SOUTHERN TEACHERS AGENCY

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Recommender Elissavet Kalemou Date 12 Feb 2016
Title Primary school teacher Tel +30 6934 635 797
Institution Jewish School of Thessaloniki Greece Email elsakalemou@hotmail.com
Candidate Kevin Berkowitz

To Whom It May Concern:

I am a primary school teacher with 15 years’ experience. The last eight years I have taught at the Jewish
School of Thessaloniki, Greece, a private primary school.

Last year I contacted Mr. Kevin Berkowitz because the students in fifth grade wanted to create a robotics
class, and we knew he had some relevant knowledge. He responded willingly to our suggestion to
cooperate. In a short time he created a course on robotics, using the Lego Mindstorm EV3 robotics set. We
decided to teach English language at the same time using the CLIL method (CLIL = content and language
integrated learning).

Mr. Berkowitz was accurately responding to the program’s needs, creating lesson plans and integrating
English language practice at the same time. The robotics class lasted eight months (2014-2015) with a
two-hour class every other week and some out-of-school meetings.

Our program attracted the interest of the Informatics Conference hosted by the Ionian University and the
University of Piraeus. Last October, with our students, we presented the program to the conference. We
received a positive response and congratulations on the work we did.

The school staff decided to continue with the robotics class and involve more students. This school year we
teach the robotics class to the third, fifth and sixth grades. It’s going well and keeps the students' interest at
a high level.

I cooperated with Mr. Berkowitz many times because I needed him to train me in robotics. He is also
effective in adult education. He helped me design the whole robotics course. He is flexible enough to handle
the class and has enough knowledge to handle the students' inquiring minds.

He is well-organized and prepared before class. He is able to communicate with and coordinate the class
and get feedback from the students. He also makes daily reports to the home-room teachers of the classes.
This is important because it prompts conversation and questions on how we can improve our teaching.

In general, Mr. Berkowitz is responsible, accurate, well-organized, cooperative, flexible and knowledgeable.

It will be my pleasure to answer any further questions you have.

Regards

Elissavet Kalemou
Teacher
elsakalemou@hotmail.com