Arrivano I Tiranesi !!!

The students from our sister school L'Istituto Pinchetti in Tirano Italy have departed for our shores to complete the reciprocal component of our sister school arrangement. They have created a blog to track their progress, located at:

http://www.pinchetti.net/blog/

The adventure begins ! (again...) Here's their first post:

Scambio con l’Australia

agosto 21st, 2010

Giovedì 26 agosto inizia la seconda fase dello scambio con l’Australia che vedrà impegnati un gruppo di studenti del nostro Istituto.
Il blog della scuola sarà il modo più semplice per rimanere in contatto con gli altri studenti, con le famiglie, con gli insegnanti e tutto il personale della scuola.
Istruzioni per gli studenti coinvolti nello scambio.
Prima di partire provvedete a registrare il vostro account, ricordandovi di usare una e-mail valida alla quale saranno inviati i dati per l’accesso. Una volta effettuata l’iscrizione e verificata mediante un primo accesso, comunicando al gestore del blog la vostra registrazione verrete abilitati a scrivere gli articoli e a inserire le immagini nel blog.

French Language Assistant - Joelle

We are very pleased to have Joelle with us from Belgium. She is our French Language Assistant and she is helping our students in so many ways. Thank you so much to Sondra Tate's family for hosting Joelle during her stay at Mount Lawley. Without parental support such as this many of the extras we offer our students would not be possible. Merci bien Sondra, ta famille et naturellement Joelle.

Hi everyone,

My name’s Joelle and I’m from Belgium, not very far from Brussels. I arrived the 16^th July in Perth where I’m going to spend 2 months teaching French at Mount Lawley Senior High School. I’m very happy to share the aussie everyday life with my host family, Sondra and Michael Tate and their children.

This term I’m helping years 8 to 10 to improve on their French. As a native speaker, it’s a real pleasure to share my mother tongue and my cultural background with the students.

French is an important language and it’s a real challenge to teach it. As a teacher, you need to use all kinds of tricks to make students understand how important it is to be able to communicate in an appropriate way.

Being at MLSHS is an opportunity for me to learn different ways of teaching and that’s just fantastic!

I’d like to thank everyone for their help and their kindness.

Joelle Poelman.

Car Rally - Languages Parent Support Group

Thank you so much to Sondra Tate and the LPSG parents who planned, organised and coordinated the inaugural LawleyLanguage Car Rally. Congratulations to the Shilkin family (Lily Year 8 GATE Italian) who were the winners for 2010 ! Merci beaucoup to our Languages Assistant, Joelle who placed photos on Picasa. I have placed the links below. We have a wonderful school community that provides our students and families with fantastic opportunities to explore, share and enrich their lives with language and culture. Thank you again to Sondra for organising t-shirts for the GATE Language students, the P&C for financing them, Nic Beames for the logo and Michael Camilleri for allowing the students to wear them during Languages Week. As you can see below, they look fantastic, Languages for Life !

On Sunday 1^st August the MLSHS Languages Parent Support Group held their first Car Rally Fundraiser Event. We perhaps should have checked to see if anyone had a fear of popping balloons before we started but we weren’t to know.  The weather was perfect as

our excited crowd set out with their list of instructions (which they should have read first) and collection bag (one handful of sand would have been plenty!). They struggled with ominous directions and overly enthusiastic family members to answer questions along the way such as “what is the colour of the slide in the next playground” or “what is the colour of the letterbox at No. 72?”.  One Mintie in the bag either caused an argument or was silently eaten to avoid one. (The argument started later).  There was an out of car excursion or two to stretch the legs and collect various items (a piece of limestone for example) and afterwards we enjoyed a picnic on the lawn in Kings Park overlooking our beautiful city.  The cars all finished well within the two hours we anticipated with the exception of a few who either ended up in Quinns or the City or somewhere that is still in question as this is written.  They were given up for lost until we received a call (as we were all starting to depart) announcing their arrival.  (They couldn’t stay for lunch anyway…whew! ). Ten out of ten for finishing you two (you know who you are!). Many thanks to all who participated and we look forward to seeing you and other enthusiasts again next year. 

Vous êtes invité à voir l'album photo de poelman joelle intitulé : car rallye 1st August Mount Lawley

car rallye 1st August Mount Lawley

1 août 2010

de poelman joelle 

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LawleyLanguages Week

Wow ! What a week it's been. Thanks to our wonderful Languages Parent Support Group, our students have had tasty treats available every day of the week at Lunch 1. Monday it was Chinese Day and we had beautiful Baozi, Tuesday it was Indonesian Day and we had sizzling spring rolls, Wednesday we had French Day and you could eat exciting eclairs, Thursday was Italian Day and we had some gorgeous gelati and finally it was Friday and gourmet German cakes were on offer. Grazie, xie xie, merci beaucoup, terima kasih, danke shon to our wonderful parents who volunteered their time and their expertise to help make our school community a place where languages are a living entity.

Thank you also to our Language Teachers for planning, organising and coordinating excursions including the Language Film Festival and visits to restaurants so our students could experience even more of the culture they are studying. These activities are an integral component of our Language program and make languages come alive. They were also an opportunity for all our students to spend time getting to know our visiting exchange students from China and Italy and France.

Enjoy the photos and the memories !

Bentornate Amanda ed Ellie !

Da Cosa Nasce Cosa (One Thing Leads To Another)

Last week we were very happy to have a visit from Ellie (our inaugural Intercultura exchange student in 2008) and her Italian host sister (now soulsister) Amanda. These two have become more than lifelong friends, they are like real sisters and their friendship not only continues but it thrives. Ellie went to Rome to live with Amanda this year and work with Amanda's mother in the fashion industry. We were hoping to catch up with them when we were in Rome but were not able to. After a few months in Italy Amanda together Amanda came back to Perth and is having a wonderful time reacquainting herself with many of the sights and people she experienced on her last trip.

These wonderful ambassadors for the exchange experience were kind enough to visit us and have a brief conversation with our Year 8 and 9 students to share with them some of the benefits of studying a language. Language has opened up Ellie's world and giving her some amazing adventures. She will be studying Communication at Curtin but hopes to continue with her Language Learning (Languages for Life) and both have expressed an interest to visit us again and assist us with an assortment of activities. I am very proud that our students both from Perth and overseas are proud of their school and enjoy coming back, that's the sign of a wonderful school, when its students keep coming back.

Grazie ragazze ! In the photo below you can see Ellie handing over the exchange baton to this year's applicant Tahlia Knights who hopes to be travelling to Puglia (the heel of the boot) in Italy in November. It's great to see this exciting tradition continue.

Studente Di Scambio - Santi

Ciao mi chiamo Santi vengo dalla Sicilia, isola del Mediterraneo. Abito pecisamente a

Catania zona di mare e di montagna grazie alla meravigliosa Etna. Sono arrivato a Perth il 20 giugno.

Mi sono accorto del fatto che la vita qui e’ molto piu’ tranquilla rispetto all’Italia, per esempio in Italia i centri commerciali stanno aperti fino alle 9.00 di sera. Anche il clima e’ diverso, in Italia fa molto piu’ freddo d’inverno di qui e quindi per me va bene cosi’. Penso che il fatto di venire a scuola qui mi aiuti sia per conoscere piu’ persone e soprattutto per migliorare il mio inglese che non e’ molto buono. J 

Santi is helping our students with their Language Studies. As you can see the value of having exchange students that are the same age as ours in the classroom is priceless. We are very lucky to have an assortment of exchange programs that enrich the learning experience of all involved.