Topic: Thanksgiving Week
Subject: English
Age/Grade: First Grade
Timing:
- with all activities: two sessions of 45 minutes
- with selected activities: one session of 45 minutes
Objectives:
- Students will be able to name Thanksgiving food vocabulary (turkey, corn, pumpkin pie, etc.)
- Students will be able to describe Thanksgiving traditions (eating a big meal, watching the parade, playing American football, etc.)
- Students will be able to describe simply the origins of Thanksgiving (the Pilgrims and Native Americans)
Lesson Outline:
- The meat of the lesson is in the prepared powerpoint about Thanksgiving. It reviews the traditions, origins, and vocabulary of the holiday with pictures and videos suitable for the first grade level of English.
- The assistant can be responsible for presenting the powerpoint, and the teacher can help to break down the information and rephrase it for the students to better understand, if necessary.
Links to videos in powerpoint:
- How We Celebrate Thanksgiving: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gI8H0u1TVN0
- The First Thanksgiving: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VvzMp5WUjls
The optional activities that follow are meant to apply the things the powerpoint teaches in a more captivating way.
Optional Activity 1: “I am thankful for”
- Students have a piece of paper with the title “I am thankful for…” and lines for them to write what they are thankful for. The language assistant and teacher help them to think of and write their words, such as family, friends, food, school, home.
Optional Activity 2: Thanksgiving Bingo
- To reinforce the Thanksgiving vocabulary in a fun way, the students play bingo. The language assistant calls the words and the teacher floats around to help the students identify them on their bingo card. With my class, we filled the whole card to count as a bingo, to fully practice all of the words, but a regular 5 in a row bingo would work as well.
Optional Activity 3: Turkey Hand Art Project
- The traditional Turkey Hand art project is a great activity, especially for the first grade age group. The students get a piece of paper (we used white so they could color, but more intricate projects can use brown) and trace their hands. They decorate their hand to make it look like a turkey, drawing the feet, beak, and eyes. They color the turkey with Thanksgiving colors if they choose, but creativity is always encouraged. Our students cut out the turkeys to put them on the wall in the classroom.
Evaluation:
My lesson included all of the activities done over two sessions of 45 minutes each. In this way, the activities themselves often serve as the evaluation to see how much the students have absorbed and remembered from the powerpoint presentation. Their ability to come up with things they are thankful for demonstrates their understanding of what the holiday celebrates today. The bingo is an evaluation of the vocabulary, as well as being more practice for them. The evaluation is very informal, and conversation with the students is encouraged as another form of evaluation. For example, asking them what Thanksgiving food they would most like to eat demonstrates their understanding of the food vocabulary.
Demi DiCarlo 