Greek

The Junior School at TJSS, as a pioneering and modern school, aims to provide a multifaceted and multilevel education. Taking this as a theorem, the Department of Greek adapts and upgrades the quality of its education so that it is creative, systematic, and modern, detached from any teacher-centred and knowledge-based method. Moving in this direction, we also make sure that the material provided to students is always progressive, contributing to the expansion of students' critical thinking. Furthermore, the school provides the opportunity for children who are non-native speakers to attend Greek lessons from the very first stages of their school life. Therefore, students have the opportunity to learn the mechanisms necessary to use the Greek language to communicate and express themselves.

In addition, in the Greek curriculum, we offer a course in mythology, starting in Y3, to travel thousands of years back when the ancient Greeks created myths, and gradually progressing from mythology to history from Y4–Y6, to discover the historical life and the cultural heritage of Greece and Cyprus. Finally, beginning with the school year 2021-2022, the Greek curriculum includes additional hours of music and physical education, both taught in Greek and separate from music and physical education lessons taught in English. The aim is to cultivate the use of the language at different levels by utilising a variety of thematic vocabulary as well as that of music and physical education.

In order to enhance and invest deeply in the educational and linguistic axes of the Greek language, we have a new setup for the course of the language. Through this, we have upgraded the structure of our school curriculum for Greek by reinforcing the textbooks, replacing some texts in the school textbooks (after approval from the Ministry of Education based on a relevant circular notified to us), adding new modern and interesting texts close to the experiences of children, removing some thematic units, adopting new literacy practices, engaging in interactive and playful activities, and adding new (hand) materials. The new setup refers to Y2-Y6 classes.

The structure will be as follows:

Greek as Foreign Language: GFL is for children who they don’t have Greek as their mother –tongue language and they don’t know the Greek language. We use an extended Curriculum, with a common set up in curriculum for each Year group; their material is adapted based on the needs of the children. The GFL level starts from RECEPTION up to Y6.

Transitional Greek: In this area are the children whose mother tongue is not Greek but they have some knowledge and understanding of Greek. The curriculum is differentiated for their needs. The transitional level starts from Y2 up to Y6. This set up will empower children who have difficulty managing the Greek language with a further focus on deepening their language acquisition.

Mainstream Greek: Mainstream Greek is for children who speak Greek fluently even though their mother language might not be Greek. They follow the same curriculum and books as the Advance level, however they have differentiation in pace, in the selection of texts and grammatical phenomena to be taught and generally in the 4 axes of Greek curriculum (reading, writing comprehension, speaking and grammar) based on the needs of the class. This set up will empower children who need more time to understand and apply the grammatical rules, to code, decode a text, more guidelines in writing and in reading comprehension based on more step by step procedures.

Advanced Greek: In this area are the children who speak Greek at a very high level. This set up will empower children with a further focus on quality deepening in language teaching for children using more advanced level books and class material. Children will have the opportunity for (critical) literacy extensions to all axes of the curriculum through projects, additional literacy practices e.tc. The advance level starts from Y3 up to Y6.

These groups and levels are determined by their understanding of the spoken Greek language as well as their reading and writing abilities. This setup is only used in primary education. Furthermore, the levels only apply to teachers; the separation of children in Greek as a target language in a context where the primary spoken language differs and is applied holistically, with the goal of meeting their needs and abilities.

Because we believe that learning is always more effective and efficient when it is accessible, understandable, and enjoyable, we use creativity as our guide. Thus, group and experiential activities, as well as modern educational methods that allow for the safe use of technology, are just a few "tricks" that ensure our ongoing interest in children and, of course, the development of their imaginations.

Years 1 & 2

The main goal in KS1, is for children to acquire the language skills required, so that they can communicate in all aspects of the language, written or oral speech on the basis of the communicative approach of language in order to accomplish the follow learning objectives:

to read texts with fluency and expressiveness, to understand them and to express their opinion in terms of their content, their structural elements and form (code and decode texts).
to produce written speech in a variety of textual genres
students to critically control what they hear and express themselves with comfort, accuracy and clarity thus cultivating their critical awareness.
to recognize grammatical phenomena and apply them in written and oral speech and of course to understand the structure of language intuitively.
to write clearly, legibly and elegantly in fluent writing.

Years 3 - 6

The main goal of teaching the Greek language is for children to acquire the necessary skills so that they can communicate in all aspects of the language, whether written or oral, on the basis of the communicative approach to language in order to accomplish the following:

Awareness and familiarisation with the language and its structure
Use the language with the ultimate goal of effective communication (written and oral) within a communication context.
Reading and writing comprehension: coding and decoding texts.
Writing: Creating written speech based on or inspired by authentic topics and in a variety of textual genres to familiarise children with genuine written communication situations.
Emergence, processing, comprehension, and application of grammatical elements through text processing.