own world with experiences. If we can involved in this project, our students may have the possibility to see how they learn the language by attending to its culture. Books and classes are not always enough for the student to learn. Even the best teachers are not enough for the best learning of any language. So, with this project we have the chance of having real life conversations in real situations.
As our language department, we really trust on our curriculum but we still have the effort of improving our cultural learning activities. For example, we have different cuisines of different countries in our lunch every month. We prepare posters, learn the ingredients and watch videos before the lunch and then we enjoy different meals. These are really helpful activities to see different cultures but we expect more and more. So, we want to eat a cultural food in a real restaurant by giving an order in a different country.
We also consider exchanges. We are planning to take exchanges as much exchanges as we can and we will visit every partner school at least one time. Because we care not only learning but also teaching different cultures.
If we attend the programme, we have the chance to show the benefits on our advertisement sources as websites and other things.. The website of the project will last for several years, the partner school will link to that and will put their own experiences also on the home page of the partner school. We will inform our parents and others by the school newspaper, the website and the local press or local radio and/or TV.
