Topic 2 CHRISTMAS
CHRISTMAS PRESENTATIONS
Both the young and the old people like Christmas. CHILDREN LOVE IT. However, there are always a lot of things to do before Christmas.
Of course, there are some differences in how we celebrate Christmas and so each group of students, that is the Czech students, the Italian students and the French students made several presentations about interesting aspects and customs in their country. So we shared information e.g. about La Befana and Carols (Italy), about Santons (France) or about Mikuláš and Christmas fried carp (Czech Rep.). What a wonderful source of authentic information!
CHRISTMAS PHOTO-GALLERY
There is always a lot you can take photos of before Christmas – so we took photos of the shop windows, of the Christmas market, of the glass Christmas tree decorations that are made in a workshop in our town, of some Christmas sweets and typical dishes – then we exhibited the photos in the twinspace photo-gallery so that everybody can have a look, admire or compare.
WHO IS IN THE XMAS VIDEO?
Do you know JibJab video? They are fun. Five Czech students used a free “Christmas” template, made a short video and the task for our partners from France and Italy was to recognize the four girls. It wasn’tt easy at all – but in the end they managed. Congratulations!!!
“Hi everybody, we have a task for you. Five students from our team made a short video in which they are getting ready for Christmas. Watch it and try to write their names.
LOL, Czech students”
VIDEO IDENTITY SOLUTION
“Hello kids, we have just watched the very nice video at school with our teacher and we have guessed your identities, we think that the characters are : S…, Z…, V…, G… and N… (full first names are written in the project´s twinspace). Compliments for the very original idea and thanks for your wishes.
Friendly, Class 3 A Dante Alighieri school Catona-ITAL”
CHRISTMAS ACTIVITY 1
The Italian students sent us a nice Christmas present in the form of “Christmas Tree Quiz” – it made a wonderful program for one of the pre-Christmas lessons and we really enjoyed it. Many thanks!
CHRISTMAS ACTIVITY 2
We wanted to share our tips and experiences that is why all the students answered a set of questions (a kind of survey made on a twinspace WIKI page) mostly about the presents which the students were going to buy for their mums, dads, … You can imagine that the answers were not only a good opportunity to practise FUTURE WITH “BE GOING TO” but also made a good collection of tips what to buy. To read all the answers then (including the information about the housework to be done and typical Xmas dishes – see the list of questions below) was really interesting.
1) What present(s) are you going to buy for your mum?
2) What present(s) are you going to buy for your dad?
3) What present(s) are you going to buy for your bro or sis?
4) How are you going to help your mum get your place ready for Xmas?
5) Is there anything that you know you are going to get?
6) What are you going to have for Xmas dinner and when are you going to have it (24/12 or 25/12, at noon or in the evening)?
CHRISTMAS ACTIVITY 3
About a week before Christmas, there was another task – this time the students had to write what they had already done using PRESENT PERFECT SIMPLE. You can see the questions here:
1) Have you bought Christmas presents for all the people who you want to have a present for? If not, for whom haven’t you bought a present yet?
2) Have you sent any Christmas cards to your friends or family? If so, who namely did you send them to?
3) Have you baked all the sweets you planned to? How many different kinds do you have?
4) Have you bought a Christmas tree? What kind of tree is it (blue spruce, pine tree, fir…)? How tall is it?
5) Have you found any Christmas presents that you will get from your parents or brother/sister? If so, where did you find them?
By the way, you would be surprised, how many of us were without present just a week before Christmas. Hopefully, they managed to get what they wanted before the 24/25th December!
A BIT OF FUN
You know – before Christmas the teachers are as busy as other people. In the JibJab video ROCKING AROUND THE CHRISTMAS TREE you could see what all the pre-Christmas preparations can include. I wish I always had so much energy and enthusiasm as we all show in the video. We hope you enjoyed watching it.
CHRISTMAS CONCERT
Christmas carols sung by Czech sts
On the last day of school (before the Christmas holidays started) there was a Christmas concert in the assembly hall of our school. Some students from KVARTA (who work on this project) took part in it. In the three short videos that we made during the concert, they were all standing in the front line – Tereza, Sabina, Zina and Natalie. The task for our partners to recognize them among the other students – of course in the twinspace the videos were accompanied with descriptions of the four girls. MERRY CHRISTMAS TO ALL!!!
ITALIAN FILM
All the students were very happy when they received the Christmas wishes from their friends. In the twinspace you can see a lot of photographs, the Italian students even made a wonderful “documentary” film. We wrote to them:
“Hi there in Italy, as late as now we have found the wonderful film showing the Italians students reading the Xmas cards. The video is original and really enjoyable - GOOD JOB!!! It is nice to see our "products" in your hands - we mean the real people who got the cards. THANKS A LOT FOR MAKING THE FILM. LOL, Czech students”
OUR CHRISTMAS PRESENTS
Jiří, one of the Czech students, made a presentation from which our partners could learn what the Czech students found under the Xmas tree. It might be interesting to hear about the presents that our partners got. Because we are all in touch through the twinspace mailboxes, we can ask each other and find out.
