My worst holidays

Welcome back! Have you ever had a terrible experience while on holidays? Our 2nd ESO students have written short fiction stories about possible holidays which went really bad. They have included vocabulary about natural phenomena and some connectors. You will see some pictures, too. We hope your holidays will always be better than those described.

My Worst Holidays

As you may have noticed, some of the tasks are longer than others and our students have different levels. Anyway, we hope you have liked every single story.

Sants Innocents, the Spanish April's Fools

If you are in a Spanish-speaking country today and play a joke on your friends and follow that up with a shout of "¡Tontos de abril!" chances are you'll get nothing but blank stares as a reaction. The minor holiday of April Fools' Day is little known in Spain and Spanish-speaking Latin America, but there is a rough equivalent, el Día de los Santos Inocentes, observed on Dec. 28. That means TODAY! The day is observed in much the same way as April Fools' Day. And when the prankster is ready to reveal the joke, the saying is "¡Inocente, inocente!"

The Day of the Innocents has a dark history from the Gospel of Matthew and the Massacre of the Innocents by Herod the Great, the Roman-appointed King of the Jews. Herod ordered all infants under 2 years old in Bethlehem to be killed because he was afraid that the baby Jesus was the newborn King of the Jews as had been foreseen. The infant Jesus turned out to be in Egypt with Mary and Joseph so Herod had been tricked. This day became a day to trick your friends. and thus followed the tradition of tricking friends on that day.

In Catalonia, on of the most common pranks is the one that consists on placing a "llufa" on someone's back. A "llufa" is a man-shaped pieced of paper which is stung on the back of an "innocent". 

Go out and practice it. Have fun!!

Christmas

We have already lived (and survived) another Christmas Day. Nevertheless, we still have New Year's Eve, New Year's Day and in Spain we'll get the visit of The Three Wise Men.

In this post we include a link with information about this celebration, which is celebrated around the world, even in countries where the Christian is not the most widely spread religion. So if you are curious enough, have a look at this link, too, where you will find information about recipes, the Christmas Story, customs and traditions and many different activities you can do at home, all the family together. Enjoy and MERRY CHRISTMAS!

Sports

Everybody knows how important it is to practice a sport. In this post you will find descriptions of different sports where students have written about their rules, the equipement required, any special features, etc. Time to take up a sport, for sure as one of your New Year Resolutions.

Handball from LidiaGon

Golf from LidiaGon

Surfing

Snowboarding from LidiaGon

Ice hockey from LidiaGon

Artistic skating from LidiaGon

Tennis from LidiaGon

Rythmic gymnastics from LidiaGon

Sports by Lidia Gonzalo

Sports 2 by Lidia Gonzalo

Thanksgiving

Happy Thanksgiving Day! 

Next Thursday, especially in the USA, people are going to celebrate Thanksgiving Day. The origins of this celebration are in the 17th Century. Nowadays, this holiday takes place the 4th Thursday of November. That allows lots of people to go home and spend the day with family and friends. 

Have a look at this website where you will find traditions, recipes, ideas for decorating, etc.

Functional language

In this post we are not showing you any of the tasks done by our students. We have decided to share with you a picture where you will find lots of useful expressions. Some of them are quite informal, which means it would be better to use them in an oral situation. On the other hand, you will find some phrases used mostly while writing compositions and whenever a formal language is needed. We hope it's useful.

Designing our own rooms

Sometimes it is very difficult to write about what we don't know. However, 1st ESO students have created their own rooms and have written a short description about those projects. They have used expressions such as There is/there are, paying attention to singular and plural nouns. They have also used prepositions of place (next to, near, in front of...) and they have enjoyed cutting and pasting different objects from decoration magazines. They are great artists!