Our school has made a strong connection with two schools in Italy. It is the Scuola Elementare Bani and Istituto Comprensivo G. Marconi, in San Giovanni Valdarno, Tuscany. In December 2004, we visited their schools. Seven of us (Lisa, Cáit, Robbie, Ben, Sandra, Róisín, Doireann) went with our two teachers to visit the pupils of these schools, and their families. We spent a wonderful five day trip and brought back lots of photographs. We had some Italian lessons especially to prepare us for being in Italy. We stayed in the Italian children's homes, without our teachers. It was a bit of an adventure as we had to try to understand our new friends and communicate with them. It was great fun.

We were delighted that the children from Italy then managed to come and visit us. We had stayed in touch by internet. We had learned more of the Italian language and our families were very happy to meet the Italian children and their teachers with whom we had stayed on our visit to Italy.

We have learned so much about Italy from our visits and letters on the internet. We set each other challenges to find out about each other's culture on the internet by exchanging questions about SPORT, MUSIC, ART/CRAFT, HISTORY, CONTEMPORY PEOPLE and A PLACE OF PARTICULAR SIGNIFICANCE.

WHAT DID WE FIND OUT?

We found out about the author of Pinocchio, the famous puppet who turned into a boy, Carlo Collodi and about the Park of Collodi founded in his honour. Carlo Collodi (also known as Carlo Lorenzini) came from Tuscany.

Roberto Benigni, the director of the film “Pinocchio” was Italian.

“The Lord of the Rings” is a nickname for Yuri Chechi who is a successful Italian athlete. He won the gold medal in the Atlanta Olympic Games in 1996. He is also Tuscan.

Yuri Chechi was born in Prato in Italy. He won three Olympic medals for his country.

Many singers born in Italy release their songs in Italian.

Laura Pausini, Eros Ramazzotti, Elisa(who sings in English and plays bass guitar and piano – she has released six albums.) and Zucchero are the most popular singers for our Italian school friends.

Juventus is one of Italy's most important football clubs. Alessandro Del Piero has played for Italy and for Juventus and is probably the player most responsible for making this team as great as it is. He wears number ten shirt.

Valentino Rossi was six times world champion MotoGP racer! He was born in Italy in 1979 and now lives in London.