Summary of March

 Alev Çalımbay Atakul/50. Yıl Chrysler Secondary School

March is the reading month for us. We read and finished "Great Expectations" by Charles Dickens. My students loved it a lot. Before we started reading I was anxious about their probablity of disliking the story. But they internalized the story so deeply that, they even discussed about the most beloved character of the novel, the most exciting chapter etc. They all had many ideas about the development of the characters and our protagnist Pip's bumpy life.

They felt sorry about Miss Havisham but also they felt angry at her behaviours to Pip and Estella's relationship. Most of my students' favourite character was Joe, because of his endless kindness to Pip.

After we finished reading, we watched the movie adaptation of the novel as well. It was a very successful adaptation. Students liked it a lot and watched it carefully in order not to miss any scenes.

You can see the summary of our March activities in the video below:

Finally, We Read Great Expectations

Alev Çalımbay Atakul/50. Yıl Chrysler Secondary School

March is the month that we finally started reading the marvellous novel "Great Expectations" by Charles Dickens as we mentioned before.

My students were really excited to read an English novel in its native language as they have little chance to do it because of their level. But throughout this project, they improved themselves a lot. Now, they have the confidence to understand a novel that simlified to their level. And this enthusiasm makes me really happy.

In this month we came together from time to time in order to analyze the story. Students helped each other to discuss the main topic and character development in the novel. They all had a favourite character and a favourite chapter in the novel. Listening to their thoughts was a great joy for me.

How about a vocabulary puzzle?

Alev Çalımbay Atakul / 50. Yıl Chrysler Secondary School

In the process of reading Great Expectations, we are learning a lot of new words. Some of them can be seen very often in the book. So, in order to make our students internalize this new words and improve their vocabulary, we created a word puzzle.

These are the words we should find in the puzzle:

ORPHAN                                     FORTUNE                            CHAIN
BLACKSMITH                             GRAVEYARD                        CONVICT
APPRENTICE                              TORCH                                 EXPECTATIO MIST                                           STARVE                               PREPARE
BENEFACTOR                              JAIL                                    CRUEL

(If you can't remember you can get help from your dictionary.)

Here is our puzzle: (you can see bigger if you click the link below.)

Great Expectations Vocabulary Puzzle

We have started reading "Great Expectations"

 Alev Çalımbay Atakul / 50. Yıl Chrysler Secondary School

This month, March is our reading month! Our students are reading one of the most outstanding novels of English Literature, "Great Expectations" from Charles Dickens.

Dickens was one of the authors we worked on the previous months. Our students researched about his life, his works, his lifetime challenges etc. They even masqueraded as him during the presentation month.

And finally we are reading one of his masterpieces. We hope our students will learn a lot from this marvellous story. Our great expectation is that the students can feel close to some kind hearted characters in the story. 

To maintain a full understanding of the story for our 6th graders, we obtained the stage which is suitable for their English level. We're still at the process of reading and analyzing the story before the last event of the project.