The 23rd of April is a very important day in Catalonia because of St. George celebration. But, did you know that it is celebrated worldwide as the International Book Day?

It all started in 1995 when the UNESCO decided to dedicate a day a year to promote reading, a lifelong skill key in learning that also adds richness to our lives.

They chose this date to honour two of the most famous writers ever who died on a 23rd of April…

We realized that, by reading a short summary (or blurb), we were able to recognize the title of one of the most popular works by Shakespeare: Romeo and Juliet.

To test our abilities in recognising books, we did, in groups, an activity that consisted in reading blurbs and match them to the correct book cover. It was very easy!

We realized that it was not necessary to understand all the words in the text and that we used a lot of different strategies to fulfill the task. Some looked at the cover and single words that matched them while other focused on some words (like rabbit or superhero) related to the stories we already knew.

After doing this activity, we were faced to a questionnaire and, in that case, it was necessary to understand ALL the text. Again, we shared strategies like guessing word meaning by context and their similarities to Catalan words.

We discovered that today it is a very special day in the United Kingdom and in the United States of America… today it’s April Fool’s day!

On this day, it is common that everybody plays jokes or tricks to make fun and have a laugh, even companies and newspapers! It is quite fun to read or watch the news today because you have to guess what article is fake.

This is precisely what we did today, we read a lot of real articles (adapted but real) that appeared on the news and we had to guess which two were real. It was not as easy as it seemed! Can you guess the two real ones? Click and have a go!

Reading together to distinguish the fake from the real ones, we realised that the important part was to get the general idea. It was not so important to know all the words in the text because only knowing the key words (which we can translate with the use of dictionaries) and the images that go with it we could guess most of it.

The strategies we used were very different when we had to answer the questions about specific information. In this activity, we had to select first the correct article to locate then the information using the key words.

In “The little Prince” it is said that the planet where the Prince lives is so small that he saw the sunset forty-four times. Having this in mind, the Petits Prínceps tried to answer the question that was waiting for them to start the term… Is it possible to celebrate New Year’s twice?

As you can see, last year there was an air company that offered the possibility to celebrate the arrival of the New Year twice by taking advantage of the International date line. Amazing!

After learning that time zones were stablished in 1883 taking London as the starting meridian, the Petits Princeps looked at the map and discovered what was the time in different cities around the world.

Once they had that clear, it was time to have fun while learning to tell the time in English at the same time. In pairs, they played a game in which they had to guess a city in the world just by saying the time…

It was a perfect and meaningful way to practise speaking!

In the class we are doing a timeline and we had a board game just about that! The name of the game is “Timeline” and it is a card game in which players have to make a timeline putting in the correct place an event card.

Well, we know that now because first we had to read the instructions… and they were in English! We had to use reading strategies to infer the meaning of the unknown words and, in some case, we had to use the dictionaries. Can you understand the instructions?

Once we had the instructions clear, it was time to play! Needless to say, we played the game using expressions like “it’s my turn”, “i’ts your turn”, “this is not correct”, “take a card” and “I’m the winner!”. It was also a great opportunity to say the years in English. It was so fun!

Today some Petits Princeps were very happy because on Thursday it’s “Halloween”. It is very fun to wear costumes and go trick-or-treating but we do not know much about  “Halloween”, though.  We saw a video that was very eye-opening…

We thought that the Americans invented Halloween recently just to have fun but we discovered that, in fact, it is a very old tradition that has a long history. And, much more importantly, we discovered that “Halloween” and “Castanyada” have the same origin!

In ancient times, the Celts, a tribe that lived in Ireland and the United Kingdom, celebrated harvest time with a big meal they called “Samhain.” They also thought that, on the 31st of October, the separation between the world of the living and the world of the dead didn’t exist. 

To avoid ghosts, people in Ireland started to dress up to protect themselves from bad spirits. They also left food outside the house to feed the ghosts and avoid them entering. These ancient traditions evolved with time and became the popular “Halloween” traditions that we know.

As somebody in class said “we celebrate the same (harvest and remembering the dead), but we do it in a different way”. 

It was really very interesting! If you want to know more, just check the video!