Seven School Wonders
Connecting through Pride in Our Schools
Introduction to our school
Our school is in the middle of Ankara, the capital city of Turkey. The name of our school is "Ali Riza Bey Primary School". Ali Riza Bey is the name of the father of Ataturk who was the founder of Turkish Republic. There are 430 students, 15 teachers and 12 classes in our school. The students are between 7 to 14 years old. Morning classes start at 7.50 and finsh at 12.40. Afternoon classes start at 12.50 finish at 17.40. There is no nursery class.
First wonder
Sovereignty and Children's Day
Turkey is the only country that bestowed a festival on children. Every year, the children in Turkey celebrate this "Sovereignty and Children's Day" as a national holiday. Schools participate in week-long ceremonies marked by performances in all fields in large stadiums watched by the entire nation. Among the activities on this day, the children send their representatives to replace state officials and high ranking bureaucrats in their offices.
In our school, students are coming together to celebrate their fest with shows and several activities such as folk dancing, theatre, games, sports, reading poems etc. The students start well in advance to prepare their costumes for the dances, dramas, marches and other performances which traditionally take place on April 23. The classrooms are also decorated for the festival. The pupils make different types of cut-paper displays, put out balloons in many colors, even write on the blackboard.
Second wonder
Reading festival
Reading festival is the festival of children who learns reading and writing. In order to celebrate the beginning of children to reading, reading festival activities are orginezed for first classes on a day the class teachers sets. To this end, the class turn into a festival place. Children learn poems by heart for the reading festival. They learn tales, stories and anecdotes which are as well as one from the other.
Our school is opened and the children come to school holding their mothers' hand. They sit down on the desk with excitement. They listen to the tales and stories that their teacher narrates. They sing songs.
Third Wonder
Theatre Day
Every year in December, our students play a theatre called “theatre play of students”. The scenarios of theatre plays are given to students by their teachers. The students study their roles about three months. In the theatre day, the students participated to this activity play the theatre in real theatre saloon near the school for their parents and their friends.
The name of the play was “mistakes” in this year. This theatre play was totally different than the plays of formers. It was an interactive play.
In first stage, there was a mother, father and three children. The subject of the first stage was the expectancy of well educated parents from their children. The parents wanted great success from their children in every aspect and they forced them to play the games regarding their professions. They ignored the children’s real wishes.
The subject of the second stage was about the parents who did not care about the psychological and emotional aspect of their children. The parent of this stage was only interested in show off.
Third stage was about the children who had to work to live and look after their parents and their brothers and sisters. They collected the garbage and papers to survive and to go to school.
In all these stages, the students were showing us the mistakes of their parents about the life they deserved. At the end of the play, every students pointed out that it was their lives and they had right to do something for their lives.
