Lesson 3

Lesson 3: 5th June 2019, 12.30-1.15 (Y5 x 13)

Lesson Objectives

• Recap rough/smooth breathings, plus ‘mikros’, ‘megas’ and letters learned in Chapter 1
• Introduce new letters alpha, kappa, lambda and tau, plus the dipthong alpha+iota

 

Welcome, settle

Pupils sat in roughly the same groups as last week. Any Jason comics done for homework were taken in while whiteboards and markers were given out.

1. LESSON STARTER TASK: What Can You Remember? quiz  plus (spontaneous!) name writing [20]

DETAILS:

1. Name two English words that start ‘mega-’. For a bonus point, what does the Greek word ‘megas’ mean?
2. And two that start ‘micro-‘. For a bonus point, what does the Greek word ‘mikros’ mean?
3. What sound does a rough breathing make?
4. Write a rough breathing and a smooth breathing.
5. How is an iota different from an English letter i?
6. Describe in Greek letters what I’m doing [humming]

OUTCOME: As an incentive, the winning team got to have Basil on their desk for the rest of the lesson.

REFLECTION: The Basil incentive was very popular! In fact, there was a Basil-napping, which gave me the opportunity to ask, “που ᾽εστι Βασιλ;” with the children working out the meaning of που (to much amusement!). Scores were very high, with only the last question separating the teams. Recall (even after the half term break) of breathings was accurate: the correlation of the rough breathing to a ‘6’ and a smooth breathing to a ‘9’ definitely aided memory retention.

Various pupils had been asking if they could write their names in Greek characters, so we spent ten minutes doing this. I walked the classroom helping pupils with questions such as’ “Where’s the ‘f’?” and “what if there’s an ‘h’ in the middle of my name?”. One pupil suggested we make name badges – a great idea that I’ll try to do in the coming weeks.

2. ACTIVITY: Story recap p.7  [5]

DETAILS: Volunteers read through the concluding narrative to chapter 1. Since the pupils had taken the Jason story home and read independently, we didn’t cover this part of the chapter in class.

OUTCOME: There was a slight stumble over ‘barbaric’ but another pupil spontaneously helped with the pronunciation and meaning

3. ACTIVITY: Chapter 2 opening narrative and new letters [10]

DETAILS: Volunteers read through the opening narrative to chapter 2. I deliberately chose a confident volunteer to read Basil as there was new vocab with new letters. I explained the new paradigm of the purple vocab box to the class, and showed how in the first few chapters the words will be both translated and transliterated so they could be more easily read out loud. I also went through the new words orally.

OUTCOME: Initially, the pupil reading Basil assumed he had to translate the words as he read but I said he was fine to read the Greek. This he did with no bother.

REFLECTION: It was important to flag up the new words before reading as there used some new characters.

4. PLENARY: Exit tickets

DETAILS: As last week, students were asked to say one thing they’d learned and give their emoji response to the lesson.

OUTCOME: Many children remembered που – hopefully this will stick until chapter 4 where it is introduced. Others commented on being able to write their name in Greek characters.

REFLECTION: I may make a game of που ᾽εστι Βασιλ;, or at least incorporate into the intro quizzes.