Dear Colleagues,

I’d like to welcome our partner schools in the third year of collaborating with the magazine Ice-breaker. Since the beginning of September, I’ve been exchanging e-mails with the teachers about our further co-operation. Some of them deciced faithfully to stay with us for the next year, there are also new schools which liked the idea of the project and found it creative and worth joining. The list of participating schools is not closed, I’m still corresponding with some uncertain teachers.
Now, I’d like to announce the first task. To begin with, all schools are asked to prepare a few slides (in Power Point) presenting their schools, reinforcing the school patron and how the school keeps national traditions. We are waiting for the presentations till the end of September. They will be collected in one and submitted in Culture Clash section.
I’d like to wish all of you, teachers and students, fruitful work and personal satisfaction.

All the best,
Marta Inglot

Dear Teachers and Students,

We are looking forward to summer holidays, so I would like to express my great appreciation for your engagement and creativeness in contributing to the magazine contents.

Twelve schools have decided to participate in the project this year, six of which continued their partnership. All the articles and presentations submitted on magazine sites your comments on the forum prove your understanding of this form of collaboration. What I really feel proud of is the section ‘Culture Clash’ with four assembled presentations, whose educational and cultural values are undisputable.

Thank you for any new ideas you are sending to me. They are very helpful and bring a fresh view of the magazine. I will use them next year, when inviting you and new partners to the project.

I wish you a joyful summer holiday.
See you in September .

Dear colleagues,
I can hardly believe that the summer holidays are almost upon us ! At the moment we are at the heart of the exam season, our school is an exam centre for the French Baccalaureat exam, so classes have already come to an end ! ( I hasten to add that the teachers are still hard at work, supervising exams, conducting oral exams and then of course, the marking !)
This is just a short message to tell you all how much I’ve enjoyed yet again working on Ice-Breaker. My pupils participated in two of the “Culture Clashes” and I hope that next year’s pupils will be even more active ! So, many thanks to Marta, who had all the hard work putting “Culture Clash” together, it was a very interesting and enriching venture and I’m already looking forward to my third year in the Ice-Breaker team !
In the meantime, let me wish you all a pleasant and restful summer holiday, deserved by all !

We regret to announce that we are off for the summer already -I asssume this will make a few of you envious. Due to national exams, lots of extra-curricular activities and end of school career for a lot of my students we have already finished our course.
I still have some articles with schol related topics, but don’t think we have a suitable category to publish it in. Would you consider opening up a new one for articles on school life, school career or school events in the next school year? I look forward to working with a new and younger group of pupils and hopefully we will be able to publish a few articles.
Regards to everyone in the community,
Jutta Bräunig for Willy-Brandt-Gesamtschule in Cologne, Germany

Dear Colleagues,
We are sumbitting the assembled presentation on winter sports with some delay, the reasons for which I explained in my personal mails. I am happy we have finally managed to complete the task, although we were not able to use the questionnaires. (more…)

Dear Teachers,
Great thanks to those who encouraged their students and contributed to the Carnival 2007 Show - the January issue of Culture Clash.

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We have just joined the team. We are a secondary comprehensive school in Cologne, Germany.Two small groups of 14-16-year-olds are ready to work once a week (if classes aren’t cancelled)on various topics in English. Help is offered by two English teachers if needed. Can we still submit our carnival presentations? It would be a start.
We would also like to present ourselves and our school as a next project. But we wonder which file we should use, as we couldn’t find presentations of other schools. For a start you might be interested in visiting our school’s homepage. Please go to www.wbg.kbs-koeln.de/ On the right-hand side follow the path Wahlpflichtbereich II and then click on Homepage in the body of text under the first picture. This will lead you an English discription of our courses.

By the way, the culture clash section appears in a strange unreadable language for us today. Will that be sorted out?

We look forward to participating in your webzine!
Jutta Bräunig

Hi everyone,

I was just thinking about the topic for February. If it doesnt have to be connected with the month, how about National Hero/Heroine? Or Does your country have its Robin Hood?
By the way Happy /new/ year 2007!

Luba

Maybe this could be an idea for the next communication among the teachers and pupils:
what about comparing school-holidays and extra activities?
Well, in Austria the 13 year old pupils are on a skiing course for a week with their sports teacher in January, and there is one week of semester holidays from February 19 to 24.
By the way, thank you to Marta for the great ideas, for example sending presentations of Carnival.
Ok, but maybe our’s will arrive a bit later…
Greetings to all the other participants from the middle of Austria and from Ernestine

Hello, Everyone,
Great thanks to those who took part in the December task and sent their presentations. The Ice-breaker’s Christmas Cookery Book is available at Culture Clash section. I wonder about your comments.
I’d like to announce the topic of the cross-cultural task for January. It’s Carnival Fashion.
I think that we should concentrate on current trends in our countries.The form of Power Point pages seems to be the most convenient. Please submit your presentations by 20th Jan 2007.
I hope all partner schools will enjoy the task and contribute to our January issue.
I am waiting for your ideas about the February topic.
All the best, Marta Inglot