HAPPY NEW YEAR !!

Some more hours and the  new year  is  coming : what we did is now part of us .
Maybe  we did something wrong. But we learn by making  mistakes and  it is important to be positive to start working  again in the new year.

Happy New Year’s Eve! pic.twitter.com/PcnCIhsf1g

— PEANUTS (@Snoopy) 31 dicembre 2017

Don’t forget your party smile! pic.twitter.com/sHTksKTcfL

— PEANUTS (@Snoopy) 31 dicembre 2017

Let's be positive and let's try to build new opportunities for the ones who are suffering, children and people living in the poorest areas of the world.

📹 WATCH @UNICEF's beautiful story that let's YOU self-explore on how much of a child YOU are.
Happy 2018 🎉🎉🎉 pic.twitter.com/cljvJ340Zd

— UNICEF Education (@UNICEFEducation) 31 dicembre 2017

Christmas trees

The Story behind the tradition of  Christmas  trees

This interesting video explains how  the decoration of  Christmas trees  started in the Victorian Age

I have often  decorated my Christmas tree: I used to do it as  a little child.

Today we are  using some old trees and love decorating them with  balls made of  paper, we  recycle materials which we would not use anymore. Usually small Christmas  trees are  given as presents  at Christmas. They are in different  sizes , shapes and colours....  a nice  tradition which makes our homes  welcoming and  we love them.

We are continuing  a tradition that  started  many years ago......



By Riksarkivet (National Archives of Norway) from Oslo, Norway - 15. desember - December 15, No restrictions, Link






Attribution : Albert Chevallier Tayler [Public domain], via Wikimedia Commons

Dickens and Christmas

 

Some  years ago I was in London. I was doing a  Teacher Refresher Course and I visited some houses which had been inhabited by important  English Writers and Poets. This was part of my  CPD as a teacher doing  the course.
It was  a great experience for me since I could visit the places where some of them had  written their works.
I visited  Charles  Dickens Museum and my adventure into visiting this kind of museums   would never stop.

Christmas is associated to  Dickens.
Dickens was associated to London and the Victorian  Age.  His works are well-known and most children have  read his famous  books and stories about  Christmas:

 http://literature.org/authors/dickens-charles/christmas-carol/


This December some  people might go to the cinema and see  the last  film about  Christmas and Dickens but  I think that  this document provided by the British Library can  help us understand the man and his time:

 

I think the film may be interesting and worth seeing but reading the book which he wrote to celebrate Christmas is much  more involving.                                                                                                        

You can  find some  nice editions online and read something  which can make you  see the beauty of the old  Christmas when Dickens  wrote his  stories.                                                                                                                                                                                    

 

 

For younger  children you can find  a nice cartoon  in English:

Merry  Christmas !!

The Christmas Truce

Friendship in the midst of War

It happened on the eve  of Christmas  1914 and it was  a special event, a special event.......when people stopped fighting...... looking forward to peace.....

 

 

 

 

 

A nice and interesting  activity can be found online to remember what happened in  1914. I am thinking of  using it in my  fifth year class to focus on the theme of peace and war.

Here is the link online :   https://spotlightenglish.com/listen/the-christmas-truce

Since we are still faced with wars, we should remember that men can be friends in spite of wars which we cannot understand.

Teaching about Pollution while using posts online

Attribution : epSos.de [CC BY 2.0], via Wikimedia Commons


If you are searching interesting materials that are related to real problems and in particular pollution, you just need to check online and you will find lost of interesting posts shared on social networks like   Twitter and  FB.
 I have been working on a Mooc  about   the Earth recently and what we can do to save it. I will write later about this online experience, but I would like to share some simple and  easy to understand texts posted on Twitter.
I was online in September and found a post dealing with cleaning  coasts and beaches, I bookmarked the information shared online and later I found this interesting one  dealing with pollution and how  we should cut plastic pollution:

Tons of plastic is lost to the ocean, please help fight plastic pollution👍 @CleanCoasts @2minbeachclean pic.twitter.com/Hs6Rha2t2M

— DiveAcademy (@diveacademyinfo) 11 ottobre 2017

Internet and  Social Networks can help us when dealing with  these issues while working on the English  Language with  our  students: we could work on the Language used and try to involve our students  in creating  presentations and taking part in activities that can save the Planet  Earth:

Need an easy good deed this Thursday? How about a #2minutebeachclean to help the coast after the storm! pic.twitter.com/G8S3wPWvv0

— Clean Coasts (@CleanCoasts) 18 ottobre 2017

"Sea" the journey of flushed #sanitaryproducts from the toilet to the #coast #thinkb4uflush @IrishWater https://t.co/5W7zUY2Utq pic.twitter.com/rPwmJRf6Fu

— Clean Coasts (@CleanCoasts) 23 ottobre 2017

The next lesson for us is to create activities in which we  try to be more careful when dealing with the issues  related to our  environment. The  sources can be found  online.

Google Slides - Thinking about how to work online and give homework

This year I am working with two new classes of the First Year at Liceo G.Chierici in Reggio Emilia.
I am working with another teacher, Daniela,  and we are trying to implement our teaching activities not only by working longer hours  with our students but also by providing more  materials for our English language  learners. We do some extra tuition and students will have extra-hours  with an English mother tongue teacher from January.

Last summer we prepared activities to reinforce the students' language performance . We asked the  families and students to work by doing some activities which were presented online.
I chose Google  Slides as they are easy to make and provide lots of links; they can be embedded in websites and also in wikis.

The slides can also be  used to create ebooks online.

Since we are going to finish the first term by 23 December, I have created this slide for one of the classes.  They are working on reading activities in Italian too and  therefore I have  created a slide with links to a short text in English with a text and a video about  a famous  book- Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde. The students have also been guided to work online by doing more  language revision online.

Here is the  document which  I have also shared in the blog which I have  created :

https://docs.google.com/presentation/d/e/2PACX-1vQyeUZh3i154-QcxVpU-1XRmP4Ffjj-j727XiaSDjQ-dd98c9fIlYPaNCGk078rriQXazgxO9Fi2m3G/pub?start=false&loop=false&delayms=3000
  


Our aim is help  the struggling  learners to empower and learn better.  We would like the students to learn on their own and  develop some skills that are often neglected  when teaching English.