Category: Selected News in English

Speedway Recollections

It was a chilly and sunny Friday of September 18, 1998. The clouds in the sky were silver and the sun was shining as bright as gold.

Lucina, a 20 year-old girl, was queueing along with her friends in the enormous crowd in front of the gates of the Polonia Bydgoszcz Stadium. They were holding tickets in their hands and were eager to see Tomasz Gollob, their favorite speedway champion competing at the Individual Speedway World Championship.

When they entered the stadium, they were amazed to see people of all ages raising Polish flags in the sky with Tomasz Gollob’s name, wearing unique scarves with the Polish flag represented on them too. Lucina and her friends were so enchanted that they bought scarfs and flags too in order to keep them as memorabilia.

After that, they went to their seats and waited impatiently for the race to start.Suddenly, the referee announced the beginning of the race and everybody stood up and cheered and sang the national anthem.

The first competitors were announced and the first round began. People were shouting from the enormous crowds while the motorcycles rolled the dust fighting for the first place. The championship lasted for three hours, but neither Lucina nor her friends were tired. The race ended and the referee started to announce the winners. People stoof up, cheered, clapped their hands and shouted of happiness to the first place winner who was Tony Rickardsson, the runner-up-Jimmy Nilsen and the third place champion-TOMASZ GOLLOB!

Lucina was surrounded by a mix of feelings of happiness, pride and amazement because her favorite speedway star won! She and her friends were in the ninth cloud because they had such an amazing experience and the fortune to be there. They made some photos and then went home full of joy. Lucina was eager to celebrate together with her friends the winning of Tomasz Gollob.

The next day, all the Polish newspapers wrote about Tomasz Gollob and the championship that took place in Bydgoszcz. Lucina cut the articles about speedway from them and placed them in her journal along with her lucky ticket. She was sure that one day, the journal, the ticket, the scarf and the flag would be part of the Polish Speedway history.

***

This story was written by Mariuta Ursachi, an 8th form pupil from G. Cosbuc High School from Balti, Moldova, in the framework of the project Selected News in English. Mariuta relied on an account and video presentation made by Alicja Zygmunt, a student at III Liceum Ogólnokształcące of Adam Mickiewicz in Bydgoszcz, Poland where she shared the stories of her mum as a big fan of speedway and Tomasz Gollob, the Polish speedway Champion.

We would also like to express our gratitude to Mrs Paulina Kaźmierczak-Majdzińska, the English language teacher who guided the Polish students in the framework of the project Selected News in English.

Partner Schools and Teachers

We are glad to confirm the following teachers have joined the project Selected News in English with a target group of students:

Moldova:

Ala Mihailov, Frasînesti Gymnasium, Ungheni

Lilia Ion Rusu, Alexei Mateevici High School, Ungheni

Natalia Ceban, Mihai Sadoveanu High School, Ocnița

Oxana Petraru, Olimp High School,Sîngerei

Mariana Beschieru, M. Eminescu High School, Chisinau

Irina Mutruc, Ion Creanga High-School, Balti

Poland:

Paulina Kaźmierczak-Majdzińska, EL teacher at III Liceum Ogólnokształcące of Adam Mickiewicz in Bydgoszcz, Poland (34 students)

Magda Mil, Warsaw, Poland

Guidelines

You can access the guidelines for the teachers and the students va this link:

https://drive.google.com/file/d/1il5TQBancIihJWEgCdWl0QbT3O_lcnd-/view?usp=sharing

SNE: Monthly Schedule and Topics

November

Topic (week 1 )- Health and Wellness

Topic (week 2 ) – Friendship

https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1sEY1r_yqMP63PXTUtVh98ZVjOvP1UJ8l9ZkZBKXiCrc/edit?usp=sharing

October

Monday, 5 October

Topic: School Uniform

Monday, 12 October

Topic: Teachers Running for Elections

Monday, 19 October

Topic: Homework

Thursday, 29 October

Topic:The Environment

Friday, 30 October

Topic: The Environment

September.

Monday, 31 August 2020, 20.00 (Bucharest or Athens time)

Topic: Laura Hurricane

Monday, 7 September 2020, 20.00 (Bucharest or Athens time)

Topic: Katrina Hurricane

Monday, 14 September 2020, 20.00 (Bucharest or Athens time)

Topic: Happiness

Monday, 21 September 2020, 20.00 (Bucharest or Athens time)

Topic: Shopping

Monday, 28 September 2020, 20.00 (Bucharest or Athens time)

Topic: Languages Unite

Selected News in English – an international project for English language learners.

Open call for partners:

Period: 1 November – 5 December 2020

Aim

To provide an international context for 14-17 year old students to improve their English language skills, by reading online news articles and participating in online discussions and follow-up activities with students and teachers from 5 countries, reflecting on their differences and working fruitfully together as a team united by common values and learning objectives.

Objectives

1 To use the flipped classrooms approach and distance learning opportunities not only to foster students’ autonomous learning skills and allow students to master content at their own pace, but also improve their team working skills by enabling them to collaborate with peers from the other countries while getting ready for the activities as well as during the online sessions.

2 To give examples of teaching and learning fruitfully in mixed-ability groups by providing a choice of news articles on different levels which enables the students who have recently started reading news articles to learn in an confident way and challenges the ones who are reading above grade level.

3 To diversify the content the students read by recommending articles on topics related to culture, education, health, life style, historical events, science, money, and sports.

4 To help the students improve their vocabulary by playing vocabulary games and quizzes.

5 To practice reading and speaking skills and raise awareness about the national, international and global issues by reading news articles and presenting a brief summary of news published by British and American media resources, educational platforms and blogs but also stay current with what is happening globally and locally by exchanging insights about their own experiences.

6 To encourage the students to develop their reading comprehension and critical thinking skills by asking and answering questions from different levels of Bloom’s taxonomy in the context of the flipped classroom where the Qs from the levels of Remembering and Understanding are covered individually or in small groups before the online session, the Applying and Analyzing level Qs are covered during the online sessions and the Evaluating and Creating level Qs and tasks are recommended as optional follow-up written assignments after the online session.

7 To encourage students from various educational institutions from the Republic of Moldova, the Czech Republic, Italy, Greece and the Ukraine to become one of the key players in developing intercultural communication among teenagers by working individually, in small groups and in a team, planning and delivering a presentation, discussing news articles, sharing knowledge, online tools and resources and own experiences in the framework of this educational project.

Who can participate? English language teachers and their students. Target group: 14-17 year old students.

Where do we meet? We run our online sessions on Zoom.

How do we organise the sessions?

Before the class

The project manager and optionally the local school coordinators select and share the articles via email or via project groups at least 4 days before the online session, create the vocabulary exercises and quizzes.

The students get acquainted with the topic. They read the article, practice the vocabulary, ask and answer Qs by levels of Blooms taxonomy to check reading comprehension and create a mind map of the article. They have also the opportunity to retell the article in a video or a Live in a closed Facebook group or via the platform padlet.com.

During the class

Volunteering students present the article(s) (News in brief), ask and answer questions related to the given topic and play vocabulary games.

The teachers recommend the higher order Qs and tasks to be covered after the class. These may be written assignment including opinion essays, reports and letters. The written assignments are not mandatory.

After the class (optional)

The students do the writing assignments and hand it to their teacher. Additionally, some of the essays could be posted on the site feltschool.net, under the category Selected News in English.

How to access the session?

All the teachers need to send us an email at continuing_education_center@yahoo.com and provide us the following information: name, institution, place, country, telephone number for whatapp or viber, email address.

We will get in touch with you to confirm the schedule. The information will also be updated on our site: feltschool.net

Certificates

Teachers

In order to receive a certificate of participation, the teachers need to join minimum 5 live sessions x 40 minutes with a group of 5 -9 students.

In order to receive a certificate as a local coordinator the teacher needs to join minimum 5 live sessions x 40 minutes with a group of 10-15 students and contribute to the implementation of the project’s activities.

Students

The students will receive a certificate of participation if they make the mind map of minimum 1 article per week, present 5 articles in the closed Facebook group and attend the weekly Zoom sessions.

In order to receive a certificate of outstanding achievements in the framework of the project, volunteering students will participate in Live sessions that will be broadcast on the Facebook page of the project. These sessions will cover the articles that have been discussed during the last 2-4 weekly sessions. The students will also play live vocabulary games and quizzes.