Language Challenges

With an Italian colleague, I started a project for 8-14-year-olds where they would complete different language challenges published on the official EDL site. Since September, students and teachers from Croatia, France, Greece, Romania, Spain, Turkey and Ukraine have joined the project and shared interesting videos and lovely photos showing the completed challenges.

My Class 4 and Class 8 students managed to complete 25 challenges, but enjoyed creating and sending Christmas cards, writing their favourite colour, sport and animal in 3 different languages, quizzes and music challenges most.

Here are some of the completed challenges:

• Challenge 2: I identified 5 languages (correctly!) in the Which language is it? game on the EDL's website.
  Students from Class 6 completed this challenge on 17 October.
• Challenge 3: I counted from 1 - 10 in 3 different languages within 1 minute.
  On 30 September, Luka from Class IV3 counted in English, Nemanja from Class IV3 counted in German, and Nevena and Dragana from Class IV3 counted in Hungarian.
• Challenge 7: I identified 5 words in my own language that are the same as/borrowed from other languages.
  Apart from English words such as film, lift, sport, TV or quiz, my class 8 students identified a lot of Turkish (e.g. šećer = sugar or dugme = button), Hungarian (e.g. mačka = cat or čorba = broth), Italian (pijaca = market or violina = violin) and German (štrudla = strudel or kelner = waiter) words.
• Challenge 8: I wrote down my favourite colour, sport and animal in 3 different languages.
  My Class VIII5 students used Serbian, Hungarian and English, while my Class VIII4 students used Serbian, English and German.
• Challenge 11: I listened to 5 songs in different languages.
  Our choices were: Time won't wait - Filatov & Karas, Parla con me - Eros Ramazzotti, Je veux - Zaz, Despacito - Luis Fonsi and Die Dinge haben sich verändert - Frida Gold.
  
• Challenge 14: I introduced myself in a video using a foreign language.
  Class IV1 students completed this challenge on 4 September.
• Challenge 15: I made a phone/Skype call in a foreign language.
  We organised an online meeting with our project partners on 18 December.
• Challenge 16: I switched the language of my phone to a foreign language for a few months!
  Some of my Class 8 students did it, including Vukašin from Class VIII4 (in the photo). 
• Challenge 18: I sent a text message in a foreign language.
  Some of my Class 4 and Class 8 students did it. Nataša from Class VIII4 (in the photo) is one of them.
  
• Challenge 19: I listened to an audio book in a foreign language.
  Some of my Class 8 students, divided into groups, listened to audio books in November 2019 and then made their presentations.
• Challenge 21: I posted a message on an online forum or social media platform in a foreign language.
  Most of my older students often do that.
  
• Challenge 22: I watched a film in a foreign language (with subtitles). All my students did it, and those in Class 8 even wrote their film reviews.
  
• Challenge 23: I watched a movie in a foreign language (without subtitles).
  Class 4 students watched an English animated film about The Little Prince on 16 December. 
• Challenge 25: I used a dictionary to look up and learn 10 new words in a foreign language.
  Some of my Class 4 students did it.
  
• Challenge 26: I watched my favourite sport on TV in a foreign language. Veljko from Class VIII4 does it all the time.
• Challenge 27: I went to a karaoke session and sang a song in a foreign language.
  My Class VIII5 love singing, so we often do it in the lesson. This is one of their favourite songs.
  
• Challenge 31: I completed a quiz in a foreign language.
  Class 5 students completed this challenge on 3 October.
• Challenge 32: I told a joke in a foreign language and someone laughed!
  Boris from Class VIII4 told a joke on 31 October and a few students laughed.
  
• Challenge 35: I borrowed (and read!) a foreign language book from a library.
  Class 8 students completed the challenge on 20 December. 
• Challenge 39: I wrote a short postcard to a friend sending a holiday greeting in a foreign language.
  My younger students wrote their wishes in Serbian and English, and my older students used Serbian, English, German and Hungarian. 
• Challenge 41: I completed the EDL Brain Game using the Latin and Cyrillic alphabets in less than 5 minutes.
  My students enjoyed playing the game.
  
• Challenge 45: I memorized and recited a short poem in a foreign language.
  Đorđe from Class VI3 recited a poem in Greek on 3 October.
  
• Challenge 52: I played a matching English/Serbian Idioms game with my friends.
  Class 6 students completed this challenge on 17 October. 

People who help us

Groups of Class 4 students have recently made their posters showing the people who help us. They agreed on who would draw which profession and what they would write. They presented their posters to the others.

Animals

Divided into groups, my Class 4 students have created posters with drawings or photos and information about jungle, sea, forest and farm animals.

We organised a presentation and put all the posters on display in their classrooms.

 

We also shared some of the photos of our activities with our friends on the eTwinning project Alphabet of the living world.

Every Day

After we had revised telling the time and daily routines, I asked my Class 4 students to describe their mum's or dad's day in a comic form.

Nikola                                                                                        Jovana

                                                    Vukašin

                Lara

New Year Wishes for 2020

While waiting for our eTwinning friends' cards to arrive, the representatives of my Class IV2 recorded their wishes for planet Earth: 

All my students were very happy when the cards finally arrived and they read the wishes from their creative friends from Italy.

Story Time

The Blue Cross

The story takes place in London, Great Britain, in the 1910s.   

The main characters are the detective Valentin, Flambeau and the priest Brown.
Flambeau was the biggest criminal in those days. He was a very tall man.
Valentin was the chief of the Paris police, and he was chasing after Flambeau.
We liked them.
Valentin was our favorite character because he fought for justice.    
We really liked the story because it was very interesting.
The story is about Valentin, who is chasing after Flambeau, that is looking for a cross with blue stones.
Priest Brown left the trails for him to find and catch. Eventually, Valentin caught Flambeau.    
We liked the book very much because it had many interesting parts we needed to figure out. Our favorite part was when the priest revealed he switched the parcels and that Flambeau didn't have the cross. It was funny when Valentin was arguing with his colleagues.

The book is for everyone.

Ratka Sokola, Darko Tot, Aleksandra Ilijin and Aleksandra Bajić, VIII1

Too old to rock and roll   

The story takes place in Greg's house.   

The main characters are Greg, Valerie and Steve.
Greg is a young boy that plays in a band. Valerie was a 40-year-old woman, a friend of Steve.
Steve was the same age as Valerie, who lost his wife due to a car accident.
Our favorite character was Valerie because she was a nice woman who helped Greg's father feel alive again.   

The story is about a man called Steve who lost his wife in an accident, and his child Greg who tries to make him feel alive again along with his friend Valerie.
The book was short but interesting and the ending was both a happy and a sad one.

We liked the book and our favorite part was when Greg went on his band practice, and as he got back home he saw his dad and Valerie having a nice time speaking together in a romantic scene.
If we could make anything, we would make Steve be more than friends with Valerie, since she is like a mother to Greg.

Đura Šibul, Anđela Beloš, Vanja Pažin and Nađa Blažić, VIII2

As the Inspector Said

The story takes place at Robert's house and in the middle of the night.   

The main characters are Robert, his wife Sonia and her lover Charles.

Robert is nearly twice as old as Sonia. He is an old boring man who cares only about his books and silver.

Sonia and Charles are bad people because they want to kill Robert and to take his silver. I didn't really like them. They made me feel maybe it will sound stupid, but like a good person because I would never do what Sonia and Charles did.

The story is about Robert's wife Sonia and her lover Charles who want to steal Robert's silver that he bought.

It happened that someone broke into Robert's house while he was sleeping and his wife Sonia woke him up and told him that she heard strange voices and that the burglar was in the house. Then he took his gun and went downstairs. Sonia heard gun shots and thought Robert was dead, but he wasn't. He came into the room and when she said to him that she thought he was murdered and asked him what had happened, he said the burglar got away and that it was Charles that was murdered.

It was really fun to read, but I didn't like the ending because someone died.   

I liked the book and my favourite part was the beginning because I got to know the characters, what they are like and what they want to do.

I would change the ending because Charles died even if he was a bad person. There were maybe a little scary bits when the burglar broke into the house.

I learned that karma is a real thing. ha ha ha...

Everybody should read this book.

Anastasija Bugarski, VIII4

Kidnapped

Describe your least favourite character

My least favourite character was David's uncle Ebenezer Balfour.

When David's father passed away David needed to take the letter to his uncle. He walked 2 days until he got to the house of the Shaws. His uncle was living in that house. When David settled down his uncle told him to go outside and upstairs to get one box filled with papers. Because David's uncle didn't use lights David needed to go in the dark and he could easily die on those stairs. His uncle gave him also some money because he was supposed to give it to Alexander but he didn't. David knew something was going on because his uncle was trying to kill him.

Alexander was David's father. He passed away three weeks before David came to his uncle. That house belonged to Alexander and because he was dead the house was supposed to go to David. That is why his uncle was trying to kill him. Then he would not have to give the house to David.

Ebenezer is my least favourite character because he was trying to kill his nephew instead of trying to connect to David and to live with him.

Aleksandra Ilijin, VIII1, 19 December 2019