What a busy time we have had in Italy this week. We made a grand entrance with a pasta eating competition! We grouped our classes and each group member tried to be the first person to suck up the long spaghetti noodle!
Shreya surprised us all by bringing a foccacia that she had made at home for us all to taste. Before we tasted it she demonstrated step by step how to make it. Thanks Shreya it really was delicious!
Mrs Rayner then told us all about the well known fashion designers who can be found in Italy. We had a look at some of their fashions, which led to some excited discussions particularly amongst the girls.
Next we gave our classes an opportunity to become designers. We gave them each a paper doll along with two outfits that they had to turn into fashion masterpieces. Gill and I were worried that the boys may not have found this as exciting as the girls. How wrong we were...both the boys and the girls loved creating the clothing, particularly when I brought out some sequins and glitter! Take a look...
During the week we had discussed various tourist attractions to be found in Italy. Gill and I gave them an atlas each, where we looked at amongst other things, the places we had been and their position in the world. The children were absolutely fascinated and just loved this activity.
On Friday, we showed our classes a Prezi highlighting the Trevi Fountains, Sistine Chapel, Mount Vesuvius, The Colosseum, The Leaning Tower of Pisa, Milan the fashion capital and Venice and the gondolas. We discussed in what city they were to be found as well as interesting information on each.
Each class was placed into groups of three and given a map as well as the pictures of each. They were tasked with choosing 6 of the tourist attractions, writing a sentence about each and then placing them on a poster, clearly indicating in which city each was to be found. But first they had to decide amongst themselves who would be doing what as well as the design and set out of the poster.
It was very interesting to watch the dynamics in each group as they to tried share out and decide who was doing what. I must say after helping some groups more than others I was very proud of their efforts. It was a really worthwhile activity where the children learnt new skills. Gill and I both agreed it was an activity that would be most beneficial to repeat.
We are using this book to introduce our classes to nouns, adjectives and verbs. This week we began by learning about what nouns were, and identifying the many nouns in the first chapter. 
