A Christmas Carol Trivia

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•Charley Dickens said, “My father was always at his best at Christmas.”  Charles Dickens loved to celebrate Christmas.  His favorite time during the holidays was Twelfth Night, the feast of the Epiphany. 
 
•Early in 1843, as a response to a government report on the abuse of child laborers in mines and factories, Dickens vowed he would strike a “sledge-hammer blow . . . on behalf of the Poor Man’s Child.”  That sledge-hammer was A Christmas Carol.  
 
•It only took Dickens about six weeks to write A Christmas Carol.  Tiny Tim and Bob Cratchit helped speed up the process.  When Dickens wrote he “saw” his characters much like the way that young Ebenezer Scrooge saw the characters from the books he had read.  As Dickens wrote A Christmas Carol he said that the Cratchits were “ever tugging at his coat sleeve, as if impatient for him to get back to his desk and continue the story of their lives”.
 
•”Old Marley was as dead as a door-nail.”   This line appears toward the beginning of the novel.  Dickens included this because of a dream.  He had dreamt that one of his good friends was pronounced to be “as dead Sir . . . as a door-nail”.
 
•The Cratchit family is based on Dickens’ childhood home life. He lived in poor circumstances in a “two up two down” four roomed house which he shared with his parents and five siblings. Like Peter Cratchit, young Charles, the eldest boy, was often sent to pawn the family’s goods when money was tight. Like many poor families the Cratchit’s had nothing in which to roast meat. They relied on the ovens of their local baker which were available on Sundays and Christmas when the bakery was closed.
 
•A Christmas Carol was first published in 1843.  Initially six thousand copies of the book were printed.  More copies were ordered after the first printing was sold in only five days.
 
•One literary critic called A Christmas Carol a “national institution”.  Dickens’ friend and fellow author, William Makepeace Thackeray,  was quick to correct the critic and call the book a “national benefit”.
 
•At the time Dickens wrote A Christmas Carol Christmas wasn’t commonly celebrated as a festive holiday. In The Pickwick Papers and A Christmas Carol Dickens’ descriptions of feasting, games and family unity combined with his message that Christmas was a time “when want is keenly felt and abundance rejoices” helped revive popular interest in many Christmas traditions that are still practiced today. 
 
•In 1867 Dickens read A Christmas Carol at a public reading in Chicago.  One of the audience members , Mr. Fairbanks, was a scale manufacturer.  Mr. Fairbanks was so moved that he decided to “break the custom we have hitherto observed of opening the works on Christmas day.”  Not only did he close the factory on Christmas day, but he gave Christmas turkeys to all of his employees. 
Some items were contributed by John D. Huston

Dickens and the Revival of Christmas Traditions

“A Christmas Carol” – 1st Edition

Thanksgiving Sermon by Charles Dickens

Charles Dickens Life

Have fun watching this spectacular animation!

Illustrations & Layouts: Mark Ruffle
Script and Research: Sally Spray
Animation: Tim Ruffle

Also on BBC website here.

Charles Dickens – A Christmas Carol

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The teachers of English belonging to the Agrupamento de Escolas de Carregal do Sal created a very interesting project about the book  A Christmas Carol by Charles Dickens.

To know more  about it, read the posts on the ES Library blog: here, here and here!

The new School Year

This year there will be no English Club activities as I received a scholarship to work on my thesis. I will be posting some new songs, links, videos and comments, so keep on visiting the blog. 😉

World Environment Day

World Environment Day was celebrated on the 5th June.
9A students participated in this event writing some sentences about the topic in English.
The celebration was coordinated by the teacher of Spanish, Verónica Melo, and the teacher-librarian, José Moreno, gave us a hand.

Watch them in action:

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Walt Whitman Exhibition

On the 1st June the Club members exhibited their works on Walt Whitman in the school library. Watch the slideshow:

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International Children’s Day

Walt Whitman

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The North American poet was born on 31 May 1819. To celebrate this date, the English Club members were given a stanza from his poem On the Beach at Night and had to add two more stanzas to it. Read their poems!

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Study Visit 2010

Once again, we had the traditional study visit to meet the students’ new friends from Mealhada.

The study visit took place on the 28th May and we visited Bussaco, following the tracks of the Battle of Bussaco.

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World Press Freedom Day

World Forestry Contest

On Tuesday, 27th April, the students received their certificates and the winners got their prize.

Teacher Rui Fidalgo, Assistant to the school’s Head Master, and teacher-librarian, José Moreno, gave us a hand.

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Watch the video:

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And the winner is…

Finally the winners of the World Forestry Day Contest were chosen: Francisca and Maria Carolina (8.ºA). Here they are with their recycled tree: