Tunagür Time

P r i v a t e E r k u l T u n a g ü r K i n d e r g a r t e n - P r i m a r y - S e c o n d a r y S c h o o l s B u l l e t i n - M a r c h 2 0 1 3 - N o . 1

Private ERKUL Schools WonGold Medal at TÜBİTAK

English at ERKUL TUNAGUR

Kocaeli’s private Tunagür School won 1 gold medal in the 17th Na-tional Science Olympiad, which was organized by the Scientific and Technological Research Council of Turkey (TÜBİTAK) and concluded on Wednesday.

The awards were handed out during a ceremony held at the Ministry of Education’s As-sembly Hall in An-kara. The olympiad covered the subjects of mathematics, phys-ics, chemistry, biology and computers.

The students who won medals have taken their awards from Nihat ERGÜN, Minister of Science, Indus-try and Technology, Prof. Dr. Davut KAVRANOĞLU, Deputy Minister and Prof. Dr. Yücel ALTUNBAŞAK, Head of TÜBİTAK. The students who represented Turkey in 2012 at International Science Olympiads

have been awarded as well. Students from Private Erkul

Schools ; Furkan SÜNGÜ won Gold medal, Eray GÖNÜLAL won Sil-ver medal and Hakan GÜLEÇ won Bronze medal. We are proud of mak-

ing a name of Kocaeli in na-tion wide. Since its foun-

dation Private Erkul schools have won 1 golden, 7 silver and 8 bronze medals in total in Mathemat-

ics Olympiads held by TÜBİTAK. It has dem-

onstrated again for being the first and only in KOCAELİ.

“ We have put a mark on the re-cord which is hardly broken in KOCAELİ as Private Erkul Schools as a result of value we have given to science and scientists. I congratu-late all teachers, parents and stu-dents who contributed efforts for the success,” said Rıdvan ADAŞ, the General Manager of Private Erkul Schools.

Language learning and lan-guage acquisition are the two ways of gaining a language. We say that the first language is ac-quired and the second language is learned. This is because we

understand that the first lan-guage is acquired through ex-perience while the second lan-guage is usually comes with formal teaching. Language ac-quisition takes place in a con-

stantly stimulating environ-ment: children are exposed to their first language from the very beginning and they liter-ally bombarded with language all the time.

Continuedon page 6

The interview with the districtgovernor of Gölcük: ADEM YAZICI

A few students from Private Erkul Tunagur school visited Adem Yazıcı and had an interview with him.

On Page7WASHBAG PROJECT

2nd grades: The unit is “Keep Clean!”. In this unit we learnt what we put in a washbag. As a beginning stu-dents made washbags.

On Page8

In our book, one of the characters called Rocket wanted to draw a happy face for him-self with a green mouth, yellow nose, blue eyes and a red face.

At Tunagur Kindergartenwe made happy faces 4Our coursebook is “The Learning Ladder”. The Learn-

ing Ladder has 6 characters and students like these char-acters very much. They work with small puppets and masks of the characters in the classroom.

Looking back at the last two years we would like to share our great experience of partici-pating in comenius project during 2010-2012 years.

Fun With “The Learning Ladder” English Coursebook.

Following the Lead of Fairy - Tales 32

THE MASSACRE in CONNECTICUT SCHOOL on December 14th.

Everybody remembers those awful breaking news from America that “ Twenty-six people -- 20 students and six adults -- were shot and killed at the Sandy Hook Elementary School in Newtown, Connecticut on December 14.”

On Page7

Looking back at the last two years we would like to share our great ex-perience of participating in comenius project during 2010-2012 years. Our project was called “Following the Lead of Fairy-Tales (Sharing the Fairy-Tale Treasure around Europe)“ and dealt with fairy-tales of all participating countries very deeply.

The project was established among five countries: The Czech Republic, Slovakia, Poland Turkey and Greece. With the help of English language we tried to share our cultural treasure , our experiences , ideas and talents ( as actors ,while performing “ Nasreddin Hodja “ play ).

The pupils and teachers from part-ner schools had a wonderful opportu-nity not only to communicate in a for-eign language, but also to make new

friends, and also to overcome cultural stereotypes and prejudices of individu-al nations.

During the project all the partici-pants had to introduce their countries, towns and schools . Also we had to prepare a play of one of the tradional fairy –tales .So we decided to introduce Nasreddin Hodja ; as a wise man who still makes us laugh at his jokes,- no matter how old we are . Working on the presentations gave us the oppor-tunity to realize some typical features of our own culture. We motivated our students to discuss the similarities and differences of the cultural values of the participating countries.

During the two years in the project our 20 students and 21 teachers had the opportunity to go abroad. We had the chance to visit the capitals of

Czech Republic, Poland , Greece and Slovakia.

In each country we visited , we had the chance to introduce Başiskele as our town, Kocaeli as our city and Tur-key as our great country by entering their English classes .We tried to teach at least a few words in Turkish, spend-ing great time with students becoming friends and exchanging little souvenirs.

In October , 2011; Private Erkul Tu-nagur Primary school played host to four partner countries . Being host for our partners made us excited. Every-body wanted to participate and was ready to do their best in this period of time. During that time we cooper-ated and we had a great job.

Finally, at the end of the second year a big bus full of students and teachers from Tunagur went to Agria Volos /

Greece. Travelling abroad, developing social relationships and being in the middle of the situation, the students felt self-confident of speaking English.

On our way to Volos we visited Thes-saloniki, the house where Mustafa Ke-mal Ataturk was born. In Volos / Ag-ria we had a warm welcome in Greek school. I’ll never forget those friendly Greek students with Turkish flags in their hand waving cheering “ Turkey ! “ , “Turkey ! “Who told that Greeks don’t love Turks ?

For students it was a good opportu-nity to practice English in real life. They also learnt how to behave in different circumstances. They could see how the educational process took place in other schools. We are sure that their moti-vation will increase in what concerns learning English and learning in gen-

eral. From this experience the teachers had things to learn, too.The activities of the project took place under the sign of respect and tolerance towards other cultures and religious beliefs. But everything in this life has an end and our project also ended. Nevertheless I think our friendship will go on . That was a great experience for all of us.

With the help of this issue I would like to use the opportunity to thank again and again all the teachers ,the students and their parents , who par-ticipated in and supported this project and had done their best ( no matter much or less !).

You are all the heroes of this project !!!

School coordinator of the E.U.Comenius Project:

Natalia Gür

2 Private Erkul Tunagür Kindergarten - Primary - Secondary Schools Bulletin

Following the Lead of Fairy - Tales

Project meeting in Tunagur

Tunagur in Greece

Tunagur in Czech Republic

Tunagur in Poland

Tunagur in Slovakia

Our coursebook is “The Learning Ladder”. The Learning Ladder has 6 characters and students like these characters very much. They work with small puppets and masks of the characters in the classroom. Also, we have a big puppet of Freddie, our main char-acter.Every weekend, one of the students take Fred-die home for the weekend, look after him and bring him back to school on Monday. They speak English to Freddie, because Freddie can’t speak Turkish.

In each unit, students work with a story which contains all the new language they are learning. They watch its video on the smart board and do activities on it. They act out the story several times in the class , and at home.

Students learn different songs and rhymes to rein-force the language they need to learn. We play differ-ent games and do different activities to develop their skills.

At the end of each unit, students do a project by us-ing the language they have learned. We send a letter to the parents at the end of each unit explaining the language that students have learned so that the par-ents can work on it at home.

English Teacher: Elif OĞUZ

3Private Erkul Tunagür Kindergarten - Primary - Secondary Schools Bulletin

FUN WITH“THE LEARNING LADDER”ENGLISH COURSEBOOK

Before the class the teacher (it’s me) made hats for each of the students. And during the lesson first they col-oured, then wore them. Again, we had a lot fun…

We also wanted to f ly like Melody, Star, Twig , Rocket and to learn the colours while f ly-ing. So we drew hot-air bal-loons. We coloured each of them with a target colour. Of course by making a group for each of the colour. We had six groups for six colours(red,blue, yellow,green,purple, orange ).

After colouring we cut the bal-loons and we sticked them on different places in the class and played “The Run to” game .

At the end we sticked our photographs which had been taken before group by group on the balloons and we f lied.

In our book, one of the characters called Rocket wanted to draw a happy face for himself with a green mouth, yel-low nose, blue eyes and a red face. But meanwhile he coloured his face by mis-take. It was so funny that made us laugh

a lot. Then we decided to make happy faces

for ourselves. So we all had a lot of fun and recited the colours ( blue, green,red, yellow )and the parts of face (eyes, ears, mouth, nose ),too.


Colourful hats at Tunagur Kindergarten

Learning The Colours While Flying...

At Tunagur Kindergartenwe made happy faces

Engilish Teacher: Emine KUNT


By making a tasty cake in age 5 group at Tunagur Kindergarten , we repeated the words : eyes, ears, mouth and nose in an enjoyable way.

A day before the lesson all the students brought two oranges to the class. We went to the canteen cheering : Juice! Juice! Juice! And there the students squeezed oranges to make juice for themselves. So we gained a lot of vitamines.

We had a project about the family members. Students introduced their fam-ily members to their friends. Of course, we were a bit excited during the presentation but we enjoyed it. Then we sticked the pro-jects on the board.

CAKE

Orange Juice

Our Family Members

Engilish Teacher: Emine KUNT

As a result of the recently introduced education system, popularly known as the “4 4 4” there are 15 lessons of English per week for the 5th graders. • 7lessonsMAINCOURSE• 5LessonsSKILLS• 3LessonsFLYERSaretheparts

ofEnglishatERKULTUNAGUR.5th graders have;• anonlineOxfordtest

• two Oxford practice tests foreach term.Toincreasemotivationwe:• tried to create an English at-

mosphere by drawing different views of Londonstreetsandculturalbuildingsonthe walls of the school corridors. • organized competitions based

onthestudents’coursebooksfrom3rdto8th grades.

• heldthepreparationsforthean-nualSpeakupcompetition.• didprojectsaboutgivingper-

sonal information by using students’ own English.• everySaturday,wehadEnglish

club meetings having a lot of fun and extendingourEnglishknowledge.Hatice Bakmaz ,5th grade English

Teacher

Languagelearningandlanguageacquisi-tion are the two ways of gaining a language. Wesaythatthefirstlanguageisacquiredandthesecondlanguageislearned.Thisis because we understand that the first language is acquired through experiencewhile the second language is usually comes with formal teaching. Language acquisi-tion takes place in a constantly stimulating environment:childrenareexposedtotheirfirst language from the very beginning and they literally bombarded with language all the time. Although we cannot reproduce thesecircumstancesexactly,weshouldtryto provide our students with at least some of the stimuli which are present in language acquisition in order to facilitate languagelearning.Ifwethinkofteachingastheothersideof

learning, then by trying to understand bet-ter how children learn we can teach them better.Learningisoftenconfusedwithstud-ying or memorising. Because we, as adults, have already acquired learning strategies,we often confuse learning with studying. Studyingisatoolforlearning;itisnotlearn-ing in itself. Languageisusuallydeliveredintheclass-

roomfollowingtherulesoflanguageAC-QUISITION:listening,speaking,reading,then writing. Thismeansthatwe:……… present the language orally; the

student listens……… then ask the student to reproduce

this language orally; the student speaks……… then present language in the

written form; the student reads…….. finally ask them to reproduce this

language in a written form: the studentwrites.Thefourstepsinthisprocessmeanthat

thestudentexperienceslanguagebeforere-producing it first in the oral form then in the written form.By “experiencing language”we do not mean that they simply hear or read something once and are then able to reproduce it perfectly; this does not happen even with the first language and it certainly will not happen with the second language because children”s learning characteristics andimplicationsaffectlearning.So;• Childrenareenergetic.Theyneed

to move a lot.• Children are noisy. You cannot

expectaquietclassespeciallywhileyouareteaching a spoken language! • Childrenarequick-quicktolearn

andquicktoforget!Theyneedtoconstantlyrevise what they have learnt.• Children like to use their senses

aswellastospeak.Theyneedtosee,hear,touch, smell and taste.• Childrenhaveimegination,sowe

use it. • Childrenarefunandenthusiastic.• CHILDRENARECHILDREN.

DONOTEXPECTTOOMUCH.EVE-RYTINGCOMESWITHTIME.HaticeBakmaz,EnglishTeacher


English at ERKUL TUNAGUR

1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 18 19 20 21

(07) (11)(16)

opposite of weak

(08) (20)(05)

very fat

(01)

not fat

(19) (14)(06)

beautiful for a woman………?......... for a man

(18) (15)

handsome for man………?......... for woman

(03)

can’t be active

(10)

rude, not polite

(17)

(04)

doesn’t want to study

(02) (13) (12) (09) (21)

doesn’t love money

Our aim is to find the password with unknown adjectives. We’ll look at the hidden pictures and try to recognize the adjectives. The first student who finds the password is the winner and got a prize. English teachers: Sümeyra Söylemez Akın

TeachingChildrenEnglish


Everybody remembers those awful breaking news from America that “ Twen-ty-six people -- 20 students and six adults -- were shot and killed at the Sandy Hook Elementary School in Newtown, Connect-icut on December 14.” Within minutes, 26 people were dead at Sandy Hook Elemen-tary School -- 20 of them were children. Among the six adults killed were Dawn Hochsprung, the school’s beloved principal, and school psychologist Mary Sherlach.

The students from Tunagur school couldn’t help themselves but write their condolences to Barack Obama the presi-dent of the USA at the English lessons.

Tunagur News Agency

THE MASSACRE in CON-NECTICUT SCHOOL on December 14th.

The interview with the district governor of

Golcuk: ADEM YAZICIA few students from Private Erkul

Tunagur school visited Adem Yazıcı and had an interview with him.

Golcuk District Governor : Adem YAZICI

He was born in Kayseri in 1965. He finished primary and high schools in Kayseri.

He studied at the faculty of politi-cal sciences department of econom-ics.

He graduated in 1988 and started to work as a governor in 1989. He has been a district governor for 23 years.

He is married and has got three children.

Question 1. Where and when did you first start to learn English?

Mr.Yazıcı : It was in 1970 when I first started to learn English in sec-ondary school . Un-fortunately I didn’t have any other opportunities to improve my Eng-lish , because there were no English courses as there are today.

Question : 2. How did you learn English?

Mr .Yazıcı: That’s a good question. In Turkey I studied English eight years but in this process I couldn’t learn English well enough . A year later just after I became a district gov-ernor, I was sent to England by the goverment. The essence of learning English, in six months, I managed to learn English which I couldn’t learn in ten years in Turkey. In England we not only had an English course but also we lived in that culture. I stayed with English family and so I never spoke Turkish, I had to speak English to communicate with people in that family. This was very important and played a big role at my learning in a short time. Of course I do not speak at advanced level but now I am able to communicate for my work.

However we have long term Eng-lish courses in Turkey, we can’t get the same quality as learning English in it’s country. I advise everybody to go to England to learn English.

Question: 3. Do you need to use English in your daily life and job ?

Mr.Yazıcı : As a district governor I have a little chance to talk to foreign people ,maybe once a year. After I came back to Turkey from Eng-land, I tried to read English journals, and newspapers , to watch English channels in order not to forget and to im-prove my English.

Question : 4. Do you need to use English too much

in your job?Mr.Yazıcı : I don’t need to speak

English here because we usually work in the provinces (village) areas and so we don’t need to use English. But when you have to work at the boundary lengths; Iraq border, Iran border, Syria border, Georgia border, Bulgaria border and Greece border, in these areas you have to know Eng-lish to communicate with neighbor countries . I have advantages because I can speak English.

Question: 5. When did you decide to become a district governor? Was it at primary school ?

Mr .Yazıcı : At my primary school years , unconsciously I wanted to be a doctor or an engineer as every child did . Now, you are much luckier than me, because you learn everything clearly at little ages.

At my 3th class of university, I decided to be a district governor.

Question : 6. What must someone do to be a district governor?

Mr .Yazıcı :To be a district governor, you must graduate from law, political or economic administrative faculties, then you must have a governorship special exam, after that you must have an inter-view exam in ministry. Finally you can be a district governor.

Question : 7. Which people can be a district governor? What are the personal qualities?

Mr.Yazıcı : You must be helpful, understanding, honest, brave ( you are able to go everywhere in your country), patient (for example in late hours someone can knock your door and you can’t say that now I am not working it is not my working hour) and you must love your country, your nation too much. So district governor is a very difficult job. During these 23 years of being a governor I tried too much to be in my present position.

Question :8. What is the next step after being a district governor ?

Mr.Yazıcı :After being a district gov-ernor, you have a chance to be a prefect governor, a vice-governor and an in-spector of ownership. It is possible for a district governor to get a job in every department of ministry because of get-

ting interested in everything. Thank you very much for

accepting our interview and spending your time for us.

Mr.Yazıcı : Thank you very much for you questions, too.English Teacher:Soner KARAOĞLAN

We

use activeboard

during our English

classes effectively. So the

students become more active

and productive.

NURHAN KARATAŞ,

7th grade

Englishteacher

WASHBAG PROJECT2nd grades: The unit is “Keep Clean!”. In this unit we

learnt what we put in a washbag. As a beginning students made washbags. First they took a piece of cloth, then they cut, pasted it. Then they decorated their washbags using some buttons, beads and ribbons. At the end they put tooth-brushes, toothpaste, combs and soap in them. Our washbags are ready. :)

English teacher : Sümeyra Söylemez Akın

Yeni Kandıra Yolu ÜzeriÇayırköy Mevkii İzmit/KOCAELİ

ADRES :ARİFBEY MAH.ZÜBEYDE HANIM CAD. NO: 184 ARİFİYE - SAKARYA

Tel: 0262 367 41 92 - 93 Fax: 0262 367 42 42

TEL: 0264 229 41 54 FAX: 0264 229 41 55

www.minikosk.com.tr

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