Opening their wings like the seagull!!!

Fly up to the sky!

The main purpose of our literature project is to involve English learners of as many age groups and levels. This is why I thought to encourage elementary school pupils at A1+ level to participate.

As I was flicking through their anthology of their Greek language subject at school, I came across Odysseas Elytis' poem 'The seagull'. I had no doubt that we would work on it. The reason? I have a special predilection to that bird as I always connect it with freedom.

The problem was that this poem has never been translated to English. Here, I would like to thank a good friend of mine who offered to help me out and make a free translation of the poem. The aim of the project is not the translation but to get the meanings, emotions, thoughts through into the world!
Since we went past this obstacle, I was confident that they would perform excellently and they will get wholeheartedly involved. The idea that their work will be uploaded in YouTube and that other English teachers will watch it filled them with excitement and eagerness.

The first step was to find information about the poet. They did their research and in the very next lesson they were ready to answer questions about Elytis' life and work. We picked up the main points through questions. This is how it looked:

The Kids :)

In our next meeting we will start working on the poem. The best are yet to come!!!