Tarsus Borsa Şehit Umut Sami Şensoy Anadolu Lisesi
Tarsus Borsa Şehit Umut Sami Şensoy Anadolu Lisesi, located in Tarsus/Mersin, is a general state high school preparing students for university education and also raising responsible, respectful to universal values, successful and virtuous students within the general objectives of the Turkish Ministry of National Education, from 9th to 12th grade. The students are between the ages of 14-19. There are currently 700 students in different levels of learning and 38 teachers with various teaching experience, 4 administrative staff, and 5 service staff. There are 20 classrooms with interactive whiteboards, 2 science labs, a reading room (school library), a room for table tennis and dart games. There is a football pitch and a newly-finished area for volleyball and basketball in the school. İn our curriculum, there are lessons concerning science, social studies, sports, health and languages.
The teachers at our school are open to any useful new techniques, methods, and approaches and eager to improve themselves at relevant levels. In our curriculum, there are lessons concerning science, social studies, sports, health and languages. We had a questionnaire to evaluate our students’ interest in history and 293 students joined it. We believe that this project will be very helpful for our students to develop their knowledge of geography which is taught at our schools and unfortunately seen as an extra and unnecessary lesson although they have to study to be able to get a good score at university exams.
We have a project team for this project and it has 3 English teachers who have experience in preparing and coordinating the project. And also, in the project team, there are 2 History teacher and 1 Philosophy teacher. During the project, these teachers will be in collaboration. English teacher who is responsible for this project took an active role in preparing an Erasmus project on the Roman Empire. And also he prepared a project critical thinking and media literacy. In both of 2 projects, activities for collaboration, communication, creativity, working as a team and also skills of foreign language and ICT were included. Also, he was selected as User Group Teachers of Europeana which is Europe's digital cultural heritage platform and this experience will be very useful for the project. In case of a problem, other English teachers will take responsibility.
Ancient civilizations and geography
Description of the activity:
The main aim of this mobility is to make students think over how our ancestors were affected by the geographical conditions around them and also in which conditions they thrived or failed. So, they will make searches about the first civilizations in the world that reigned for a long time and common points among the geographical conditions of the areas they were founded in. And we will ask them to search for the civilizations, cities or states that collapsed or were destroyed because of some geographical conditions. And also, students will prepare informative videos about these civilizations and cities and they will be collected on an interactive map that can be used in history and geography lessons.
The host country will prepare an online exam about these cities and civilizations and it will be applied before and after the mobility to evaluate our students' progress in the topic. Before the meeting, we will create a padlet and the participants will introduce themselves and tell their expectations and feelings about mobility. And also, the host school will introduce the planned places and activities on the padlet. And on the first day of mobility, we will have some ice-breaker activities to make students and teachers know each other and teachers will have a meeting about the aims and activities of the meeting. And we will have a city tour and visit some of the important places. And we will create teams of students that will work together during the meeting. And also, we will distribute the tasks of a writing story, preparing videos and a photo exhibition and painting to students who are gifted in these fields. And on the last day of mobility, they will prepare these works. Our students will see the places where some of the ancient cities were founded and study the geographical conditions around them via excursions to the places where some of the most important ancient cities were founded. We will visit Zeugma ancient city which was one of the most important and richest cities of the Roman Empire. In the museum, students will be given a worksheet to find some mosaics and characters on them working as a team in a given time.Our teachers will join a workshop on 21st-century teaching skills. As a creative activity, our students will join the activity of preparing toys of ancient civilizations that will be introduced to the kindergarten students in the area of the host school by the host students after the mobility. And on the last day of the mobility, we will arrange a mini-congress, and participating students will present what they have during the mobility to the host school's students and teachers.