Sunday 16th July
Hi my colleagues…!!...dopo un estenuante viaggio di quasi 4 ORE di coach from London Stansted to Oxford (collezionando tra l’altro ben 30 minuti di ritardo perché avevano più passeggeri prenotati che posti effettivi!!) ormai congelata dall’aria condizionata sparata a manetta ...sono finalmente arrivata in questo fantastico posto dove sembra che il tempo si sia fermato...si respira storia in ogni angolo…
B&B molto grazioso, proprietario fantastico, conduzione familiare, super easy, molti consigli e suggerimenti utili…
Anyway...now I’ll try to post some photos...sorry if I don't succeed…
Bye for now…
The famous “Alice in wonderland” shop...in honour of Lewis Carroll who studied here in Oxford
Monday 17th July
Ready to start!!!!!!!
This is my school, but I’ll attend lessons here…
At the Said Business School…
We are a group of more than 20 teachers…divided into two groups...I’m with Spanish, German, Polish, Hungarian and just another Italian colleague, all collaborative and nice 😊
Teachers are great, school staff is really kind and professional…the university is very big, I got lost twice today!😂
The course is very interesting, lots of materials, clues and ideas to bring into classroom, the lesson is very challenging, basically we test between ourselves some activities which could be suitable for our students to help them learn a particular topic and we find out how to work properly with the four skills (listening, writing, reading, speaking) ; my favourite topic is how to get students involved in lessons and motivate them to learn English…
This afternoon we also had a fantastic Oxford walking tour with a very funny guide who told us many curiosities about this wonderful city...😃
Now I’ll show you some photos…then I’ll probably go to bed ‘cause I'm exhausted 🤗
Robert. ..our tour guide
Oxford University ...which,he told us, has been rated as the best in the world again this year…
Famous shops…
Radcliffe’s Camera, a building of Oxford University by James Gibbs
Bridge of Sighs (it wants to be an imitation of our Italian Ponte dei sospiri in Venice) Lots of films have been shooted here… not only Harry Potter's but even Transformers!!!🤔
...here they are...the famous windows in some of Harry Potter's scenes…
Inside the building…all writings are in Latin
This is the library with the biggest reading room in the world...up to 4 kilometres books...no photos could be taken inside unfortunately…
Bye for now, cheers
Tuesday 18th July
Hi!!!!!!
Today the lesson was very hard in the morning and since yesterday we worked longer than what we should, teachers gave us free afternoon !!!!!!!! (Also because they know that here shops and museums close at 5p.m. so they really made us happy!!!!!!!!
The lesson started with verb patterns...how to teach verbs which want the infinitive or bare infinitive and those which want the gerund...very important topic to teach, Lucy gave us many suggestions and we play/experiment a lot…
(Unfortunately I don't have so many photos of the lesson ‘cause surprisingly I’m the only one in the group who take photos...so I feel I little bit embarrassed actually...anyway, I don't care, I’ll continue doing it! )
This was an exercise useful to teach rhyming expressions...we had to match them and then discuss together
This was my group result…
Another technique to help students understand why infinitive and why gerund.
Then we talked about the importance of using images to make students infer and think
We (always experiencing the task as students) had to think about what topic should be explained to students using those images...we had then to invent sentences to describe images using the grammar topics we thought were right for the purpose...and they were Present Perfect and second and third conditionals...
Then we moved to pronunciation…
We saw videos, we listen to different accents, we did dictation…
(These are very good teachers, the one on the right is Noemi...she lived for six years in Africa..,her English is perfect! She's Hungarian, the other one is from Poland and she's very good too)
Now...lunch time please!,,,
And finally relax…
Botanic garden
Shopping...
And boat trip
Oxford castle
This evening there's Shakespeare's Romeo and Juliet on...no tickets unfortunately, all sold out…
Well, let's go to one of the famous pub…
And now it's better for me to go to bed…
Bye bye
Wednesday 19th July
Hi guys!!!!!!!
Another very tiring but really satisfying day…
Today Lucy showed us very amazing games to propose to students to help them learning grammar or vocabulary...and of course we did the “guinea pigs” 🤣😂😀
An alternative to the “hanged man”
To learn vocabulary
Then an amazing game to learn prepositions and...I’ll tell you another time because it's long 🤔
This game was my favourite one...to learn talking about experiences using Past Simple and Present Perfect...students have to investigate making questions to understand if what one is saying is true or not and believe me...sometimes it can be very embarrassing!!!!!😁😂 (have a look at the questions on the blackboard!!!!!!!)
And this was one of the best idea we shared in the afternoon about the way we teach some topics...our Austrian colleagues use coloured clouds to teach verb tenses...I’ll tell you how…(again quite long and complicated, and maybe boring for most of you!!!😁)
….later, in the afternoon when we were finally free from lesson….RELAXXXXXXX
We went to the Christ Church College guided tour
Harry Potter's stairs and hall
This was the door Alice (the one of Lewis Carroll’s book) wanted to open to go in that garden...this is because she was always looking for the key in the book… (she lived there with her little brother when her father was the college principal...and Charles Dodgson (Carroll) was a lecturer there…)
Again another Harry Potter's shooting spot
After the college tour, even if I’m really tired and my feet hurt, I was easily convinced by my friend Patrizia and the two Austrian colleagues to join another guided tour...the Ghosts Oxford tour …
The tour guide was amazing...he was acting while telling us strange legends about this quite a lot esoteric city and then he told us about the violence and killings there were in the past among students, teachers and local population...that was because colleges were built...to protect students and let them live and study in peace…
I’m afraid I haven't got any ghosts’ photos!!!!!
This is the narrow street which leads you to one of the most famous pub in England...for sure in Oxford...you can't manage to seat for a beer...it’s always busy...in the past many murders were committed there
Cheers…bye bye
Thursday, 20th July
Hi my dear colleagues!!!! Here in Oxford another fantastic sunny day has gone and I really had very good time…
This morning we worked on teaching students writing skills and motivate them, giving them opportunities to write SHORT tasks but OFTEN… Lucy told us this is the most important thing…
She gave us a lot of ideas, we tried again in pair or in group each task, game or play role-play she suggested and, as always, we learned a lot having lots of fun too! 😂
This is a fantastic online programme to make a newspaper out of a student's writing...amazing...it could be useful to make a kind of school newspaper
Then we saw many other useful tasks to propose such as “musical stimulation” where we had to close our eyes, listen to some classical music and imagine where we were, who we were with, what we were seeing, what were we doing etc. When the teacher stopped the music, we had to write a brief paragraph about the experience we imagined.
Then we did expand a story,dictogloss,
And circular story...which is this one below, very amazing, where each group in turn had to continue a story starting from 3 sentences...very good!
In the afternoon we moved to using images to get students conversate!!!!!!!😅😥
Brilliant tasks again, very useful suggestions and many many laughs...especially when I was at the blackboard to draw !!!!!😅😂 (I’ll show you my disaster later!)
This was dictadraw
One of us was at the blackboard to draw and her team had to dictate how to draw something similar to the drawing they had as task… the more the drawing was precise the higher were the points for the team! This was the result...
And this is Outside the postcard
You had to draw what your team imagined there could be outside the given postcard...unfortunately this time my team lost because of my primitive artistic skills as you can see!!!!! Everybody here keep joking at me now! 🤣😂😅
In the afternoon, since I'm a huge fan of Harry Potter, I went to visit Bodleian Library….which is absolutely wonderful … but unfortunately no photos could be done inside...I can only tell you I've never seen so many books in my life! There was a magical atmosphere...all these very old books, old wooden shelves...simply fascinating.
Then, since I love books so much, I went to the Blackwell’s Bookshop to visit it and to buy some good books…
This bookshop has the biggest reading room in the world…
My visit to this shop lasted about two hours...🤓 so many books...how can you decide??????
Ok then, after a delicious Thai dinner, I think it's now time to go to read my brand new book! (I’ve finally chosen “The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe” by Lewis, another fellow and tutor in English Literature at Oxford University until 1954)
Bye bye 🤗
Friday 21st July
Hi!!! ...my last day here has come...😢
Last breakfast in the beautiful B&B garden...
This morning we had just a short lesson and then the teacher gave us the certifications…
We talked about teaching English culture using some amazing games…
This is the university Café
...well...with a lot of sadness but very happy for the experience I'm now leaving Oxford to reach Stansted Airport and get ready for the flight on Saturday.
Bye bye guys! 🤗