The last month of 2020 has started. We have transferred our classes online. The times are challenging and we are all trying to adapt to the situation that is THE virus living among us.

Nevertheless, December is always a month of great expectation. Christmas is coming and we have started the preparations. Lots of English teaching groups, pages, and blogs have already published Advent and holiday activities. Some of more popular ones are Advent calendars. They seem to work rather well worldwide.

Another traditional holiday activity is reading Christmas stories or watching Christmas movies, which will not be excluded this year.

Since 2020 hasn't been very kind to us so far, some of our students were presented with an Advent Challenge. They are supposed to do good deeds, take photos and write about the whole process. Hopefully, it will help all of us to spread some kindness and joy this December. Their work will be published in an online ebook, so fingers crossed that a lot of them accept the challenge!

Last Thursday was actually the fourth Thursday in November, the day when the Americans celebrate Thanksgiving. In our school we made posters with students' thoughts of gratitude.

We also used the technique of MAGNETIC POETRY to create works on gratitude. Some freestyle did sneak in, but it was too good not to be included.

Every year our senior classes work on Jane Austen's Pride and Prejudice. This year we tried to do something a bit different - hexagonal thinking. I printed out hexagons with terms and characters from the novel and the students tried to connect different terms/hexagons. One term could be connected with max. six other terms/hexagons. Through the process of connecting different hexagons with terms and characters that are in various ways connected in the novel, the students came up with interesting mosaics. Their final goal was to explain their mosaic pattern by explaining the connections between the terms and characters within the hexagons. It was quite interesting to see different ways the students connected the same terms and characters, and finally explained their choices.

read.bookcreator.com/tBmSOxRWglYoOqzvw1x4th12SIy2/Ziwwfk_mTvuBP0QM_otfpQ
One-pager is a technique of analyzing texts. Usually a page is divided into separated fields which need to be filled with certain information from the text. One-pagers also include a visual component such as drawings of characters, symbols, setting, or any other category that you choose to present in this form. Linked above is a virtual book (made with Book Creator tool) where we have compiled one-pagers our students created this year. In this way we want to thank them for their participation and effort.
Teachers Ljerka Bačurin, Martina Natasha Lacković, and Iva Rožić

Halloween is a big deal in the USA and other English speaking countries. Some people dislike the holiday because it shows the global American cultural influence, but since we are teaching English and English culture is a significant part of our topic selection, we did talk about Halloween. Grade 2 got a bonus task:

The Weekend Project (for volunteers, to be graded): Use your translated recipe to make that pumpkin meal/dessert. Film a video or make an Instagram post of your cooking photo (using Canva tool) and send it via chat.

The students translated pumpkin recipes in class, paying attention to the different measures used in America and in Europe. Those who volunteered had an option to actually bake or cook the meals from the translated recipes of their choice. Some of the students did that and took pictures. Looks delicious!

Another Grade 2 student work which includes the recipe as well.

Grade 2 is exploring the unit on Art at the moment. As part of the Poetry in motion lesson, the students were given a task to listen and analyze Dylan Thomas's poem Do not go gentle into that good night. After the analysis, they created their own poems dealing with the topics that Thomas covered in his own work. Their task was to write acrostic poems on life, fight, death or passion. Each student got to choose their topic. Most students wrote their poems in the form of an Instagram post using Canva, as they were instructed to do to make the poems visually more interesting. Their work is exhibited below.

Grade 3 is in the process of working on a lesson called Solving Crime. The topic of CCTV and crime prevention lead us to the grim visions of future connected with surveillance. I chose to present the term DYSTOPIA and ask students to compare two dystopias - the movie Gattaca and the novel/movie 1984. They had to read the plots or watch the movies and write down how each dystopia deals with the topics in the circle: emotions vs. reason, collecting data about citizens and control of the masses. Finally, they had to choose which dystopia is more likely to come true in the real world and explain their opinion.

Grade 2 students are working on a lesson called Granny Graffiti. It introduces 'yarn bombing'. As a complementing research task, they were given this Canva template to prepare a presentation on one street artist of their choice.

They were also provided with some direction in their research - one linked article about most famous international street artists and one about a street art festival which took place in the city of Sisak, which was hit by a devastating earthquake on December 29, 2020 (alongside towns of Petrinja and Glina).

https://www.timeout.com/newyork/art/top-famous-street-artists

https://www.journal.hr/lifestyle/kultura/rethink-murali-sisak/

The students were required to read the articles and choose one street artist, make a poster about them using Canva tool and post their work on a designated Padlet page.

This is an example of the completed template for the task on street artists. This one was unique because a student chose the work of his classroom colleague.

Prince Philip has sadly passed away. This week grade 3 has been reading articles about him and working on vocabulary and reading comprehension questions. Two teachers prepared the tasks - written and online. They include translation of vocabulary from Croatian to English (words and phrases appearing in the article about Prince Philip's death), defining true and false sentences, identifying vocabulary from the article, online crosswords (https://wordwall.net/resource/14275778/prince-philips-death)

Picture uploaded here presents introductory activities:

Research online:

1. How many children did Queen Victoria have and which genetic disease did she transfer to them?

2. Why are some names in blue? Why are those people significant?

3. What does the title of Prince Consort mean?

Cultural point (aim of the task - to deepen the understanding of the historical influence of members of the British royal family):

How are these terms and names connected to Alix (Alexandra Feodorovna) and Wallis Simpson - Adolf Hitler, Rasputin, Anastasia, The Russian Revolution, The Bolsheviks, ABDICATION, EXECUTION, FIRING SQUAD, THE ORDER OF SUCCESSION

This year we've chosen to explore literature in a bit more creative way. These are the tasks that grade 4 students worked on after reading information about H.G.Wells and his novel and Orson Welles and his radio adaptation of the novel.

Following the tragic death of Sarah Everard, as a current topic, grade 3 and grade 4 students worked on articles about this case. They read the articles and answered comprehension questions while debating related topics put into focus by this case.
Some students also created posters (Canva) highlighting the problem of vulnerability of women in public places which were published in an e-book (Bookcreator): https://read.bookcreator.com/tBmSOxRWglYoOqzvw1x4th12SIy2/tqLvXBioRdmMROb02RtG2w

Grade 2 worked on a mini-unit covering space exploration. The unit outline and tasks have been posted below. One of the tasks was to study the information on the Golden Record sent into space during the Voyager missions and choose information students would send on their own Golden Record. Here is one of the best works - an interactive image created with Genial.ly app.