BOOKR’s Recommendation: Tips for Thanksgiving

The legend says that Thanksgiving originates in 1620, when the pilgrims left England on a ship called the Mayflower to start a new life in America. It took them more than two difficult months to arrive and unfortunately, the journey was followed by a harsh winter when more than half of the pilgrims died of hunger.

Luckily, spring came and the pilgrims met the native tribes who taught them how to plant crops and how to hunt better. In 1621 they had a harvest like never before and by autumn all the pilgrims had enough to eat.

Ask the learners to sit in a circle. Give each learner a name: turkey, potato or pie. When the teacher calls “turkey”, all the students with this name stand up and switch places while the teacher sits down on one of the empty chairs.

The learner who doesn’t have a place calls the next name. It’s also possible to call “Thanksgiving dinner”, in which case all the learners stand up and switch places.

They were thankful for all the food so they invited their Native American friends to a feast. According to the legend, this was the very first Thanksgiving dinner in history.

How to celebrate Thanksgiving with your learners? Here are some tips to help you:

Ask the learners to sit in a circle. Start the game with a sentence like this: “I’m bringing turkey”. The next learner’s task is to repeat the first food and to add another one: “I’m bringing turkey and potatoes”.

The game ends when everyone has something to bring for dinner.

Use our introductory paragraph about Thanksgiving as a reading activity. Divide your class into groups and ask them to write questions about the text. Next, pair up the students who have different questions and let them check each other’s reading comprehension by answering each other’s questions.

If you’d prefer to improve your learners’ language accuracy, copy our text and delete some words thus creating a gap-fill exercise. It’s up to you!

Use our word search and gap-fill exercise attached.