"A dream you dream alone is only a dream. A dream you dream together is reality" (John Lennon)

Thursday, January 26, 2012

Penna in Teverina Presentation

Here is a presentation of Penna in Teverina the students of class II A made for the eTwinning project "Schools get together with History".
Penna in Teverina and Giove are the two villages where the students taking part in this project live. They are near the bigger village of Amelia in the province of Terni, Umbria.


Tuesday, January 24, 2012

Chat, chat, chat!

Yesterday evening, from 8.30 pm to 9.30 pm, I was in a very interesting chat session together with my Italian students and with Turkish and Polish students and teachers taking part to the eTwinning project "Schools get together with history".










We talked about a lot of things such as: actors, singers, books, sports and so on.
It was really nice because I  learnt a lot of new things about these topics thanks to the students and it was also nice to chat with the colleagues from countries that are closer then what we may think.
Among the people we talked about there are the following actors and actress:

Robert Pattinson



http://www.en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Robert _Pattinson



Riccardo Scamarcio










http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Riccardo_Scamarcio


Pelin Karahan
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pelin_Karahan

Necati Sasmaz
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Necati_Şaşmaz
We also spoke about singers such as Mick Jonas, Tiziano Ferro, Antonello Venditti, Setab Erener, Claudio Baglioni, Linkin Park, Biagio Antonacci and Rafael Nadal.
We talked about football players such as Lionel Messi and Burak Yilmaz.

Here I want to thank again our Turkish and Polish friends (students and teacher) and my students too to have taken the time for this activity that, in my opinion, is very important to improve both our language skills and our knowledge of other cultures.
Colgo l'occasione anche per ringraziare i genitori dei miei alunni per aver permesso loro di svolgere questa attività in orario extra scolastico.


Monday, January 23, 2012

A word cloud on past simple


Here is a word cloud with some irregular verbs id the past.
The first who send a comment with the base form of each verb wins a prize!




  Wordle: Past simple


More on present perfect

Some weeks ago we studied the present perfect with students in class III D. We enjoyed making a speaking activity on it and I wrote this post with some useful links.
As we reviewed it this morning and added more information here is a page to remind you how to form the present perfect and when to use it.

PRESENT PERFECT: USE

1) Result of an action in the past that is important in the present

have cleaned my room.

2) Recently completed action

He has just played handball.

3) State beginning in the past and still continuing

We have lived in Canada since 1986.

With this words

just, yet, never, already, ever, so far, up to now, recently, since, for


FORM

have/has + past participle

Examples

Affirmative sentences:

have cleaned my room.
I've cleaned my room.
You have cleaned your room.
You've cleaned your room.

Negative sentences:

have not cleaned my room.
I've not cleaned my room.
haven't cleaned my room.
You have not cleaned your room.
You've not cleaned your room.
You haven't cleaned your room.

Questions:

Have I cleaned my room?Have you cleaned your room?


Here are some new exercises on since and for. 
http://www.englishexercises.org/makeagame/viewgame.asp?id=1394



And here other exercises to practice this structure.
http://www.ego4u.com/en/cram-up/grammar/present-perfect-simple/exercises




Thursday, January 19, 2012

Board games: part one!

During the Christmas holidays I promised no homework and ... I gave really a little bit.
In fact 2nd and 3rd year students had to create a board game.
2nd year students created board games using the language they studied from the beginning up to now;
3rd year students created board games using the past of the most common irregular verbs.
As they created a lot of games we could only try some of them, but I promised we'll use them all while reviewing what they studied.


3rd year students trying their board games in the school of Lugnano











The 3rd year student Martina, from the school of Giove,  invented and created a wonderful board game we all enjoyed playing. Here you can see her explaining it and the other friends playing. This is a great way to review the past simple: thanks a lot Martina!








Here are 2nd year students from Giove playing with their games.






 The games you can see here are only a part of the games the students made. The fact is we didn't have enough time to play them all. Next time we 'll play with different games and I'll post "Board games: part 2"!











Wednesday, January 18, 2012

Students in the newspaper!

Even in the newspaper there are info about us and our Comenius project!

Tuesday, January 17, 2012

Receiving and reading postcards from Izmir, Turkey

When we came back from our Christmas holidays we found a nice surprise: postcards form our eTwinning friends from Izmir, Turkey.



They described themselves and their school and my students were very happy to read their postcards. Each of them wanted a postcards to take home to show it to their parents and to read it and understand it better.



When the students brought the postcards back to school we put them on the EU map in our Language Room together with all the others.






And now we've just started thinking about the next postcards!


Tuesday, January 10, 2012

Reading postcards from Rossett

Yesterday morning, when I met students of class I A they immediately asked me if I had the postcards from their English friends and ... of course I had! So we had our lesson first, then I showed them some pictures about the school in Rossett (St. Peter's school) and at last I gave them the postcards and ....
have a look at the photos here!









While reading the postcards students asked me the meaning of some words they didn't know and they also wanted to know what kind of sport Netball is. As I wasn't sure on how to answer, I searched the net and here is a link with info on this sport: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Netball

And to learn more about this sport you can click here: More on netball

A visit to St. Peter's school in Rossett

As I told all my students I went to the United Kingdom on Holiday. I've been visiting several interesting places among which Liverpool, Chester and Rossett. All of you know Liverpool and maybe Chester too but not everybody knows about Rossett.
Here is a map showing my journey and the places visited.



Rosett is a small town near Chester where St. Peter's school is. This is school is the very same school we have started a postcard project with. So January 4th I had the chance to visit it and to meet the head teacher Mrs Helen Pritchard, the teachers Mr Lloyd and Mrs Bayliss, some other teachers and all the students. They were all very happy and I was happy too to meet them. I gave them the cards and a present my students prepared and they gave me the postcards. We had the time to talk a little bit about our school systems and the English pupils asked me some questions I answered happily. It has really been a very nice visit, all the people warmly welcomed me and I felt as if I knew them ever since. I hope we can continue with our project even in the next years. 

Here is a short presentation of my visit to St. Peter's school, look and enjoy!

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Monday, January 9, 2012

First letters from Finland

During the Christmas holidays I got the letters from Tyrnävä, a small place near Oulu in Finland



and this morning I could give them to the students of III D. 




As soon as they got their letters I had to stop doing anything else and let them read what Finnish students told about themselves.


When I had their attention back I read the description of our new firends' school.





All the Italian students where very happy of getting the letters and of knowing about a different school system and started asking me a lot of questions I was hardly able to answer. So I think we'll ask our Finnish friends some more info on their school.



Now it is our turn again. Write a letter and remember to include:
- opening greetings;
- answers to the questions your friends asked you;
- a short description of Christmas traditions in our country;
- some nice events that happened during your Christmas holidays.