Morning of Thursday, 8th of October 2015, and we have come to the highest summit of the cliff where the village "Saint Myron" is located. At that spot, the Elementary School is built. Its manpower sums up 3 teachers and about 50 students who come from Saint Myron and the surrounding villages Pentamode, Petrokefalo, Pyrgou. A well-preserved old classical building, with thick walls, big doors and windows, spacious rooms and an impressive court yard with ancient stones and inscriptions -the ruins of Ancient Raucous, indicates the historical character of the place. At this beautiful place, the School's Head Master Mr. Michalis Kotrotsios, the two teachers Mrs. Despoina Manouseli and Mrs. Katerina Mayiopoulou and quite many small groups of impatient students gave us a warm welcome.
For the first two hours, we gathered at a spacious room which soon became overcrowded, filled with too many seats and the total number of the School's students. Our mission was to travel along with the Earth to its Yearly Space Trip and to be acquainted with the reason for the four Seasons and the change of the day length (from Sunrise to Sunset). Assisted by media (videos and interactive applications), we studied these phenomena in all widths and lengths of the Earth, but also as viewers from Space -a role we played in a theatrical play.
A small break and we moved to the world of Maths. A and B classes learned the first powers of number 2, namely numbers 1, 2, 4 and 8, by folding in half paper sheets again and again. The game "Guess my number" followed, according to which a student thinks of a number from 1 up to 15 and then another student guesses the number by the mere information on which out of four tables it belongs. All students became excited and eager to learn the "trick" and then apply it: It was just to add the first number of each of those tables the secret number belonged to. But the fun reached its peak with the "magic cards". They were "Magic" for two reasons: they opened from the middle of the card revealing two more hidden pages and also some images changed their order (the left would come on the right and the right on the left) as the card was flipped. Of course, the little students didn't omit to color their cards, enjoying the task totally and showing their work when they were done!
Next, was C and D classes’ turn. Being a bit older, they were involved with the original "Guess my number" game which includes 5 tables with numbers from 1 up to 31. Students filled carefully a relevant worksheet and so they learned that the powers of 2 are just enough to express each number as the sum of them (the binary arithmetic system). Magic cards were shared to all of the students at the end of the hour, but unfortunately, there was no time left to explain their construction. Even so, we were truly forced by the students to briefly demonstrate the construction during the break -so eager they were to learn!
We finally met the students from E and F classes, who also filled the worksheet for the game "Guess my number". They felt quite free to move around and soon we were impressed to see one student here helping his fellow student and some others there having turned their chairs and formed small groups of 4 to cooperate!
The time was up and we left the School. As we scrolled down the little narrow village roads, some villagers informed us they had already learned about the magic cards from our students. What a wonderful feeling this was! Our lesson had flown out of the walls of our school to the neighborhoods and coffee huts through our students who had become teachers for a while. We thank you so much, our dear little friends! See you next year!
Irini Perissinaki (Mathematics teacher)
- Irini Kassotaki (Greek language teacher)
- Irini Kassotaki (Greek language teacher)
Experimental General Lyceum of Heraklion
For more, visit the webpage "Math Laboratory" (Experimental Schools of Heraklion): http://mathlab.mysch.gr/friends/2015_agios_myron/index_en.html
