Happy Europe Day

Labour Day

Historical anniversaries for 2018

This is a list of some relevant historical anniversaries that will be celebrated in 2018:

• 1018: Abd ar-Rahman IV became Caliph of Cordoba.

JANUARY

• 1st January 1993: Czechoslovakia ceased to exist as the Czech Republic and Slovakia separated in the so-called Velvet Divorce.
• 1st January 1993: The European Economic Community eliminated trade barriers and created a European single market.
• 20th January 1993:  Bill Clinton became the 42nd President of the United States.
• 22nd January 1918: Ukraine proclaimed its independence from Russia.
• 1st January 1818: Frankenstein was published by Mary Shelley.

FEBRUARY

• 24th February 1918: Estonia became independent from Russia.

MARCH

• 4th March 1918: the flu pandemic of 1918 began. It killed between 50 to 100 million people worldwide.
• 22nd March 1518: Magellan convinced King Charles I to support his voyage to Spice Islands.

APRIL

• 4th April 1968: Martin Luther King Jr. was assassinated in Memphis, Tennessee.

MAY

• 23rd May 1618: The Thirty Years' War started in Europe. The conflict involved most of the European powers at that time.
• 15th May 1648: The Peace of Westphalia put an end to the Thirty Years' War in Europe.

JUNE

• 14th June 2008: Expo 2008 started in Zaragoza, with the topic "Water and sustainable development".
• 5th June 1968: Robert F. Kennedy (John F. Kennedy's brother) was assassinated in Los Angeles.

JULY

• 18th July 1918: Nelson Mandela was born.

AUGUST

• 7th August 2008: Georgia invaded the breakaway state of South Ossetia, starting a war with Russia as the latter intervened in support of the separatists in both South Ossetia and Abkhazia.
• 30th August 1993: Russian troops left Lithuania.

SEPTEMBER

• 17th September 1993: Russian troops left Poland.

OCTOBER

• 16th October 1968: US athletes protested against racial discrimination during the Olympic games in Mexico City.

NOVEMBER

• 4th November 2008: Barack Obama was elected the 44th president of the USA.
• 11th November 1918: End of World War I (1914-1918), the first major catastrophe of the 20th century.

DECEMBER

• 24th December 1968: Apollo 8 was the first manned spacecraft to orbit the Moon.
• 3rd December 1818: Illinois becomes the 21st state of the Union (the United States of America).

Monarchs descended from Quen Victoria

Many present-day monarchs in Europe are descended from Queen Victoria. Have a look at the family trees:
CURRENT MONARCHS IN EUROPE AND THEIR RELATIONSHIP WITH QUEEN VICTORIA:

QUEEN VICTORIA'S CHILDREN:

Charts from Wikipedia

Indo-European Languages

Indo-European languages are the world's largest family of languages.

Linguists believe they all came from a single language called Proto-Indo-European. This language was originally spoken somewhere in Eurasia. Today they are spoken all over the world.

The Indo-European languages are a family of several hundred related languages and dialects,including most major languages of Europe, the Iranian plateau, and South Asia.

Historically, this language family was also important in Anatolia and Central Asia.

The earliest Indo-European writing comes from the Bronze Age in the Anatolian and Mycenaean Greek languages. We can place the origin of Indo-European languages after the invention of farming, because some of the Proto-Indo-European words are farming words.


The languages of the Indo-European group have about three billion native speakers. Although it may not have as many different languages as some other language families, it has more native speakers than any other.

Of the 20 languages with the most speakers, 12 are Indo-European: English, Spanish, Hindi, Portuguese, Bengali, Russian, German, Sindhi, Punjabi, Marathi, French, and Urdu. They account for over 2.7 billion native speakers.

Four of the six official languages of the United Nations are Indo-European: English, Spanish, French, and Russian.



Text from Simple Wikipedia

Europe Day

Europe Day is celebrated every year on the 9th of May. If you want to know more about the European Union the BBC has a very useful website were you will be able to learn about:

• How did it begin?
• Which countries belong to the EU?
• How does the EU work?
• What does it all cost
• How does the EU spend its money?
• Why is there a referendum?
• What next?

And here you will find the activities that will be held across Europe.

60th Anniversary of the Treaty of Rome

WHAT WAS THE TREATY OF ROME?
The Treaty of Rome was signed on 25 March 1957 between six European coutries (Belgium, France, Italy, Luxembourg, the Netherlands and Germany). After centuries of wars, those countries started to act together for more peace and prosperity.

This treaty was the basis of the European Economic Community, which was joined by as much as 27 countries and evolved into the European Union.

The Treaties of Rome established a common market where people, goods, services and capital can move freely and created the conditions for prosperity and stability for European citizens.

READ MORE:

• History and main characters in the history of the European Union
• 60th Anniversary
• Wikipedia

Monarchs descended from Queen Victoria

Taken from https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Royal_descendants_of_Queen_Victoria_and_King_Christian_IX

How Americans See Europe

Imperialism and Nationalism

These are the materials we have in this blog for ESO-4 unit 6:

UNIT 6 - Imperialism and nationalism

Colonial powers by 1800- Wikipedia

- unit 6

- presentation 6

- glossary 6 

- additional text from Wikipedia
- ESL video: Scramble for Africa
- revision test 
- crosswords
- match the names
- match the dates
- match the definitions
- match the countries
- fill the gaps: Scramble for Africa

- audio1

- audio2

- audio3

- audio4

Eurovision Song Contest

The Eurovision Song Contest is a song contest run by the European Broadcasting Union that started in 1956. Different singers representing countries in Europe compete every year.

Famous past winners include ABBA (representing their native Sweden) and Céline Dion (though Canadian, she represented Switzerland). Check Wikipedia for a full list of the previous winners.

This week the Spanish representative has been chosen: Barei, with her song Say Yay.

The Europen Final will take place on May 14th in Stockholm, as country of the last winner is in charge of organizing and hosting the following final.

LAST YEAR'S WINNER



2016 SPANISH SONG



SAY YAY LYRICS — BAREI
Hello hello Mr. fighter
Look! there we go again…
Go-getters don´t forsake!
They never wallow in their fate.
More than a thousand miles until the end
We’re never gonna know what lies ahead.
We only got today
to learn from our yesterday!

I feel alive bringing into play
my whole life going all the way.
I’m still alive and I turn away
from broken mirrors.
I feel alive when I dare to say
I wanna fight
Won’t fix by running,running… I won’t fix by running!
Come on and raise your battle cry
You are the one who never dies!

Hurray sing it lalalala! Go on singing lalalala!
You keep on climbing over hills…
Right now you’re following your dreams!
Hurray sing it lalalala! Hurray!
SAY YAY YAY YAY!
Hurray! Hurray!
SAY YAY YAY YAY!
Hurray! Hurray!
SAY YAY YAY YAY!
Hurray! Hurray!
SAY YAY YAY YAY!

Hello Hello Mr. Danger
No need to be afraid!
I know by heart my shades
I got the light between my breaks…
More than a thousand
wounds upon my hands
of every time I fought them face to face!

We go through our mistakes
to find the way to go back straight.
I feel alive… no voy a caer
my whole life una y otra vez
I´m still alive no voy a ceder
en el intento…
I feel alive no voy a correr!

I wanna fight
Won’t fix by running, running… I won’t fix by running!
Come on and raise your battle cry
You are the one who never dies!

Hurray sing it lalalala! Go on singing lalalala!
You keep on climbing over hills…
Right now you’re following your dreams!
Hurray sing it lalalala! Hurray!

SAY YAY YAY YAY!
Hurray! Hurray!
SAY YAY YAY YAY!
Hurray! Hurray!
SAY YAY YAY YAY!
Hurray! Hurray!
SAY YAY YAY YAY!
Come on and raise your battle cry…
SAY YAY YAY YAY…!

FAMOUS EUROVISION SONGS

1967; SANDIE SHAW: PUPPET ON A STRING (UNITED KINGDOM)



1974: ABBA-WATERLOO (SWEDEN)


1978: GALI ATARI AND MILK AND HONEY: HALLELUJAH (ISRAEL)


1988: CELINE DION: NE PARTEZ SANS MOI (SWITZERLAND)


2006:LORDI: HARD ROCK HALLELUJAH (FINLAND)


2008: DIMA BILAN: BELIEVE (RUSSIA)

Advent time (four weeks before Christmas)

Advent calendar

Advent is not widely celebrated in England, its celebration actually originated in Germany, although in the church calendar Advent is the official start of the run up to Christmas.

Two traditions that have caught on in England are the Advent calendar and the Advent candle. The Advent Calendar originated in the 19th Century from the protestant area of Germany. Protestant Christian families made a chalk line for every day in December until Christmas Eve. Before long, commercial entrepreneurs started replacing the ephemeral chalk lines with printed calendars. The first known Advent Calendar is for the advent of 1851. Nowadays it is usually a thin rectangular card with 24 or 25 doors. The doors are numbered 1-24/25. Door number 1 is opened on the 1st of December, door 2 on the 2nd etc. Behind each door there is a Christmas scene (but the most popular ones have a chocolate behind each door) .

"Marianne Schneegans Adventskalender" by Marianne Schneegans

An Advent candle often has 25 marks on it, a bit of the candle is burned down by one mark each day. In some homes, 24 candles are kept, one for each night from December 1 through Christmas eve. One candle is lit for a while on December 1, then a new candle is added each day for the 24 day period. However, it is now more common to have four candles for the four weeks before Christmas. One candle is lit on the first Sunday, two the second week and so on. The candles were often placed on a wreath upon the dining room table. Advent candles are lit in many homes, schools and churches, in England, with a final central candle lit on Christmas Day; these are often on a hanging decoration known as an "Advent Crown." They became exceedingly popular due to a children's TV programme called Blue Peter, who every year made an advent crown from old coathangers, tinsel and candles! Well, they used to use candles, but because of health and safety insanity they now give instructions using baubles - it's not really the same, but you can make an advent crown following the instructions in this pdf file.

Information from http://www.learnenglish.de/culture/christmas.html#sthash.cJyTOjiU.dpuf

Maps of Europe and Spain

MAP OF EUROPE IN SPANISH 

(Banco imágenes INTEF)

MAP OF EUROPE IN ENGLISH 

(http://www.youreuropemap.com/europe_map_political.gif)

MAP OF SPAIN IN SPANISH 

(Banco Imágenes INTEF)

MAP OF SPAIN IN ENGLISH 

(http://www.mapsopensource.com/images/spain-political-map.gif)

 

Royal descendants of Queen Victoria

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Royal_descendants_of_Queen_Victoria_and_King_Christian_IX

Facts about Languages

Did You Know That ?

• There are about 7,000 languages in the world.
• There are 50,000 characters in the Chinese language. You’ll need to know about 2,000 to read a newspaper.
• 12.44% of the world’s population speaks Mandarin as their first language.
• There are about 2,200 languages in Asia.
• 1/4 of the world’s population speaks at least some English.
• 50% of educational time in Luxembourg devoted to learning English, German, and French.
• There are 13 ways to spell the ‘o’ sound in French.
• There is a language in Botswana that consists of mainly 5 types of clicks.
• There are 2,400 languages classified as being ‘in danger’.
• 231 languages are now completely extinct. These include Alderney French, Soyot and Togoyo.
• Ayapaneco. In Mexico this language is in danger of dying out , because its two remaining speakers refuse to talk to each other.
• One language dies about every 14 days.
• Eastern Siberia, Northwest Pacific Plateau of North America, And Northern Australia are hotspots for endangered languages.
• There are 12 imaginary languages in Lord of The Rings.
• Marc Okrand, the man who was credited with creating Klingon, was once a linguistics teacher at the University of California.
• Esperanto is an artificial language, but is spoken by about 500,000 to 2,000,000 people, and 2 feature films have been done in the language.
• The UN's Universal Declaration of Human Rights has been published in 300 languages. It is the world's most translated document.
• There are 24 working languages of the EU.
• There are 6 official UN languages: Arabic, Chinese, English, French, Russian and Spanish.
• The Bible is available in 2454 languages.
• Agatha Christie's novels are available in 7231combinations of book and language. She is the world's most translated author.
• 830 languages are spoken in Papua New Guinea.
• Frisian is the easiest foreign language for English speakers to learn. It is native to part of the Netherlands and has a common history and similar sounds.
• Welsh is spoken in Wales (the United Kingdom) and Argentina, as Welsh immigrants settled in Patagonia in 1865 and kept the language.
• The oldest written language was believed to be written in about 4500 BC.
• Rotokas has the smallest alphabet, just 11-12 letters, whereas Khmer (Cambodian) has the largest alphabet, 74 letters.
• South Africa has 11 official languages – the most for a single country.
• The pope tweets in 9 languages.
• German and French have been voted the best for graduates to learn to help enhance their prospect of getting a job.
• German is thought to be the most similar to English.
• If babies hear foreign languages in their first few months, they'll find picking up languages easier in later life, a study has shown.
• Sign language also has accents.
• The US has no official language.
• You can us an ATM in Latin in Vatican City.

taken from http://www.edudemic.com/language-quiz/

United Kingdom & Great Britain: the difference

Solar eclipses in history

solar eclipse, 20th March 2015

Solar eclipses have always been observed by humans and have been recorded ever since the beginning of history. They had been depicted in the fascinating mythology of ancient Egypt, and produced evidence that the ancient Egyptians observed solar eclipses over 4,500 years ago. Similarly the Chinese also tried to interpret these astronomical events. Not having a scientific justification for eclipses, magical intepretations emerged:

• In ancient China, solar and lunar eclipses were regarded as heavenly signs that foretell the future of the Emperor; predicting eclipses were of high importance for the state. Over four millenniums ago, two Chinese astrologers were murdered as they failed to predict a solar eclipse. They believed that solar eclipses occured when a legendary celestial dragon devoured the Sun. They also believed that this dragon attacked the Moon during lunar eclipses. However, by 20 BCE,Chinese astronomers realized the true nature of solar eclipses, and by CE 206, Chinese astronomers were able to predict solar eclipses by analyzing the motion of the Moon.
• In Mesopotamia, the plain between the two great rivers Tigris and Euphrates, the Babylonian astronomers observed the motions of the Sun, Moon and planets carefully and kept records of the celestial events. They are also credited with remarkable contributions to ancient astronomy. Babylonian astronomers recorded the eclipses of May 3rd, 1375 BCE; July 31st, 1036 BCE, and Assyrians recorded the solar eclipse of June 15th, 763 BCE in Nineva.



solar eclipse 20th March 2015

• The ancient Greek astronomers made remarkable contributions to astronomy. For instance, Eratosthenes (276-194 BCE) estimated the circumference of the Earth with a remarkable accuracy by measuring the angles of the shadows cast at noon in Aswan and Alexandria on the day of the summer solstice. They also had great knowledge of eclipses. Claudius Ptolemy (ca. 87-150 CE) wrote about eclipses. His writings show that he studied the lunar orbit carefully and had a sophisticated scheme for predicting both solar and lunar eclipses.
• Muslim prophet Mohammad witnessed the annular solar eclipse of 27 January 632. He stated explicitly and definitely that the eclipses of the Sun and the Moon are not bad omens, but are cosmic spectacles that demonstrate the might and knowledge of Allah the Great.
• The Egyptian astronomer Ibn Yunus (950-1009), who was regarded as one of the greatest observational astronomers of his time, made important, precise observations of lunar and solar eclipses in Cairo.
• In modern times, two solar eclipses were particulary significant:
• In 1868, the French astronomer Jules Janssen discovered the element helium when he observed the spectrum of the Sun during a total eclipse in India. 
• The total solar eclipse of 29 May 1919 is famous for astronomical observations that were carried out during that eclipse and confirmed some of Einstein's work on general relativity.

Further reading

• http://www.history.com/news/historic-eclipses
• http://www.bibalex.org/eclipse2006/historicalobservationsofsolareclipses.htm
• http://ancienthistory.about.com/od/eclipses/a/SolarEclipses.htm

25 years of the Berlin Wall

four zones after WW2 - picture from Wikipedia

The Berlin Wall,  Berliner Mauer in German, separated the city of Berlin in Germany from 1961 to 1989. It separated the eastern half from the western half. For manay it was a symbol of the Cold War. The Berlin Wall was about 168 km (104 miles) long.It was built to prevent people from escaping from the eastern half of Berlin.

After the WW2 ended Germany was divided into four zones, one for each of the main Allied countries: France, United Kingdom, the USA and the Soviet Union. Berlin, its capital, was also divided into 4 zones even though it was inside the Soviet zone. 

In 1949 the British, French and American zones became the Federal Republic of Germany or West Germany and the Soviet part became the German Democratic Republic. As Germans living in the Soviet part of the city tried to escape a wall was built, the Berlin Wall.

Berlin Wall - picture from Wikipedia

The German Democratic Republic was isolated from the rest of the country and it had a communist regime. In the 1980s eastern, communist countries faced collapse and the opposition of people. In October 1989 mass demonstrations against the government in East Germany began.

Eventually, the Berlin Wall was taken down on November 9, 1989.

READ MORE:

• Simple Wikipedia (easy texts for CLIL students)
• Wikipedia in English
• BBC: videos and audio files

European Day of Languages 2014

The European Day of Languages is celebrated every year on the 26th of September. The European Commission has prepared some activities for schools to promote awareness of the richness of knowing several languages and being able to communicate with as many people as possible. This is part of our European cultural heritage.

This is the official site where you can find more information about this date.

And if you want to learn a lot more, the European Commission has elaborated a number of documents that highlight different aspects about multilingual diversity in Europe. Just have a look.

Here you are some interesting games and activities:

• Language Trivia
• Assess your language skills
• Language Facts
• Animal sounds in different European Languages
• Language Quiz
• Palindromes
• Longest words
• Tongue Twisters
• Idioms of the World

Beginning of the First World War - the Assassination of Franz Ferdinand in Sarajevo

Gavrillo Princip, Franz Ferdinand's murderer

WHAT HAPPENED 100 YEARS AGO?

100 years ago, on the 28th June 1914, the heir to the Austrian Empire, Franz Ferdinand, was murdered in Sarajevo, the capital of Bosnia, while he was visiting the city.

Franz Ferdinand

Bosnia was in the very south-east corner of the Austrian empire and some people there wanted to be independent from Austria and set up their own state which could run itself.

WHY DID THIS MURDER LEAD TO THE WW1?

Serbia was blamed by Austria for this murder. Serbia was near to Bosnia and it had encouraged the Black Hand Gang and given the gang weapons. Serbia hoped that both herself and Bosnia would unite to form a new Balkan state.

Austria decided that Serbia must be punished and planned to invade her. Serbia called on her old friend Russia to help her. Now the alliance/entente came in to play. One country from each was involved on opposite sides. The situation could only get worse.

Serbia would have been easy for Austria to crush but Russia was a different issue. She had a huge army and Austria would not have coped with a Austro-Russian war. Austria called on Germany for help. The German government agreed to this and their response provoked the French government.

However, unknown to anybody other than the German government, the German army had created a plan called the Schlieffen Plan. Schlieffen was a senior German army officer and he believed that the German army was superior to any army in Europe but that it could not fight a war on two fronts - France and Russia. 

However, he calculated that the vast Russian army would take 6 weeks to get itself organised - called mobilisation - and that in that time, the Germans could attack the French, beat them and then send their army across Europe to fight the Russians. The German High Command accepted this plan. But it had one problem. It relied on what the French or Russians did and the actions of one would provoke a German response and not the other way round. In other words, the Germans had to react to a situation as opposed to controlling it.

When France called up her army, Germany had no choice but to carry out the Schlieffen Plan. This plan involved an attack on France via Belgium.

Britain had given Belgium a guarantee in 1839 that if anybody attacked her, Britain would attack the attacker.

Therefore, within weeks of the murder at Sarajevo, five out of the six countries that had signed the two treaties were on the verge of war.

On August 4th, 1914, Germany invaded Belgium. Britain declared war on Germany. France and Russia supported Britain. Austria supported Germany. Only Italy did not get involved - yet.

Every country concerned was convinced that the war would last only from August to Christmas 1914 but it lasted until 1918 and millions of people died in what was later called the Great War.

adapted from  http://www.historylearningsite.co.uk/sarajevo_assassination_1914.htm 

Unit 9 - The First World War from Ana Arias Castro

OUR CLIL RESOURCES ABOUT WW1

READ MORE:

• Wikipedia
• History Learning Site
• History
• First World War
• Jetpunk Quizz about WW1