Osnovna škola Ivana Gorana Kovačića Vrbovsko

On May 4th, 2015 The Month of the English Culture was officially opened. The first week was dedicated to the United Kingdom of Great Britain and northern Ireland.

At the school entrance there was a desk decorated with the Welcome sign and Shakespeare's figure next to it. There was also a red rose as the official flower of the UK as well as a bulldog in the UK raincoat as the official animal of the country. Two 6th class pupils, Ella Musulin and Lana Uzelac opened the week. After listening to God Save the Queen our pupils went to their classrooms.

During these five days each class had a guided tour through the school corridors. It was like travelling through the UK with your own personal guide. Their guide was a 5th class pupil Roberta Vučinić, dressed in Griffindor's colours representing Hermione Granger, Harry and Ron's friend.

At the very beginning of the tour she took them on a journey through geography of the UK and they got to know which countries make the UK and which are their capitals. They heard of Ben Nevis and Loch Ness as well as the Channel Tunnel connecting the UK and France.

They moved through history represented by the famous queens such as Elizabeth I, Mary,Queen of Scots, then Victoria and Elizabeth II. They also "met" King Henry VIII and his six wives. They found out many facts about the royal family and its members including the latest member, Her Royal Highness Princess Charlotte Elizabeth Diana of Cambridge.

They learnt something about the UK governement and the famous PMs such as Sir Winston Churchill, Lady Margaret Thatcher, Tony Blair and the current PM David Cameron.

There was a poster on two very prestigious universities - Oxford and Cambridge and the Boat race in which they traditionally participate.

They revised many well-known landmarks thanks to the poster containing infomation about them. But there were also many paper model of those landmarks such as the Buckingham Palace, Saint Paul's Cathedral, London Eye, the Tower of London, the Houses of Parliament and Big Ben, and many more.

They enjoyed learning about the film and music industry including names such as Daniel Radcliffe, Orlando Bloom, Kate Winslet, Catherine Zeta-Jones, Sir Anthony Hopkins, the Beatles, Adele, Sir Elton John, Amy Winehouse, and many more.

They heard of Monty Python's Flying Circus, The Darling Buds of May, Only Fools and Horses and their favourite one - Mr Bean...and of course, his Teddy.

Literature was represented by two great writers - William Shakespeare and Charles Dickens.

The last poster in line presented a festival of their choice - Saint Patrick's Day which was all coloured in green. Some of them heard of shamrock for the first time.

Since we all love to eat, we had to mention some traditional dishes such as fish and chips, Irish stew, haggis, cottage pie and Yorkshire pudding. And very important tradion of drinking the 5 o'clock tea.

Pupils had a chance to read three stories around the school library - Scottish Tomlin, Irish The Giant's Wife and English The Gingerbread Boy. There was a desk with many books written in English that they can borrow from the library.

Last in line was a Powerpoint presentation on the UK done by the 8th class pupils Natalija Domanović and Marin Mamula. It had everything - geography, history, landmarks, universities, film, TV shows, music, literature but also the UK national parks and famous sports (the most important being football, of course).

During each break there was a pupil in charge for playing a CD with the UK music. The list included the Beatles, Queen, Sir Elton John, Adele, Amy Winehouse, Robbie Williams, U2 and One Direction.

The 1st and the 2nd class pupils had a workshop on making the UK flag called Union Jack while the 5th class pupils had a film workshop Paddington followed by making a poster based on the film.

On Wednesday, May 6th Tomislav Goluban visited our school. He has won 4 Porin awards since 2009 for playing the mouth organ. He used his mouth organ to immitate the sounds of chickens, trains, trains in a tunnel, etc. He played blues, country and gospel for them. He was not only interesting to listen; his lecture was very educational and our pupils enjoyed it very much.

On that same day a  reporter from Novi list, Marinko Krmpotić came to our school to hear something about our project. He also listened to Tomislav Goluban perform. He took several pictures while walking through the school corridors listening to the English teacher (that would be me) talk about the posters, paper models, figures, books, music, etc. 

One more event marked Wednesday and that's the English waltz danced by our pupils Valentina Alinčić and Mirjam Golik (5th class), Marillena Golik (6th class), Zoran Mamula (7th class) and Vedrana Dragović and Dario Konjević (8th class). They were great!

Our neighbours from the Railway Technical School also came together with some of their pupils and they were thrilled with our UK week and our own Hermione Granger.

I want to use this opportunity to say thank you to all the pupils who worked with me for the past several months and made this dream come true. Also, a big thank you to all pupils of Nikola Tesla Primary School for taking a journey through the UK with us. Thanks to my colleagues for all their support and kind words.

And a special thanks to Miss Roberta Vučinić, the best Hermione Granger Gorski kotar has ever seen! I'm proud to be your teacher!

Till next week and the journey through the USA with our own Minnie Mouse...

You're all invited!