HALLOWEEN
Aim: To learn the typical vocabulary from Halloween.
Focus: VOCABULARY
Level: KIDS
Time: AN HOUR
Procedure:
WARMING-UP:
1) Bring a pumpkin in class,
2) Explain the origin of the holiday and all the activities involved such as trick-or-treating, attending costume parties, and telling scary stories.
ACTIVITY:
1) Give the students some pictures attached below to color.
2) Pupils need scissors, tape and a drinking straw.
3) Pupils have to color, cut out and use the tape to make puppets with the straws.
4) As pupils work, the teacher circulates and asks them questions about the items. For example, ‘What is this?’ or ‘What color is your pumpkin?’
5) In turn, pupils show their favorite puppet to the rest of the students and say what it is.
FOLLOW-UP: During the last 15 minutes, the children are put in groups of four. They will be given a number of words such as devil, dracula, witch, skeleton and zombie, and some pictures. The students have to match the words with the pictures. The idea is taken from http://printables.kaboose.com/printable-monsters.html.
CRISTINA
CLASSROOM NEWS
Level: intermediate (teenagers)
Focus: reading and speaking
Objectives: To introduce on-line resources which motivate teenagers’ learning of English language.
Time: 1.5 hours, aprox.
Learning Strategy: Read a piece of news online and present it orally in class with role playing.
The teacher will provide a link to a web which is interesting for teenagers. Then they will have the option to choose the topic they want to work on. By going through the text, students practice analytical skills and obtain new vocabulary, and at the same time, they get information about their favorite celebrities.
Materials: Dictionaries for the class, and perhaps some magazines to illustrate the poster.
Procedure
1- Teacher asks students, as homework, to visit the MTV USA webpage http://www.mtv.com/ and choose a piece of news from the ones listed under the category “news” in the main webpage. They should print it out and bring it to class.
2- (next day)In class, students:
1. Go through their texts and circle the difficult words.
2. Find them out in the dictionary (monitor that they use the correct meaning of the word)
3. Read the text carefully
4. Find the main idea of each paragraph and look for a convenient title (for each paragraph)
5. Make a brief summary of the text, including the main ideas of each of the paragraphs.
3- The next step is present them in the “Classroom News”: Students will play the role of hosts of a news program and, in turns, present their summary to the rest of the class.
(Advise them to imitate the speech of the reporters/news host)
4- As follow up, students could create a “newspaper poster” for the class, putting all of their news together and decorating the poster with photos from magazines, or drawings.
Maya
