New Year's Eve 2017 Fireworks

Happy New Year 2018

T&L warmest wishes for an incredible New Year!
Never forget...

Boxing Day 2017

Boxing Day occurs every year on December 26th. It's a national holiday in the UK and Ireland. If the day after Christmas falls on a Saturday or Sunday, the following Monday is designated as the official public holiday. This year, Boxing Day falls on a Tuesday. December 26th is also the feast day of Saint Stephen, the patron saint of horses, which is why Boxing Day has come to be associated with horse racing and fox hunting. According to some Boxing Day can be traced back to the Victorian era when churches often displayed a box into which their parishioners put donations. Also in Britain, on the day after Christmas Day, servants of the wealthy were given time off to visit their families because their services were required for the Christmas Day celebrations of their employers. They were therefore allowed the following day for their own observance of the holiday and each servant would be handed a box to take home, containing gifts, bonuses and sometimes leftover food. It was also customary for tradespeople to collect 'Christmas boxes' of presents or money on the first weekday after Christmas as thanks for good service throughout the year.

Samuel Pepys mentions the practice in a diary entry from December 19th 1663: "Thence by coach to my shoemaker’s and paid all there, and gave something to the boys’ box against Christmas." Five years later Pepys was not feeling so generous. Complaining in a December 28th entry from 1668: "Called up by drums & trumpets; these things & boxes having cost me much money this Christmas."

Boxing Day is observed only in the United Kingdom, Canada, Hong Kong, Australia, New Zealand, South Africa and some other Commonwealth nations. The holiday was not perpetuated by the English in the American colonies.

Boxing Day is really 'St Stephen's Day' in Ireland, dedicated to a saint who was stoned to death for believing in Jesus. 'Wren Boys' were notorious for blackening their faces stoning wrens to death. They would then carry their catch around the town knocking on doors and asking for money. This distasteful act has now stopped, but the Wrens Boys still dress up and parade around town but collecting money for charity.

Hunts were a Boxing Day tradition but the 2004 ban on foxhunting put an end to all that. Despite this, 10 years later 250,000 people still regularly turn out to support hunting. Certain modified forms of hunting foxes with hounds are still within the law and hundreds of Boxing Day Meets take place every year.

What was once a day of relaxation and family time has now become a holy day of consumerism. The sales used to start in January post-New Year, but the desire to grab a bargain and for shops to off-load stock means many now start on Boxing Day.

Last year, Christmas Day itself emerged as one of the most popular days for online shopping, with consumers buying products in the afternoon - often after not receiving their desired gifts.

Source: The Telegraph

Happy Thanksgiving 2017

credits: CDN4

Thanksgiving is celebrated today, November 23rd, as always in the fourth Thursday of this month, all across the USA and Canada and precedes Black Friday, one of the busiest shopping days in the USA.
In 1621, the Plymouth colonists and Wampanoag Indians shared an Autumn harvest feast that is acknowledged today as one of the first Thanksgiving celebrations in the colonies. For more than two centuries, days of thanksgiving were celebrated by individual colonies and states. It wasn't until 1863, in the midst of the Civil War, that President Abraham Lincoln proclaimed a national Thanksgiving Day to be held each November.

THANKSGIVIG AT PLYMOUTH

credits @ mbeinstitute

In September 1620, a small ship called the Mayflower left Plymouth, England, carrying 102 passengers - an assortment of religious separatists seeking a new home where they could freely practice their faith and other individuals lured by the promise of prosperity and land ownership in the New World. After a treacherous and uncomfortable crossing that lasted 66 days, they dropped anchor near the tip of Cape Cod, far north of their intended destination at the mouth of the Hudson River. A month later, the Mayflower crossed Massachusetts Bay, where the Pilgrims, as they are now commonly known, began the work of establishing a village at Plymouth. Throughout that first brutal winter, most of the colonists remained on board the ship, where they suffered from exposure, scurvy and outbreaks of contagious disease. Only half of the Mayflower’s original passengers and crew lived to see their first New England spring. In March, the remaining settlers moved ashore, where they received an astonishing visit from an Abenaki Indian who greeted them in English. Several days later, he returned with another Native American, Squanto, a member of the Pawtuxet tribe who had been kidnapped by an English sea captain and sold into slavery before escaping to London and returning to his homeland on an exploratory expedition. Squanto taught the Pilgrims, weakened by malnutrition and illness, how to cultivate corn, extract sap from maple trees, catch fish in the rivers and avoid poisonous plants. He also helped the settlers forge an alliance with the Wampanoag, a local tribe, which would endure for more than 50 years and tragically remains one of the sole examples of harmony between European colonists and Native Americans.

credits @ ucls-chicago

In November 1621, after the Pilgrims’ first corn harvest proved successful, Governor William Bradford organized a celebratory feast and invited a group of the fledgling colony’s Native American allies, including the Wampanoag chief Massasoit. Now remembered as American’s “first Thanksgiving”—although the Pilgrims themselves may not have used the term at the time—the festival lasted for three days. While no record exists of the historic banquet’s exact menu, the Pilgrim chronicler Edward Winslow wrote in his journal that Governor Bradford sent four men on a “fowling” mission in preparation for the event, and that the Wampanoag guests arrived bearing five deer. Historians have suggested that many of the dishes were likely prepared using traditional Native American spices and cooking methods. Because the Pilgrims had no oven and the Mayflower’s sugar supply had dwindled by the fall of 1621, the meal did not feature pies, cakes or other desserts, which have become a hallmark of contemporary celebrations.

THANKSGIVING BECOMES AN OFFICIAL HOLIDAY

Pilgrims held their second Thanksgiving celebration in 1623 to mark the end of a long drought that had threatened the year’s harvest and prompted Governor Bradford to call for a religious fast. Days of fasting and thanksgiving on an annual or occasional basis became common practice in other New England settlements as well. During the American Revolution, the Continental Congress designated one or more days of thanksgiving a year, and in 1789 George Washington issued the first Thanksgiving proclamation by the national government of the United States; in it, he called upon Americans to express their gratitude for the happy conclusion to the country’s war of independence and the successful ratification of the U.S. Constitution. His successors John Adams and James Madison also designated days of thanks during their presidencies.
In 1817, New York became the first of several states to officially adopt an annual Thanksgiving holiday; each celebrated it on a different day, however, and the American South remained largely unfamiliar with the tradition. In 1827, the noted magazine editor and writer Sarah Josepha Hale—author of the nursery rhyme “Mary Had a Little Lamb”—launched a campaign to establish Thanksgiving as a national holiday. For 36 years, she published numerous editorials and sent scores of letters to governors, senators, presidents and other politicians. Abraham Lincoln finally heeded her request in 1863, at the height of the Civil War, in a proclamation entreating all Americans to ask God to “commend to his tender care all those who have become widows, orphans, mourners or sufferers in the lamentable civil strife” and to “heal the wounds of the nation.” He scheduled Thanksgiving for the final Thursday in November, and it was celebrated on that day every year until 1939, when Franklin D. Roosevelt moved the holiday up a week in an attempt to spur retail sales during the Great Depression. Roosevelt’s plan, known derisively as Franksgiving, was met with passionate opposition, and in 1941 the president reluctantly signed a bill making Thanksgiving the fourth Thursday in November. 

THANKSGIVING TRADITIONS

credits @ fashionpill

In many American households, the Thanksgiving celebration has lost much of its original religious significance; instead, it now centers on cooking and sharing a bountiful meal with family and friends. Turkey, a Thanksgiving staple so ubiquitous it has become all but synonymous with the holiday, may or may not have been on offer when the Pilgrims hosted the inaugural feast in 1621. Today, however, nearly 90 percent of Americans eat the bird—whether roasted, baked or deep-fried—on Thanksgiving, according to the National Turkey Federation. Other traditional foods include stuffing, mashed potatoes, cranberry sauce and pumpkin pie. Volunteering is a common Thanksgiving Day activity, and communities often hold food drives and host free dinners for the less fortunate.
Parades have also become an integral part of the holiday in cities and towns across the United States. Presented by Macy’s department store since 1924, New York City’s Thanksgiving Day parade is the largest and most famous, attracting some 2 to 3 million spectators along its 2.5-mile route and drawing an enormous television audience. It typically features marching bands, performers, elaborate floats conveying various celebrities and giant balloons shaped like cartoon characters.
Beginning in the mid-20th century and perhaps even earlier, the president of the United States has “pardoned” one or two Thanksgiving turkeys each year, sparing the birds from slaughter and sending them to a farm for retirement. A number of U.S. governors also perform the annual turkey pardoning ritual.

Source:  The History Channel (abridged and adapted)

You may also check relevant multimedia resources on this topic @:

• Bet you didn't know: Thanksgiving;
• History of Thanksgiving; 
• Thanksgiving becomes a holiday;
• Thanksgiving foods;
• Teaching History;
• The Learning Network by NY Times.

You can get ELT resources (further info, lesson plans, printables, posters, slideshows, recipes, graphs, crafts, colouring pictures and greeting cards) on the topic @:

• British & American Festivals and Holidays;
• We are Teachers;
• Scholastic.com;
• Thanksgiving on the Net;
• Teacher Vision;
• The Teachers Corner.

The Origins of Halloween

Halloween 2017 Class Activities

Can you match these frightful, spooky idioms with their meaning?

1. I don’t recommend that horror film. It will scare the living daylights out of you!

2. My old car finally gave up the ghost, so I’ll have to buy a new one.

3. When she saw the dark shadow in the in the moonlight, she was scared stiff.

4. What’s the matter? You look as if you’ve seen a ghost!

5. Oh, don’t be such a scaredy-cat. Nothing bad is going to happen.

6. That spooky old house gives me the creeps.

7. I wouldn’t do that if I were you. It will come back to haunt you.

8. No one lived there anymore. It was a ghost town.

MEANINGS:
be a mistake
very frightened
coward
make (someone) uncomfortable
make (someone) scared
very white, pale
deserted
stopped working 

IDIOMS ABOUT FEAR

If you want to get the full text by BBC Learning English, you can click here.

Feeling superstitious this Friday 13th?

According to folklorists, there is no written evidence for a "Friday the 13th" superstition before the 19th century.The earliest known documented reference in English occurs in Henry Edwards' 1869 biography of Gioachino Rossini.

Consequently, several theories have been proposed about the origin of the Friday the 13th superstition.

One theory states that it is a modern amalgamation of two older superstitions: that thirteen is an unlucky number and that Friday is an unlucky day.

In numerology, the number twelve is considered the number of completeness, as reflected in the twelve months of the year, twelve hours of the clock, twelve Gods of Olympus, twelve tribes of Israel, twelve Apostles of Jesus, the 12 successors of Muhammad in Shia Islam, whereas the number thirteen was considered irregular, transgressing this completeness. There is also a superstition, thought by some to derive from the Last Supper, that having thirteen people seated at a table will result in the death of one of the diners.
Friday has been considered an unlucky day at least since the 14th century's The Canterbury Tales^, and many other professions have regarded Friday as an unlucky day to undertake journeys, begin new projects or deploy releases in production. Black Friday has been associated with stock market crashes and other disasters since the 1800s.

If you are spooked by Friday the 13th, you're in for a whammy of a year. This  unlucky day is the second of three for 2012. Many superstitions stem from the same human trait that causes us to believe in monsters and ghosts: When our brains can't explain something, we make stuff up. In fact, a 2010 study found that superstitions can sometimes work, because believing in something can improve performance on a task.
If you're not scared of Friday the 13th, you should be scared of the word used to describe those who are: friggatriskaidekaphobics. (An alternative, though just as tongue-twisty, word for the fear is "paraskevidekatriaphobia.")
For a superstition, Friday has long been considered an unlucky day - according to Christian tradition, Jesus died on a Friday.
According to the Stress Management Center and Phobia Institute in the USA, about 17 million people fear Friday the 13th. Many may fall prey to the human mind's desire to associate thoughts and symbols with events.
"If anything bad happens to you on Friday the 13th, the two will be forever associated in your mind," psychologists say. "All those uneventful days in which the 13th fell on a Friday will be ignored."

Source: Live Science

Happy World Teachers' Day!

Teaching & Learning is 6 years old today!

Teaching & Learning was born six years ago on a rainy afternoon, just like today! It doesn't seem so long ago, and yet so many things have changed...
We intended to give suggestions of ELT resources and Web 2.0 tools applied to English language teaching, gather some practical examples of students' work and discuss their relevance/success in class context, create an interaction tool with Students/ other Teachers and keep close to Steve Jobs' motto: “Stay hungry. Stay foolish.” as we believe work can be done with pleasure and it can be much better if we don’t forget about enjoying it and adding a pinch of foolishness!
More than 740 posts and 130000 hits later, we believe those objectives are being achieved.
T&L audience is growing every day, it comes mainly from the USA, the UK, Russia and Portugal, but also from the United Arab Emirates, China, Germany, Japan, Brazil, Guatemala, Philippines, Indonesia, Australia and New Zealand. 
THANK YOU for reading T&L, for supporting it and above all for being here! I would also like to thank all those who spend their precious time commenting and giving important feedback!

This whole experience is a pleasure for us, so we intend to keep on going, posting more about Didactics, English, Culture, Students’ tasks and foolish things, too, of course! We hope to see you all around here a year from now… 

Six years and counting… STAY HUNGRY. STAY FOOLISH. 

Let's celebrate... HAPPY BIRTHDAY, TEACHING & LEARNING!

July 4th - Independence Day

Declaration of Independence

The Fourth of July, or Independence Day, is a federal holiday that celebrates the adoption of the Declaration of the Independence on July 4th, 1776 in the United States of America. On this date, the Second Continental Congress unanimously adopted the Declaration of Independence, announcing the colonies' separation from Great Britain. The Constitution provides the legal and governmental framework for the United States, however, the Declaration, with its eloquent assertion "all Men are created equal," is equally beloved by the American people.

Drafted by Thomas Jefferson between June 11 and June 28, 1776, the Declaration of Independence is at once the USA's most cherished symbol of liberty and Jefferson's most enduring monument. There, in exalted and unforgettable phrases, Jefferson expressed the convictions in the minds and hearts of the American people. The political philosophy of the Declaration was not new; its ideals of individual liberty had already been expressed by John Locke and the Continental philosophers. What Jefferson did was to summarize this philosophy in "self-evident truths" and set forth a list of grievances against the King in order to justify before the world the breaking of ties between the colonies and the mother country. Here you can read a transcription of the complete text of the Declaration.

The US Flag

photo credits: US Flag Vector

The Stars and Stripes originated as a result of a resolution adopted by the Marine Committee of the Second Continental Congress at Philadelphia on June 14, 1777. The resolution read:

"Resolved, that the flag of the United States be thirteen stripes, alternate red and white; that the union be thirteen stars, white in a blue field representing a new constellation."

The resolution gave no instruction as to how many points the stars should have, nor how the stars should be arranged on the blue union. Consequently, some flags had stars scattered on the blue field without any specific design, some arranged the stars in rows, and some in a circle.

Strong evidence indicates that Francis Hopkinson of New Jersey, a signer of the Declaration of Independence, was responsible for the stars in the US flag. At the time that the flag resolution was adopted, Hopkinson was the Chairman of the Continental Navy Board's Middle Department. Hopkinson also helped design other devices for the Government including the Great Seal of the United States. Flag Day is celebrated every year on June 14^th.

Celebrations

Hurrah for the USA, 1915

Over time, various other summertime activities also came to be associated with the Fourth of July, including historical pageants, picnics, baseball games, watermelon-eating contests, and trips to the beach. Common foods include hot dogs, hamburgers, corn on the cob, apple pie, cole slaw, clam bakes and some incredible fireworks.

While the Fourth is celebrated across the country, historic cities like Boston and Philadelphia draw huge crowds to their festivities.

In Boston, the USS John F. Kennedy often sails into the harbor, while the Boston Pops Orchestra holds a televised concert on the banks of the Charles River, featuring American music and ending with the 1812 Overture.

Philadelphia holds its celebrations at Independence Hall, where historic scenes are reenacted and the Declaration of Independence is read.

Other interesting parties include the American Indian rodeo and three-day pow-wow in Flagstaff, Arizona, and the Lititz, Pennsylvania, candle festival, where hundred of candles are floated in water and a "Queen of Candles" is chosen.

If you want to know more about American and British holidays and celebrations, visit the wiki: British & American Festivals and Holidays!

Sources:

USA Government Website

The Charters of Freedom

Fourth of July Database

May the 4th be with you!

World Book Day 2017

Visit the World Book Day website to access books, resources, 

videos, games and lots of news on this date.

How to Say Easter in European Languages

Wishing you a Blessed Easter

Teaching & Learning wishes you a Blessed  and Joyful Easter!

Happy Saint Patrick's Day!

Happy Pi Day!

Credits: EDUTOPIA

Pi, Greek letter (π), is the symbol for the ratio of the circumference of a circle to its diameter. Pi Day is celebrated by math enthusiasts around the world on March 14th.

With the use of computers, Pi has been calculated to over 1 trillion digits past the decimal. Pi is an irrational and transcendental number meaning it will continue infinitely without repeating. The symbol for pi was first used in 1706 by William Jones, but was popular after it was adopted by the Swiss mathematician Leonhard Euler in 1737.
There are many ways of celebrating Pi Day. Some of them include eating pie and discussing the relevance of π.

And it's just a coincidence, but it is also Albert Einstein's birthday... So, one more reason to celebrate!
Read here and here on T&L for further information about Pi Day!