My Box Of Life

                                          My box of life

  ‘ My box of life ‘   is an international school project .It  has been developed  to emphasize  the pupils’ identity and diversity in the classroom enviroment.

This  project was first created by my Spanish colleague Anabel Borras Gonzalez  and ıt has already been developed with different schools before.

 And Now the participants of the project are the 5th level students of the school  Ali Durmaz Secondary School from Turkey and the 5th level students of the school  Joan Sallarès i Pla from Spain.

Aim of the project

Through their boxes of life, the students tell  briefly about themselves . So  The aim of the project is to make  students  become  aware of  the others  from different  countries and different  cultures and  make them  get to know each other as well.

Here is the picture of students of Ali Durmaz Secondary School

  the picture of students of the school  Joan Sallarès i Pla

And here students  with the boxes

 Project Development

The project is planned to be done in three stages:

1- Collecting  the objects.

2- English work.

3- Recording and sharing.

In the first stage,

 Each child has a box and they put 4 objects which are important for them into the box .

These objects are :

• one family photo

• If the ethnic origin is different , something typical from their countries

• An object which is important for them for a special reason

•  one object that shows  what they would like to be in the future.

After they put everything into the boxes they told the reasons why they put these objects. But they used Turkish / Catalan languages to explain their  reasons Because they could  feel more confident  in their own languages

In the second stage,

 we used a very simple guide to translate the explainations  into English.  and then students  studied their texts for some time.

                                  My Box Of Life

       Hello,My name is …………. And This is my box of life.

      1-  I have got  a …………………… 

       It is important to me because ……………………………………..

      2- I have got  a …………………… 

       It is important to me because ……………………………………..

      3-I have got  a …………………… 

       It is important to me because ……………………………………..

       4- I have got  a …………………… 

       It is important to me because ……………………………………..

In the last stage,

 Students  talked by showing the objects in front of the camera and  We recorded them and  uploaded the videos in the school’s bloc then  we shared  them with the friends in Joan Sallarès i Pla  .

Here are the example videos  of students.

The first one  is Hüsniye ‘s video from Ali Durmaz Secondary School

The second one is Laura’s video from Joan Sallarès i Pla

Assesment

It’s been a very effective and and enjoyable  project.

First of all students enjoyed  a lot. It was a good experience for them . ıt  encouraged  them  to talk about themselves, use English and know about the others. They learn to accept and tolerate the others from different culture and heritage .

Then , students got the opportunity to interact with friends from a different country so This made them  broaden horizons

Thanks

 Firstly I  want  to thank my  colleague  Anabel   for working together in this project. Then I want to thank my students because they were so enthusiastic to do this project. And also I want to thank to Anabel’ s students . It’s  really good to cooperate and share ideas with different people from different  countries.

I hope we can work in different projects again.

                                  Hamide Kartal Yılmaz

              English Teacher at Ali Durmaz Secondary School

                                        Bursa ,Turkey