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

Friday, January 31, 2014

Madrelingua in classe: A special guest today in Lugnano!

This morning, 3rd year students had the visit of a very special guest!
In fact Dawn (Aurora in Italian) came to our class to talk with the students and they asked her questions and introduced themselves.
At the beginning it was not easy to start talking to an unknown person, but after a while it sounded also natural to have her with us.
Almost all the students asked personal questions such as:
1 What's your favourite food?
2 What's your favourite book?
3 Have you got brothers or sister?
4 What did you do last summer holidays?
5 What did you do last Christmas holidays?
6 Where were you born?
7 What's your typical day like?
8 What's the weather like in California?
9 What was your job in the USA?
10 What's your favourite colour?








Then some students introduced themselves telling info about their age, their families, their free time activities and so on. 






It was great to see my students trying to communicate with Dawn this morning, they were curious and they paid attention to all her answers being able to understand her while speaking.
They also took care of their pronunciation, which they don't usually do (!!!), and made efforts to tell her something about themselves.
At last Dawn reminded them that English is important for their future job, for their future life. 
And thinking about this we decided to talk about their future school and their dream job next time she comes. 
In fact she will come again, she will be with us several times as stated in the project we wrote at the beginning of the school year.
The main objectives of this project are:
- to improve communication skills in English;
- to use English in a real context;
- to show interest towards other cultures;
- to build self confidence. 

Well thanks a lot Dawn for having decided to have this adventure with us and thanks to teacher Agostina Giovannini who helped me in contacting Dawn.









Monday, January 27, 2014

Greek Stanley has arrived!

Last Saturday I found Greek Stanley in my post box and welcomed him in my house.
Unfortunately I wasn't very well so he stayed at home with me all the day, he relaxed, listened to music and slept a lot!
Sunday morning, as I was a bit better, Greek Stanley came to church with me and my family,


after the Sunday Mass he had fun with the friends of the choir (they are high school and university students).




In the afternoon Greek Stanley attended teacher Sbaraglia's book launch "Le avventure del Vecchietto con la 600" (The adventures of the Old man and his 600) in Amelia, a little town near Giove, and could listen to the author himself reading some pages of his short stories: of course Greek Stanley didn't understand but our teacher of English translated everything for him!





Here is a short video of Stanley's adventures on Saturday!

Greek Stanley in Italy

This morning he came to visit the other to schools where I teach and had the chance to meet my students both in Lugnano and in Guardea. I think he had fun!




Tomorrow Greek Stanley will go to Giove and he will meet the students who take part in this etwinning project, he will also have the chance to meet their family and have more adventures!



Sunday, January 19, 2014

Flat Stanley visited our school

Some weeks ago we welcomed Flat Stanely from France, Portugal and Norwey and they all visited our school.
We worked on the presentations of our school to show it to the friends from the other countries who take part in this project.
To create the presentations:
1.  I divided the class in small groups;
2. the groups choose one or two rooms to describe;
3. a small group of students went around the school to take pictures bey themselves and with Flat Stanley too;
4. they all described the rooms;
5. I corrected the descriptions if needed, this means I sometimes didn't change their description if this was understandable;
6. some of the students, at home, created the presentations.

Here is the video Michele made



And this is a powerpoint presentation made by Roberto and Cristian





To these kids in particular and to all the others:




Wednesday, January 15, 2014

Questions, questions, questions!

This morning in class II A the students created questions using the question words they studied last week.

WHEN
WHERE
WHAT
WHO                                                                    
WHY
HOW
WHICH

Here are the questions the students wrote down and then ask each other in a chain interview, but as the lesson was soon over they could only answer to a question each.


1. Where does your dad work?
2. Which do you prefer, basketball or football?
3. Where is Milano?
4. When is your Maths lesson?
5. Where is your school?
6. Who do you listen do?
7. When are your dance lessons?
8. Who is your best friend?
9. Where does your uncle live?
10. What is your favourite song?
11. What is your favourite subject?
12. Who is your favourite teacher?
13. Where are your parents from?
14. Which do you prefer, pizza or chocolate cake?
15. What do you do on Saturday?
16. Who is your teacher of Italian?
17. When is your birthday?
18. What are you doing now?
19. Do you like playing the guitar?
20. Why do you study English?

So, answer the questions in a comment below. The first 8 comments will get a prize!

Tuesday, January 7, 2014

What did you do during your Christmas Holidays?

I had a very interesting chat in class III A this morning. They told us what they did and it was very nice to have all of them willing to say something, or at least almost all of them.

Here is a word cloud with all the verbs we used this morning.
These verbs are in the past simple tense and what you have to do is:
- write the base form of each verb;
- make at least 5 sentences in the present
- make at least 5 sentences in the past tense.

Send me your work posting a comment.

THE FIRST 5 STUDENTS WHO POST A COMMENT WILL GET A PRIZE! 



Wordle: simple past