Materials for the lesson

The Teachers Bell.

Layout of the classroom

The desks are scattered around the classroom so the students can step-up and recite a piece about the hero-personality that they represent during all the period that they were taught about the Greek Revolution and its heroes.

1^st Phase

This lesson (historic overview), is based on the Section of each lesson that has the title “The Historic Sources narrate”.
In each chapter there is a piece that refers to the Heroes and Personalities talked about the Fight or other Known Writers talked about the heroes.
The teacher separates a piece that he/she thinks is important and gives it to each student of the class. The children either read it or even better learn it by heart and recite it.

2^nd Phase

 The teacher prepares a simple narrative text that is interrupted in various parts so the students can intervene with their pieces and present the Hero-personality that they were assigned to research.

This narrative text covers all the history of the Greek Revolution (Section C- 6^th Grade History) and is presented by the teacher so they students will have a Dramaturgic axis (central point) to base their own intervenient.

This text can be like the following:

TEACHER:It all started in 1814, when 3 Greeks met in Odessa (Russia) and decided to constitute a strictly conspiratorial organization (Society of Friends). Its goal was to prepare the revolt of all Greeks and their liberation by the Ottoman Rule (the Turks). These 3 men where : Nikolas Skoufas, Athanasius Tsakalof and Emmanuel Xanthos.

Xanthos:(the student that has this role) (in simple translation)
“ I feel hatred against Turkish tyranny so I had the idea that it was possible to create a secret organization that will achieve the liberation of our Nation”.

TEACHER: Goal of the Society of Friends (Filiki Eteria) was the general revolution of the Greeks and the “Establishment and Liberation of the Greek Nation and our Country”. Many where the ones that swore to the goals of the “Society of Friends” made its Oath of Induction.

Three Children  (or more, come in front to the Teacher and recite the Great Oath of the Society, placing their hand on a book the he/she is holding).

“I swear in the name of truth and justice, before the Supreme Being, to guard, by sacrificing my own life, and suffering the hardest toils, the mystery, which shall be explained to me and that I shall respond with the truth whatever I am asked”.(Oath of Initiation)

“Last of all, I swear by Thee, my sacred and suffering Country,— I swear by thy long-endured tortures,— I swear by the bitter tears which for so many centuries have been shed by thy unhappy children, by my own tears which I am pouring forth at this very moment,— I swear by the future liberty of my countrymen, that I consecrate myself wholly to thee; that hence forward thou shall be the cause and object of my thoughts, thy name the guide of my actions, and thy happiness the recompense of my labors”. (Conclusion of the Great Oath)

TEACHER (continues)  Many personalities that would later play very important roles in the revolution became part of the Society. Merchants, Fanariotes (Greeks that had managed to become part of the Ottoman ruling system), Foremen and of Religious Authority that were active parts of the Fight such as Theodore Kolokotronis,

KOLOKOTRONIS (speech):
“Our Revolution is nothing like the others that are happening nowadays in Europe. Europe’s’ revolutions against their Ruling is Civil war. Our war is the utmost fair as it is Nation against Nation. Not even the Sultan accepted the Greek people as people, but as slaves”.

3d Phase

 Going throughout the facts/lessons this is a way to recite and presented by the students pieces from that part of the lesson that is called “Recourses narrate”.

With a suitable connective narrative text by the teacher, we can present to speak:

Kapodistrias (Letter to A.Corais):  “Be sure that I go to Greece having clear goals, that if they receive help from our expatriates and from the circumstances- up to  a point- they can prove , I hope, your  right, good opinion of me.  So, I wish for you, honorable man, health and longevity and to judge my intentions and prosper their results.

Percy Shelley (English Romantic poet)  : “We are all Greeks. Our laws, our literature, our religion, our arts, have their root in Greece. Because without Greece Rome the driving force, the conqueror, could not have spread any light and we would all be pagans (idolatrous) and savages. The form and the spirit of Man reached their perfection in Greece…”.

There are numerous texts by very Important  personalities describing their devotion, their Greek origin and country to choose for such a lesson, it is up to the teacher to decide to whom to give a voice.  (Lord Byron, Dionisios Solomos, Makrygiannis … etc)

4^th Phase

The above Creative Lesson is a draft/proposition. The teacher can create a different plan. Such a lesson of history could also be presented as an event for a historic or National celebration (as we do in Greece on the 25^th of March, celebrating the Revolution against the Ottoman Rule in 1821). An event could also be enhanced with projections of paintings with themes of the Greek Revolution.