Celebrating Agatha Christie's 120th Anniversary at school




Google doodle Agatha Christie

Did you had noticed already? Google are featuring a special Agatha Christie Google Doodle, the "Queen of Crime", on their home page to celebrate Agatha Christie's 120th anniversary

It is appearing on the Google homepage in all these countries: UK, Ireland, Slovenia, Romania, Latvia, Kyrgyzstan, Slovakia, Hungary, Israel, all Arabic speaking countries, Korea, Italy, Spain, Denmark, Spain, Norway, New Zealand, Australia, Netherlands, Germany, Portugal, Russia, Armenia, Azerbaijan, Belarus, Estonia, Kazakhstan, Morocco, Tajikistan, Turkmenistan, UAE, Uzbekistan, Finland, Suriname, Macedonia, Japan, & Lithuania.









 Agatha Christie

Agatha Christie is the best-selling author of all time.  She has sold over two billion books worldwide and has been translated into over 45 languages.  

In a writing career that spanned more than half a century, Agatha Christie wrote eighty novels and short story collections.  She also wrote over a dozen plays, including The Mousetrap, which is now the longest running play in theatrical history.



Education:

A. Are you a teacher at middle school? Why not motivate your students to participate at Christie Week 2010?



Agatha Christie tea


Students can organise an "Agatha Christie's Week" at your school, share with another students of the school or other schools in another city or country.
They can begin with a pedagogical research on the oficial site:

1. Stories and Detectives
2. The stories of Agatha Christie (using the filter to browse through her stories)
3. Christie's Detectives (M. Poirot, Miss Marple, others) 
4. Reading order (to a bibliography)
5. Sidekicks ( the role of the sidekick in crime fiction) 

But you have more! Let your students have funny moments by gaming learning!

1. Mystery figure game
2. Christie quizzes
3. Christie crosswords (vocabulary in English language)

B. And for the youngest, why not "Play 4.50 from Paddington" (free trial)?
All these activities are available here 

C. If you are a teacher in a High Junior School, don't miss the BBC archive! 



To mark the 120th Anniversary of Agatha Christie's birth, BBC Archive is realising a small collection of radio and television items in tribute to the world's most famous crime writer. We can hear from the lady herself!

What a fantastic tool to introduce crime fiction at English Literature curriculum?! Don't you agree?


For example, don't miss the audio The Misterious Dame Agatha (1st broadcast 1975) or Agatha Christie Interview (recorded 1955) where the writer talks about her lack of formal education and how boredom during childhood led her to write "The Mysterious Affair at Styles", wich was completed when she was still in her twenties...


Some Conclusions:

So as you see, even now we are talking about a formal learning as a non captivating method!

Well, there are a lot of funny and engaging activities about the "narrative text" that you can create and share with your students, on an informal learning in face-to-face teaching. 

Believe me! You will have a motivated classrooom that will learn literature, crime fiction, vocabulary, grammar... to you, "the attitude" of changing methods, and the creative mind to facilitate different learning activities at your young students!


"Colourless green ideas sleep furiously" 

Chomsky


G-Souto

15.09.2010
Copyright © 2010G-Souto'sBlog, gsouto-digitalteacher.blogspot.com® 


References:

Agatha Christie

BBC Archive Agatha Christie