METU DEVELOPMENT FOUNDATION ANKARA MIDDLE SCHOOL
ENGLISH LANGUAGE PROGRAM
The main purpose of the Middle School English program is to equip our learners with the 21st century higher order thinking skills such as critical and creative thinking, and problem-solving within the framework of a skills-based curriculum. Throughout this teaching and learning process which is centered around meaning-making and purposefulness, a process-driven, criteria-based and constructivist approach is adopted. Building self-confidence in our learners, whom we pledge to help grow into autonomous individuals, is also highly valued and emphasized.
Since our learners’ active participation in the lessons is significant, pair and group work activities are critical to our practices. Besides, in order for our students to experiment with and produce target structures more effectively, role plays, presentations and other communicative language practices as such are incorporated into the learning environment. At all levels, as part of English literary analysis lessons, our learners are invited to read English literary works and develop a critical way of thinking.
In line with the learning process, the learners’ academic progress is closely monitored with a scientific approach. Throughout the year, our learners’ language skills are evaluated through a variety of assessment tools, which are written exams, grammar and vocabulary quizzes, speaking performance tasks, writing portfolio and project assignments.
In accordance with the Ministry of Education’s Regulations on Secondary Education Institutions, Preparatory Exemption Exam which our students are required to take at grade 8 is administered by the High School Directorate.
CLUBS, PROJECTS AND ACTIVITIES
JMUN Club
Junior Model United Nations (JMUN) Club, which is organized every year with the participation of our 7th and 8th grade students, is a simulation of United Nations. In JMUN, our middle school students act as representative country delegates and take an active role in the processes aimed at overcoming the world problems. As part of the JMUN events, our students attend conferences during which they take part in debates on behalf of the specific countries they represent as delegates in several committees and come up with proposals to solve the world problems.
English Drama Club
In accordance with our educational philosophy, which aims at raising physically, mentally and psychologically balanced and healthy individuals, we are determined to prepare our students for their future lives as sociable, self-confident, creative and productive individuals in good terms with art.
In our school, which supports every kind of activity to reveal and improve the talents of our students, thanks to English drama, our students are given the opportunity to implement the language they learn by having fun and experiencing the real life. Furthermore, our students share the well-deserved pride of theatre play, which they work on throughout the year, with their families and their teachers by staging their play at the end of the year.
Erasmus+ Interscholastic School Education Partnership Projects: “Motivation By Innovation”
Motivation By Innovation is a project our school has been implementing in collaboration with Denmark, Portugal, Slovakia and Poland as an Erasmus+ Project approved by the European Community and Turkish National Agency. The project, which started in 2016 and is planned to continue until 2019, emphasizes the importance of lifelong learning. Its main aim is to promote the exchange of best teaching-learning practices and innovative approaches in different countries as well as enabling the cultural and academic improvement of our students and teachers on an international scale based on the innovations Information Technologies have introduced to education.
Destination Imagination (DI)
Destination Imagination is a non-profit, volunteer-led, cause-driven organization. It is cause-driven because it inspires students to be the next generation of innovators and leaders and equips them with the relevant skills. The program aims to help our students adopt a different stance towards issues and boost their creativity using the 21st century skills.
The Destination Imagination program also encourages teams of learners to have fun, take risks, focus and frame challenges while incorporating STEM (science, technology, engineering, and mathematics), the arts, and service learning. Our students learn patience, flexibility, persistence, ethics, respect for others and their ideas, and the collaborative problem solving process. The teams showcase their solutions in the tournaments.
My Schools Network
Our school has been a member of the international platform named My Schools Network since Ron Barendsen and Rolien Bos-Wierda, instructors at NHL University of Applied Sciences, introduced the project to our students in 2015-2016 academic year. Through participating in salient events, our students have been effectively using this international platform and fulfilling great achievements for two years. This year, the project will be carried out with the participation of the 6th grade students.
Future Problem Solving Project
The main purpose of this project is to enable the students to come up with solutions for the problems likely to pose a serious threat for humanity and the world in the future by getting them to implement the scientific and analytical problem-solving processes. The project will be carried out with the participation of the 5th and 6th grade students.
Reading English Books
With an attempt to help our students develop the reading habit, our students are invited to read the unabridged age and level-appropriate books selected for them and carry out several activities and book analysis projects.
