Telling stories forms an important part of our everyday communication. This lesson is aimed at developing the ability to tell stories. More specifically students are expected to develop understanding and accurate use of a range of narrative tenses as well as fluency in storytelling.

The 3rd Grade students  are watching the film “The boy in the striped pyjamas”. The film is about  a nine-year old boy,Bruno, who lives a wealthy lifestyle with his mother, sister Gretel and Father, who is a soldier. But his father gets promoted and the job requires the whole family to move out of Berlin  to the countryside.

Once the family arrives at the so called by Bruno “old and dusty” new house, Bruno discovers a fence out of his window. Bruno enjoys exploring and finds a young boy behind the fence named Shmuel, whom Bruno becomes great friends with. But was getting so close with someone behind a forbidden fence such a good idea?

The Boy in the Striped Pyjamas leaves a strong message, about what Hitler did to many innocent lives and about friendship as well. It is a must!!!! Enjoy it!!!

The boy in the striped pyjamas

Colours in different cultures

Some time ago, before the collapse of communism in Eastern Europe, I heard a joke about colours: somebody informed USA officials that the Russians were thinking of painting the entire moon red to show their supremacy in space. Everyone was expecting to see the Americans getting angry over this, but instead they were very calm about it. “Ok, no problem, let them paint the moon red.” To which they added “We’ll just write Coca-Cola on top of it and everybody will know who the best is…”

Same colour, two different meanings: red is perceived as the colour of communism and Russia used to be a communist country, but red is also the colour of Coca-Cola, which is a very well-known symbol of the United States.

Colours are important in communications. Feelings, ideas, and emotions can be expressed with colours. When designing websites or brochures for International markets, colours are crucial. Not paying attention to them could result in expensive and often embarrassing problems… Just think of the impact you’d have by wearing all red to cheer for one of Detroit Red Wings’ rivals… You wouldn’t want to be there… You’d be detested by the entire audience. The same could happen with your website. Make sure your website has the right colour when entering into different markets. The wrong colour could transform the best designed website and best ad promotion into a nightmare.

In May of this year, a few large corporations with International websites had changed the colour of their Chinese home pages to black to pay respect to all Chinese people affected by the Sichuan earthquake. Although white is the colour of mourning in China, this was still a very touching gesture to pay respect to the more than 60,000 people who had died.

In 1999, Crayola changed the “indian red” colour name to “chestnut” in response to educators who felt some children wrongly perceived the crayon colour was intended to represent the skin colour of Native Americans. The name originated from a reddish-brown pigment found near India commonly used in fine artist oil paint.

During its 1994 launch campaign, one of the well-known European mobile phone companies – Orange – had to change its ads in Northern Ireland. “The future’s bright, the future’s Orange.” This was because in the North the term Orange suggests the Orange Order. The implied message is that the future is bright, the future is Protestant, loyalist…

Here are a few things about colours you might find useful:

Red:

Red is the colour of love in most cultures: Chinese brides wear red for their wedding, and red roses are the most common gift for St. Valentine’s Day.

Red is also the colour of communism – the flags of China and Vietnam are red. The Former Soviet Union’s flag used to be red too. The army of the Soviet Union was known as the “Red Army”. In Christianity, green and red are associated with Christmas. There is an Easter tradition to colour eggs red – red in this case represents the blood of Christ.

Satan is also most of the time represented by the colour red in icons and popular culture. On the other hand, Santa Claus wears red and white for Christmas.

In China, red paper and red envelopes are frequently used to wrap gifts of money. Though, on the negative side, to write someone’s name in red signals that you are either cutting them out of your life, or that they have died. Red is also used to indicate emergency and warnings. Red is the colour for all Stop signs around the World. However, the first Stop sign had black letters on a white background until 1924 when white was replaced with yellow. It wasn’t until 954 that all stop signs became white and red.

Green:

In North America, because of the colour of the United States dollar bill, green is the colour of wealth and money. Also, the colour green is always associated with nature.

In my native country, Romania, people with green eyes are seen as very deceptive people. In some of Shakespeare’s plays, envy is associated with the colour green.

Green is considered the traditional colour of Islam. It is also the national colour of Egypt. But don’t create packaging or mail packages in green: It’s not well-received. In some Asian cultures the colour green is often used as a symbol of sickness.Green is a symbol of Ireland; green is a strong trend in the Irish holiday St. Patrick’s Day.

White:

While Westerns see white as the colour of purity and innocence, in some Asian cultures ( China, Vietnam, and Korea), white is the colour of death and mourning.

In India, people wear white after the death of a family member.

White is the traditional colour of bridal dresses in Western cultures. A woman wearing white will be seen as a bride on a Western website, and as a person in mourning on an Eastern website. White is also the colour of snow and winter. Some associate snow with Christmas, forgetting that countries from the Southern hemisphere don’t have snow during Christmas time. A white pigeon is an international sign of peace; a white flag is an international sign of surrender.

Blue:

Iran: mourning

China: immortality; workers’ uniforms; blue-coloured gifts are associated with death

Hinduism: the colour of Krishna

Egypt: dark blue is a colour of mourning.

Black:

Black is the colour of mourning in Western cultures;

Black is also the most common colour used for clothing for formal occasions; black is also worn by priests. In the Japanese culture, until the nineteenth century, some women used to dye their teeth black because it was thought that black teeth would make a woman look beautiful.

Orange:

The colours orange and black are the colours of Halloween because orange is the colour of pumpkins and black is the colour of night and darkness.Orange is the national colour of the Netherlands, referring to the royal family.Orange is the brand used by France Telecom for its mobile network operator and Internet service provider subsidiaries

http://list25.com/25-most-popular-urban-legends-still-being-told/

2 of the Creepiest Urban Legends (That Happen to be True)

ByNathan Birch October 19, 2007

http://www.cracked.com/article_15628_the-5-creepiest-urban-legends-that-happen-to-be-true.html

The Dead Body Under Your Freaking Matress

The Legend:
A couple checks into a hotel and have to put up with a foul odor in their room all night. They call the staff to complain and somebody figures out the stench is coming from the bed.

Now, there’s no way that scenario is going to have a good ending. You’re almost hoping at that point that it’ll turn out the last guest just got drunk and pooped behind the headboard. But, no, the staff take off the matress and discover the couple has been sleeping over the rotting body of a dead girl who had been stuffed in the box spring.

The Truth:
This actually happened, in Las Vegas. Also, Kansas City, MO and Atlantic City, NJ and several times in Florida and California and, well, let’s just say that in or under the bed in a hotel room seems to be a fairly popular destination for the recently deceased.

It makes sense if you think about it. The closet and under the bed are the two most popular places to hide just about anything, so it’s not surprising a hell of a lot of corpses end up there as well. In fact, the odds are pretty good that at least once a guy has killed a prostitute, tried to stuff her under the bed, only to find there was already a body there.

Hopefully they at least got a free continental breakfast out of the ordeal.

Buried Alive

The Legend:
Some poor schmuck is committed to his or her eternal resting place, even though they aren’t quite ready to take that final dirt nap. Scratch marks are later found on the coffin lid along with other desperate signs of escape.

The Truth:
This not only happened, but back in the day it happened with alarming regularity. In the late 19th century, William Tebb tried to compile all the instances of premature burial from medical sources of the day. He managed to collect 219 cases of near-premature burial, 149 cases of actual premature burial and a dozen cases where dissection or embalming had begun on a not-yet-deceased body.

Now, this may seem ridiculous, but keep in mind this was an era before doctors such as the esteemed Dr. Gregory House gained the ability to solve any ailment within 42 minutes. If you went to the doctor with the flu in those days, he’d likely cover you in leeches and prescribe you heroin to suppress your cough. Their only method for determining if a person had died was to lean over their face and scream “WAKE UP” over and over again. If you didn’t react, they buried you.

The concern over being buried alive back then was so real that the must-have hot-ticket item for the wealthy and paranoid were “safety coffins” that allowed those inside to signal to the outside world.

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