[mesmark]

Anyone planning on doing Thanksgiving lesson? If so, what are you going to do?

[ana.renee]

How come nobody replied to this? I dunno what to do for Thanksgiving either. I was thinking maybe they can decorate the classroom with fall-themed things and give a short presentation on the history of Thanksgiving. I want to have some sort of activity, but I can't think of anything; any ideas?

[alawton]

Hello,

What I've done in the past was to print out a list of words that have to do with the holiday. The students are pretty motivated to learn these words because they are seeing and hearing them everywhere. Depending on the chemistry and attitude of my class, I sometimes have the students write a role play out that has to do with Thanksgiving. Sometimes I will have them pretend they are at the feast with the pilgrims and native americans. Other times I will have them act out a typical Thanksgiving day in a home in this country. The dialogue they create has to include ten or so words from our vocabulary list. Holiday themed lessons are always fun. The students love the break from the text book. Good luck!

[ana.renee]

I like the vocabulary thing, I think we can work on a mini play.
I recently spoke to the Headmaster, and he liked the ide of the play but he also wanted them to have a Thanksgiving "dinner" during the class period (10-11am), and I have to include all the "tipical" foods. However, the kids in my class are teenagers (14 and 15 year olds) and I'm pretty sure they won't be willing to taste "strange" food, and I don't think their mothers would like to cook for the whole class. I was thinking maybe I can sustitute some of the foods, for example: instead of turkey we can have turkey sandwiches. But I need more ideas! My mum usually makes sweet potatoes, turkey, glazed carrots, corn pudding and bread pudding for Thanksgiving, basically because we can get the ingredientes in my country (I live in Mexico). Any suggestions for a teen-aproved Thanksgiving menu?

[arielhud]

I teach really young kids, mainly, and since I'm in Japan, most of them have never even heard of Thanksgiving. Japan pretty much throws Christmas lights on right after Halloween (or sometimes before) so it was really hard to teach them anything this week.

What I ended up doing was focusing the lesson more on the general, universal feelings of the Thanksgiving season: fall foliage, the harvest, etc. I set up a paper tree in the room that kids decorated with puffy red and yellow pompoms and maple leaf name tags, and crafts for the week included making a scarecrow on a chopstick, drawing hand turkeys and playing BINGO.

Part of the problem for me is kids didn't know exactly WHAT a turkey is. Luckily my school has a turkey and peacock stuffed animal, so I could at least show them the similarities, but it was hard to describe Thanksgiving as anything more than a food festival in the West.

As far as teenager approved food- the stuff you listed sounds fine to me, though pudding pie is always a good addition XD