Author: Admin

We are sharing the initiatives put in place to celebrate women with the students' work from Fifth Year Primary School, coordinated by the teacher Angela Pane.

The teacher writes

As March is Women's History Month – commemorating and encouraging the study, observance and celebration of the vital role of women in the world, in 5th class we decided to create an interdisciplinary inquiry-based project for Global Perspectives with the title ”Bold women who changed the world”.

This project covered aspects of English, Science, Technology, as well as history, culture and human rights. The students worked in groups and conducted their research in order to produce a ‘body figure biography’ about four famous women in history.

The 14 March Our School celebrated the Pi, a celebration for maths lovers it is an opportunity to be reminded of how this number permeates our everyday lives. On March 14th, around the world, we celebrate Pi Day, the most famous of the mathematical constants indicated by the Greek letter (pi).

On the occasion of Pi Day The primary school classes and those of the first-level secondary school Oxford, showing great interest and participation, they were keen to celebrate the world's most famous irrational number, ‘honouring’ it both from a culinary perspective with the creation of themed cakes and pastries, and from a more strictly mathematical one by carrying out tasks and crafts that in some way involved pi with its many decimal places.

Primary school pupils' time travel.

In particular, the children at Oxford International House primary school celebrated the day with a “A little trip back in time“the chosen destination was the City of Syracuse more than 2,200 years ago when it was a flourishing Magna Graecia colony. Why Syracuse? Because it is the city where the father of pi, the greatest genius of classical antiquity, Archimedes, lived.

Through this little journey proposed on the wings of the book of Anna Cerasoli “Everyone celebrating with Pi” - along with their wonderful curiosity, the children delved deeper into the knowledge of the great genius, his discoveries, his inventions, and some fun anecdotes; focusing in particular on how he managed to solve the most ”problematic” problem of antiquity: finding the measurement of the circumference.

The children in Year 5, in particular, having studied the circle for the first time, also through the telling of fascinating legends such as that of the Phoenician princess Dido and the founding of Carthage, discovered many things about it and became passionate about this magical number, Archimedes' constant. All the classes at Oxford Primary School, like many little scientists for a day, to celebrate that likeable, irrational number with infinite value: 3.14.

Activities of junior high school students

Among the initiatives carried out, the lower secondary school pupils, on the other hand, have been involved in Drafting a coherent sentence where each word had to contain, in order, a number of letters corresponding to the first twenty decimal places of pi.

The author of the most beautiful sentence was awarded a medal reporting the digits of pi arranged along an Archimedean spiral, discoverer of the number, attached to a pearl necklace strung with a very precise chromatic criterion in compliance with the ‘magic’ numbers of pi.

The following clip, with a melody based on the union of notes and the digits of pi,’To summarise with images, this wonderful initiative has undoubtedly contributed to increasing pupils‘ interest in mathematics and its ’mysteries'.’.

Pi

Pi is the initial of the Greek terms“outskirts “e“ perimeter”but also the initial of Pythagoras; with terminology that may appear evocative to those outside the field, mathematics defines Pi as a real, irrational, and transcendental number. Pi is the constant value that defines the ratio between the length of any circumference and its diameter; it repeats itself continuously in nature and is the means by which, for example, the height of an elephant from the ground to its shoulder can be calculated.

In reality, then, a mystery, a millennia-old quest, a number that governs our entire lives. It has a multitude of practical applications encompassing mathematics and physics, from probability calculations to aerodynamics. We find it in wave motion, planetary and particle motion, but also in stars and rivers.

Pi seems to peek out everywhere, from the strings of a vibrating guitar, The electromagnetic wave which spreads, a scent that expands in the air, as well as an influenza virus, the temperature that rises in a metal object. In short, it is no coincidence that it has been defined the “most beautiful mathematical formula” and that it deserves a special day to be celebrated.

The choice of the 14th of March is not a coincidence but it reflects the Anglo-Saxon numbering of the calendar, 3/14 or 3.14, in homage to the most used value of Pi (3.14). On this same day… Albert Einstein was born (in 1879: 140 years ago) and Stephen Hawking died (in 2018). On this day dedicated to celebrating the magical number, the children will be involved in educational activities aimed at stimulating their curiosity. For the occasion, they can bring a special snack to school: cakes, biscuits or muffins inspired by the mathematical constant, as per the instructions provided by Prof. Papa directly to the children.

With thanks to teachers Anna Maria Rosato (Primary) and Salvatore Papa (Lower Secondary)

As we used to do... yes, right today, in the digital age, when paper seems to be falling out of use, the small pupils of Montessori Nursery Oxford, they took a trip down memory lane.

Within the scope of activities planned for the project of the year: “The Library amongst the School Desks”The children took part in the educational outing at the Museum of Printing in Merine.

The very young pupils were involved in an interesting Laboratory activities during which they were able to make recycled paper sheets and, using ancient presses from the 1800s, print a postcard depicting Lecce Cathedral and a famous character from fantasy novels for children, to be coloured in at school.

It was an exciting experience for the children attending Oxford Nursery School, grappling with parchment sheets and the printing press, fascinated by the stories of those who welcomed them.

The little ones, well accustomed to laboratory activities within the Institute where the Montessori method is applied, proved to be attentive and collaborative, before returning home with an extra piece of knowledge in their possession.

An important event and a moving meeting were held at the’ Hotel Tiziano e dei Congressi, Lecce.

The students of Years 7, 8, and 9 of the lower secondary school of the institute International House Oxford Group Lecce, On 7th March, they had the opportunity to meet the senator, former President of the Senate and writer Pietro Grasso, in dialogue on the themes of legality and the fight against the mafia.

The meeting began at 15:00 in the Donatello room of the Grand Hotel Tiziano in Lecce with a welcome from the director Anna Grazia Buttazzo and the headteacher Carmen Indirli, where the students were accompanied by their teachers. The pupils' families, who are always attentive and interested in the numerous proposals that enrich the Montessori International School's educational offering, were also invited and attended in large numbers.

‘My friend Giovanni’

At the end of the meeting, the students had the opportunity to receive an autograph on their “My Friend Giovanni” book”, already widely discussed and explored during lesson hours, with the support of the teachers who oversaw the project, Teresa Romano, Anna Paola Carluccio, and Elena Carluccio. In particular, teacher Teresa Romano, a member of the Demea association which made the event possible, played a fundamental role in the organisation, actively collaborating in the creation of the programme.

“There are stories that do not end, stories that cannot end because the journey is too important and the purpose is fundamental. My friend Giovanni tells a story that cannot end because it is, first and foremost, the story of a friendship. But it is also the story of a professional relationship built on sharing: time and spaces, intense study, immense fears, great joys, small steps forward and bitter frustrations. The book you hold in your hands is very precious because it is the story of a friendship and a professional relationship intertwined, and it is a story that concerns us. What this book recounts has a beginning but does not end with the death of Giovanni Falcone, because, thirty years after the Capaci massacre, Pietro Grasso's gaze is fixed on the future, a future that opens up to all that has yet to be done and which could be realised.”

In the 30th anniversary of the Capaci massacre, Pietro Grasso tells the young people about Giovanni Falcone, their friendship and the many battles fought alongside the symbolic judge. fight against the mafia.

The Falcone Tree

Furthermore, the event was enhanced by the presentation to the school, from the hands of Pietro Grasso, of the’ “Falcone Tree”, a cutting from the tree that grows in Palermo under the magistrate's house. The Carabinieri of the Environmental Unit oversaw the handing over of the shrub.

During the meeting, moderated by journalist Marco Renna, the young people presented the former magistrate with Picture books prepared in the past few days, one made by Years 7 and 8 (they summarised and translated into images the book they had read) and the other one made by the first-year middle school students, who interviewed parents, grandparents and other adults, asking them if they remembered where they were when the news of the Capaci and Via D'Amelio massacres was announced.

The boys of First Media They also built a tree, on whose leaves they had written their thoughts on legality. Another group wrote a newsletter on the themes of the mafia and those who fought it at the cost of their lives.

The pupils asked their questions and made a commitment to be “young Falcones” to contribute every day to the fight against illegality.