Create a little activity of your own using the knowledge which you have already acquired (on later sessions you will be asked to construct a more complex activity based on a site). You have to concentrate on any of the learning strategies you have read about in the second reading of activity 2.
Make sure that your activity is well structured and devised to fulfill the objectives you have in mind.
To have an example, you can go over this one.
NAME OF ACTIVITY: What’s Halloween about? OBJECTIVE OF THE STRATEGY: To acquaint students with vocabulary related to the topic of the text. To teach them to make predictions about the text they are going to read and the basic vocabulary items they are going to encounter. To show them how they can work on their previous knowledge of the topic and thus improve, fasten and optimize the understanding of the text. INSTRUCTIONS FOR TEACHERS: The teacher must encourage students to provide anything they come up with: there are no wrong or right answers. He or she should not solve any doubt related to the meaning of the words they are going to be working on until the moment of facing the text comes: only students can intervene in the pre-reading activities. During the reading, the teacher can pass around every group and answer any question related to the text. In the speaking post-reading activity, the teacher has to correct any error students have in expressing themselves so that the new vocabulary they are meant to learn is definitely stored. AGE: 12 (Basic-Low intermediate level) The origin of Halloween 1) Halloween is a great day for parties. Children dress up as witches, ghosts or vampires, and they go from house to house playing TRICK OR TREAT. But what’s the origin of this custom? 2) Halloween means Hallows’ Evening. It is the evening before All Hallows’ Day (now called All Saints Day), a Christian holiday, celebrated on the 1st of November. But that day was important already in ancient times. On the 1st of November, Celtic peoples celebrated the festival of Shamhuinn, which marked the beginning of winter and the Celtic New Year. 3) “How come a Christian and a pagan holiday are celebrated on the same day?” you might ask, “Is it just a coincident?” – No, it isn’t. When Christianity spread, the Church tried to disturb the pagan customs as little as possible, and so they merged their festivals with pagan ones. 4) It was widely believed that on Hallows’ Evening the dead would rise from their graves to roam the earth. Afraid of evil spirits, people therefore either wore ugly masks to frighten those spirits away, or they stayed at home saying prayers. Some would also go from house to house, begging for ‘soul cakes’, square pieces of bread with currants. In return they promised to pray for dead members of the donors’ families. 5) Going from house to house, begging for sweets – doesn’t that sound familiar? Indeed, that’s the origin of TRICK OR TREAT. Be aware, however, as the custom has changed! Nobody is going to pray for you nowadays. Instead, if you don’t have a TREAT for the children in front of your door (some sweets for example), they will most likely play a TRICK on you – that’s what TRICK OR TREAT is all about. ANTICIPATION 1. Brainstorming: the class group is asked to say all those words they think a text about Halloween will contain. The teacher writes them all down on the blackboard in order to make them all known to them. These are read aloud by the teacher first and then repeated by the students. 2. The teacher asks the whole class what are their ideas about the origin of this tradition and to create a short paragraph that summarises this using the words that have been noted on the board. 3. The teacher shows another list of words that they will run into in reading the text. Students are asked to guess the meaning of those words which have not been mentioned up to then READING 1. In small groups, the students are asked to read and comment together on what they have understood and to try to deduce the meaning of those words they do not know. The teacher must give them some tips on how to figure out the meaning of words they have never read before such as looking and the context and to use the information that the previous anticipation discussion has put forth. POST-READING 1. Make the students give their impressions about the text and whether it has matched or not their expectations, what they have learnt and what has surprised them. 2. Invite the students to explain or to invent an experience of their own related to this festivity, so that they can draw on the new vocabulary they have learnt. | <><>
Suggestions / homework for further mastery of this vocabulary:
1. Classify the vocabulary according to the categories they choose themselves and share it with the ones of other students.
2. Write a short scary story (either invented or one that they know).
Here we have another example of exercise to work on memory:
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