day 4

Today we attended a literature class with 13 year olds called “ Marzuk’s Bowl“. The students read fables in different languages (Arabic, Urdu, English...). This session was very enjoyable as the students participated a lot. One of the students read the story in Italian and the other in his mother tongue translated the story.

Simona (the teacher) was stopping the reading and commenting on words. She was also explaining relevant facts about the popular stories, for example that many of them have a common element. Cinderella's shoes are made of different materials depending on the country where the story is told. In Holland Cinderella's shoes are made of wood, in Asia they are made of silk...

She also explained that in folk tales there are common proverbs in different languages and we shared Catalan proverbs with the students, many of which had an Italian translation.

Then they had a quiz about the characters. The teacher divided the class into two teams and asked them to think of questions to ask each other. The questions had to be related to the main characters in the folktales.

This activity has been a lot of fun as the students have come up with some pretty difficult questions to beat the opposing team. For example, they asked: What is the name of Pinochio's friend? Where does the story of Aladdin take place? We laughed and had a lot of fun.

Afterwards, we attended an art class in which the 12 year old students were designing their own books telling the history of the village. They used the caviardage techinique which consists on matching reading, writing and art.

In the afternoon, two teachers (Raffaela and Sabrina) took us to Aielli, a village full of beautiful murals.

Here you can see some pictures of this amazing day!