An interview with the Commander

On Monday, September 26, we had a great time with our school Commander, Cel. Victor Hugo Gomes Centeno, who gently found some time in his agenda to talk to us. The students asked him several questions about his experience abroad, specially concerning his mission in Canada, where he has recently been. Some personal questions were also asked – the students wanted to know about his birthplace and about his reading preferences, for example. During the interview, Cel. Victor made the students feel very comfortable because he also asked them to talk about their experiences and dreams. At the end of the interview he told the students to keep on studying English and he also reinforced the idea that the English language can open many doors in their future. By the way, this interview will soon be published here. Thank you, Commander!

 

 

 

 

Rio 2016: Are you a “sports nut”?

The Olympic Games in Rio were the theme of the first English Club meeting of the semester. The students watched one of the official videos, named “Together”, available on Youtube. They transcribed it and discussed the text. The words in the video emphasize the importance of sports and all the benefits its practice can bring to all of us. There was also a discussion on the sports the students consider exciting, boring, dangerous, etc. The teacher also gave the students a list of sports and asked them to place the verbs play, go or do next to each one of them. The teacher asked the students to say which medals Brazilian athletes had won and in which sports. At the end of the meeting the students watched a video with the highlights of London 2012 and listened to the song “If this is it”, by Newton Faulkner. They discussed its lyrics and related it to Rio 2016 and all the feelings the games bring.

Movie Session: The Emperor's Club

During the month of June, we worked on the Values Project, which aims at contributing to the improvement of the moral and civic values of the CMSM students. In the beginning of each meeting, we saw part of the movie The Emperor's Club, in which Mr. Hundert, an idealistic preparatory school teacher attempts to redeem an incorrigible student. After some minutes of movie watching, we discussed some particular scenes as well as some dialogues and quotes - the movie is full of them and some come from the Classical World. "A man's character is his fate"; "The end depends upon the beginning"; "Great ambition and conquest without contribution is without significance"; "It's not living that is important, but living well" were some of the quotes we discussed the most. We also spent some time discussing the following questions, asked by Mr. Hundert: "What will your contribution be? How will History remember you?". We had a great time watching this movie and discussing it because of the lessons it gives us. They surely converse with the values CMSM wants to teach its students.

What are you reading at the moment?

We started our meeting today talking about the books we've been reading lately... They are mostly fiction, some of them are being read for pleasure, others because somebody (teachers!) told us to do so! The good thing is that we all enjoy reading and take this activity very seriously. Also, some sentence starters were given to the students and we ended up discussing many different subjects, an activity that made everyone speak and interact with each other.

Shakespeare: to be or not to be!

As in 2016 we are celebrating the 400th anniversary of Shakespeare's death, the English Club put their hands to work and organized the board of the Department of Foreign Languages with this theme. Besides that, the Club selected some of Shakespeare's famous quotes and prepared some posters with them to be displayed on the boards around the school. They all had the hashtags #ShakespeareLives and #EnglishClubCMSM.

 The English Club also prepared a Shakespeare Week for all the students at CMSM. The Elementary School Students watched some videos produced by the British Council and did a written activity about one of Shakespeare's plays. The plays were Romeo and Juliet, Hamlet, Twelfth Night, Macbeth and A Midsummer Night's Dream. The High School students watched a documentary about Shakespeare, produced by Miramax as a bonus feature of the movie Shakespeare in Love. After watching the documentary they also did a written activity. All the videos are subtitled in English. The links for the videos are:

http://learnenglishkids.britishcouncil.org/en/short-stories 

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FAfih_YUgMk 

Some pics of the Shakespeare Week:

 

English Club: another opportunity to practice English at CMSM

Hi, everyone! It is with great pleasure that we start this blog to register the activities of our English Club at CMSM. We are a group of High School students (and some eigth graders too) who meet (almost) every Monday at 1:30 pm at the Cultural Hall. In this blog we are going to describe our activities as well as share some stuff we find interesting. We hope you like it!