Hello again class!

The holidays have long passed by and thus here we are in a new year, eager to explore English even deeper and on new horizons.... As first assignment, you will have to describe at your choice 3 of the people in the pictures. Pay attention to their clothes carefully and don't forget: start with more general clothing, like the bigger items and then go to smaller ones, like belts, caps, or a bag.... Good luck!

Strange happening

For the week 19-23 March, you are going to write a story about a strange happening. You will post the story on the storybird site. In the story use as many narrative tenses as possible ( past simple, past continuous and past perfect.) Make sure your story will have at least 5 pages!!!

Good luck!

Questionnaire- Museums

Virtual Museums

Wandering through the virtual worlds that are put at our disposal thanks to the internet, I have quite recently found some virtual tours in some great of the world. Here are the link to them:

- The Sistine Chapel
- The Smithsonian National Museum of Natural History


Enjoy!

Touring Museums

Below there are several links to some of the most important museums in the world. They are all famous for the great value of their exhibits, which bring each year more and more visitors. In groups take one of the museums and look for information to fill in the Google document you receive from me.

Group 1: Ciufudean Mihai, Rebega Remus, Lapadat Ilie, Dindeal Tudor, Botarel Cosmin
- Smithsonian's National Museum of Natural History

Group 2: Cirlan Mihai Gabriel, Comaniciu Razvan, Bejan Emanuel, Mandea Constantin, Vilcu Ioan

- The Louvre Museum

Group 3: Birbichiu Pavel, Lutoiu Stefan, Morar Catalin, Trifu Ionut, Bunea Stefan

- The Hermitage Museum

Group 4: Marcu Andrei, Vacarus Cosmin, Droc Adrian, Teasa Laurentiu, Daju Ioan
- The Vatican Museums

Group 5: Ciociu Cristina, Lucian Stanca, Negrila Andrei, Oancea Silviu, Carp Vasile,
- The British Museum

Group 6: Savencu Catalin, Chirila Catalin, Radu Nicolae, Goghi Ianos, Munteanu Rares
- The Peles Museum

After you have completed the questions, you will use the information to design a poster in Glogster. Your poster will contain information about the admission fees, the name of the museum, its location, the opening hours and some words about its exhibits. For the rest, feel free to use your imagination!!! As a second part of your assignments, you will post your poster on your personal wikispace page. Good luck!!!

Wordle

Wordle is a site/ toy for generating “word clouds” from text that you provide. The clouds give greater prominence to words that appear more frequently in the source text. You can tweak your clouds with different fonts, layouts, and color schemes.

Such word clouds can be used as starter points for a conversation, as they contain the most important words or the most common ones in a text. You can then ask students to build ideas using the words in the cloud, to make up the story. Moreover, such a text cloud could also be used as a summarizing tool, at the end of one of your students' activities, they can summarize their most important ideas on a topic by playing with the tool in order to create a word cloud that would illustrate their work.

The works obtained can then be wither saved as PDF files, through the print button or as images through printscreens. The only condition for the site to work is to have already installed in your computer the Java Platform.

Puzzlemaker at Discovery Education

If in search of various word games like puzzles, word search, or hidden massage one of the best places to go is on the Discovery site at the Education section of this site. It is here that both as a teacher and as a student, you can find plenty of resources to satisfy your curiosity in more fields- maths, science, English language. In this site there is also a specific section in the top menu, where they offer plenty of word games, that can be used as mere games, or as useful educational tools in class. To go to the Puzzlemaker page, just click on the this link.

Story Starters

Story Starters

Still in the field of writing stories, there is another beautiful site I came across quite recently, and this gives the students story starters- a first sentence of what can become a beautiful story. These starters are always funny and surprisingly unexpected. You don't need to log in, you just write your name and the site, in a nice, funny manner comes up with your story starter.

It is definitely a nice and funny way to start writing.

Just go to http://teacher.scholastic.com/activities/storystarters/storystarter1.htm

Writing stories can be fun

Storybird

Making stories can be fun, social and easy! All that with the help of the site www.storybird.com . Here design artists offer dozens of images to work with as a start for your story.... It is up to you to choose the images and the characters that you like and then build up an entire stories around those images. You have cover with title and author's name, and then page after page the story unfolds before our eyes as you wrote it, letting us know bit by bit your imagination, creativity and language used. A great site, where everybody can create little stories that can be published online for everybody to read, or can be sent to someone, or even published if you want. Besides being a great and fun way to write, it can also help students be more attracted to writing, thanks to the great visual aids, and plunge into writing with more ease.

European Capitals

Activity 5

Pick a capital from Europe and make a PowerPoint presentation containing between 8-13 slides where to present information on that capital, plus pictures (location, population, things to see and do, a personality related to it etc.)

Upload the presentation into your personal page. under the title Activity 5- European Capitals.

Moreover, upload on your personal wiki page a short video about the capital you chose.

Good Luck!

Object description

Activity 4

Imagine you have lost an item of importance to you (mobile phone, watch, scarf etc) while staying at a hotel. Write a letter to the hotel describing the item in the hope of being found. Give details about when you stayed there, what the object is and any information necessary to make it easy to be found. Respect the structure of such a letter as well as the register (formal/ informal).

Write the letter in a word document and attach it into your wiki page.

Good Luck!

My hobbies

Activity 3

My dear students, for this assignments you are going to present your hobbies.
1. Go to your voki account and create a character talking about 2 of your hobbies. (the text should have 2 paragraphs)
2. Create a glogster with the text used in voki and accompanying pictures to illustrate your hobbies.
3. Post both the voki and the glogster inot your personal wiki page.

Good luck!

To "voki" myself 2

Activity 3

- go to http://www.voki.com and make an account for yourself;
- write a small text to introduce yourself to your colleagues. Mention name, what town/village you live, how many people are there in your family and what your hobbies are;
- introduce the text into the voki site, choose a character and a voice and save and publish the file.
- when you hit the Publish button a window appears where you can copy a code;
- you go to our wiki , you log on and access your page.
- you hit edit and write as title Activity 1, then you hit Widget in the top menu and from the list appearing choose Other HTML and paste the code you copied form Voki there. Then click save. You're done. On your page you have a voki character introducing himself/herself. Good luck!

Place description

Activity 2


Each group of students will deal with a certain picture and individually will write a description of what they see in 2-3 paragraphs.
Group 1:















Group 2:















Group 3:















Group 4:















Group 5:















Publish your description on your personal wiki page. Good luck!

Travel brochure- WebQuest

Activity 1


We all like traveling in order to meet new people and make new friends, to discover new cultures and civilizations and why not maybe just to relax or pursue our hobbies, be them skiing, swimming, shopping, sightseeing.
But we have all seen how hard it is sometimes to decide where to go, once you have the country, many times you have no idea about what to see or do there, you do not know anything about traditions or customs there or about what we call good manners and so on....

---

The WebQuest is a kind of activity in which with a certain purpose in mind you try to find certain answers through navigating online.The information you will collect is taken from the Internet only.
You are going to work in groups, each group dedicated to a particular country and look for certain information about that particular country. The countries you are going to visit virtually are: Austria, France, Italy, Poland, Spain, UK.

Introduction

We all like traveling in order to meet new people and make new friends, to discover new cultures and civilizations and why not maybe just to relax or pursue our hobbies, be them skiing, swimming, shopping, sightseeing.
But we have all seen how hard it is sometimes to decide where to go, once you have the country, many times you have no idea about what to see or do there, you do not know anything about traditions or customs there or about what we call good manners and so on....

You have just been hired by a local travel agency, and your first task is to stimulate interest in visiting certain European countries. You've been told to create a travel brochure highlighting the countries' historical, geographical, and cultural points of interest. The amount of people you can persuade to visit your country will greatly affect your position, and you may be fired if there aren't enough tourists. Do your best!

• Task

In this WebQuest each group will research a European country for information that might appear in a Travel Brochure. In the process of completing this assignment, each group will search information on the following aspects:
- information about travelling there (coach, plane, train....schedules, prices)
- general information about the weather, location and geographical neighbours
- capital and main cities
- language used
- main cultural, touristic and natural attractions (at least 4)
- find information about sightseeing, dining, hotels and transportation in the capital of each country
So basically what you have to do is to collect information on the particular aspects above that you save in word documents on categories to make it simpler. Make sure you also save a map of the country plus dozens of pictures illustrating the requirements above. be organized and save everything into a folder. Once you have collected your material start working on your travel brochure which will be done in Office Publisher. You will also have to design a poster for that country, that you can make on http://edu.glogster.com/ .

• Process

To make it easier for you here are some sites that you might need in your research. Yet, I have to mention they are just suggestions, as you may use whatever site you think provides you with the information needed.

- http://www.holidayplanners.com/index.php
- http://www.paralela45.ro/
- http://www.visiteurope.com/home.aspx
- http://tourism-in-europe.net/
- http://www.tripadvisor.com/Tourism-g4-Europe-Vacations.html

London:
- http://www.londontourism.ca/
- http://www.visitlondon.com/
- http://travel.yahoo.com/p-travelguide-191501822-london_vacations-i;_ylt=AkvG3Yxsm34oTy7J8rxK6Qn8xmoA

Paris:
- http://en.parisinfo.com/
- http://travel.yahoo.com/p-travelguide-191501740-paris_vacations-i
- http://www.tripadvisor.com/Tourism-g187147-Paris_Ile_de_France-Vacations.html

Rome:
- http://travel.yahoo.com/p-travelguide-191501769-rome_vacations-i
- http://www.enjoyrome.com/
- http://www.tripadvisor.com/Tourism-g187791-Rome_Lazio-Vacations.html
- http://www.rome.info/sights/

Madrid:
- http://travel.yahoo.com/p-travelguide-191501800-madrid_vacations-i
- http://www.esmadrid.com/en/portal.do
- http://www.madrid-tourist-guide.com/

Vienna:
- http://travel.yahoo.com/p-travelguide-191501715-vienna_vacations-i
- http://www.wien.info/en
- http://www.aboutvienna.org/sights/sights.php

Warsaw:
- http://travel.yahoo.com/p-travelguide-191501786-warsaw_vacations-i
- http://www.warsawtour.pl/en
- http://www.um.warszawa.pl/en
- http://www.tripadvisor.com/Tourism-g274856-Warsaw_Mazovia_Province_Central_Poland-Vacations.html

• Evaluation

Once you finish all the work upload the brochure on your wiki page as well as post the poster you created on http://edu.glogster.com/. Since the brochure is a group work all the members of the same team will upload the same brochure. The poster can be an individual/ group work as well. Good luck!

A Winter Holiday

Activity 2


You are required to plan, in groups of 5-6, a winter holiday for a family of 4 (the parents and two brothers of 10 and 13) from Sibiu to a European destination. The holiday lasts 5 days including the Christmas day and the budget for the whole trip is of 1600 E. Try to write in 2-3 paragraphs the plan of the holiday taking into consideration the destination, the transportation (schedule and price), the hotel information (what kind of rooms and the price, plus facilities), dining, things to see (museums, natural attraction, the Zoo....plus prices), and things to do. Also include in your work 2, 3 pictures with the place. Good Luck!!!

Place the answers in your personal wiki pages as usual.

To "voki" myself

For the 9th graders Activity 1 - go to http://www.voki.com and make an account for yourself; - write a small text to introduce yourself to your colleagues. Mention name, what town/village you live in, how many people are there in your family and what your hobbies are; - introduce the text into the voki site, choose a character and a voice and save and publish the file. - when you hit the Publish button a window appears where you can copy a code; - you go to our wiki , you log on and access your page. - you hit edit and write as title Activity 1, then you hit Widget in the top menu and from the list appearing choose Other HTML and paste the code you copied form Voki there. Then click save. You're done. On your page you have a voki character introducing himself/herself. Good luck!

About Voki

This post is meant both to introduce you into the world of voki and to serve as a tutorial about how to use voki.

Voki is a site where with your imagination you can convert any written text into audio output and have a character say those words. All you need is an account which is free and then you can start working. You can actually see one such example below, in a previous post.

hello everybody!

I hope you like this blog and the activities proposed in it and that its layout and template make it even more attractive to you, especially to my students who will eventually post some of their activities here.