ESL THANKSGIVING BY: TEACHER CAROL

Questions About Students' Background Knowledge

• Why do Americans celebrate Thanksgiving?
• What do you know about the origins of Thanksgiving?
• Who were the Pilgrims?
• How do Americans typically celebrate Thanksgiving?
• What kinds of foods are associated with Thanksgiving?
• When is Thanksgiving celebrated?
• What foods were served at the first Thanksgiving?
• What is 'Black Friday?'
• What do you know about the tradition of 'pardoning the Thanksgiving turkey?'
• What are some common Thanksgiving decorations?

Questions About Students' Experiences

• Have you ever celebrated Thanksgiving?
• What is your favorite Thanksgiving holiday memory?
• Will you and you celebrate Thanksgiving this year? If so, how?
• Are there any unusual dishes served at your family dinner? If so, what are they?
• Does Brazil have any holidays that are similar to Thanksgiving?

QU I Z for Students to answer after video:

(https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=H9NDuxL4WA4)

1.  How long was the first Thanksgiving celebration? 3 days

2. What was on the first Thanksgiving menu? 5 deer (Venison), maybe plain cranberries

3. Which president announced the first Thanksgiving national holiday? President George Washington

4. What year did he make the announcement? 1789

5. Which American writer waged a campaign to make Thanksgiving an annual holiday? Sara Josepha Hale

6. What recipes did she publish? Pumpkin pie, turkey, stuffing

7. Which President made Thanksgiving an annual national celebration? President Abraham Lincoln

8. What day did he set aside for the celebration? The final Thursday of November

9. Why did President Roosevelt move the holiday forward by a week?

To give retailers a longer pre-Christmas selling season

10. When is Thanksgiving celebrated now? The fourth Thursday of November

11. What unusual thing does the President do every Thanksgiving?

He pardons one or two turkey

10 Fun Activities For Adjectives Of Personality

Stimulating activities to teach and practise the difficult but fascinating topic of words that describe people’s character

Adjectives of personality can be incredibly difficult to teach and learn. For one thing, not many of them translate well, with an apparently similar word from another language turning out to be positive where the English word is negative, or to have a much wider or more restricted meaning that the translation would suggest. There are also so many personality words, meaning that any kind of freer practice turns up more and more words even if you’ve already given them a huge list.
Having said all that, there are some great activities for adjectives of personality that students love and learn a lot from. Given a really good activity that students can get involved in, they soon forget the difficulties and even become fascinated by the differences between languages. Good activities will also allow them to use the words over and over again and to think about them in more depth until they really are clear about the meaning and connotations. 15 such activities are listed below.

1. Ranking
One of the best ways of getting students to look at the same language many times so that they understand and remember it a bit better each time is to ask them to rank the personality adjectives in some way. Possibilities include putting the adjectives in order of importance for a lover, spouse, employee, boss, teacher or politician. They can then compare their ideas with another group.

2. Roleplays
Give students a roleplay card telling them what their personality is, and ask them to act that way until their partner guesses what adjective they were given. Situations in which they can do so include shopping, blind dates, job interviews and press/TV interviews.

3. Describe the people
One student uses personality adjectives to describe someone until their partners guess who they are talking about. This could be a family member, someone else that they know, someone famous, or their impressions of someone in a page of portraits that they have been given. It also works for animals, especially in a mixed-nationality class where the similarities and differences in the impressions of the personalities of foxes, elephants etc can be very interesting.

4. Questionnaires
Give students a questionnaire that is supposed to measure one or more aspect of their personality, but without its title. After they have answered the questions, they can work together to guess what they were being tested on (e.g. how generous they are), and to compare their answers with their partner(s). They can then write similar questionnaires for other personality words for other groups to answer the questions on and then guess which character traits are being tested. Creative and high level groups might also be able to improvise such questions without writing them down.

5. Your personality
Ask students to guess each other’s personality. The simplest way is for them to make statements such as “I think you are quite patient” for their partner to respond to with expressions like “Are you pulling my leg?” or “You could say that.” You could also ask them to guess facts that support that judgement, e.g. “I think that you are quite adventurous. I guess that you have been hiking on your own a few times.”

6. Guess the personality word
The simplest way of doing a guessing game with character adjectives is to ask someone to define one of the words or give examples until their partner guesses what it is, e.g. “A fox is said to be this way. It is like ‘clever’, but in a negative way” for “cunning”. You could also limit them to giving examples of actions that illustrate particular personality words, e.g. “He refused to change his mind about which pasta restaurant we went to” for “stubborn”. They could also make statements about who the word that they are describing is and isn’t particularly important for, e.g. “This is the worst thing for a nursery nurse but quite a good thing for a boxer” for “aggressive”.

7. Personality Yuppies
Yuppies is a game in one of the Communication Games books in which they take turns boasting about how “My house is more expensive than your car” and “My servant is more intelligent than your house”. Something similar can be done with personality words by asking them to compare boyfriends, bosses, teachers etc with sentences, e.g: “My boyfriend is more generous than your boyfriend. Yesterday he bought me one diamond in the morning and another in the afternoon” and “Okay, that’s pretty impressive. My boyfriend is more intelligent than yours, though. He speaks 100 languages.”

8. Personality and gender
Ask one student to describe the character of a famous person or someone that they know, and the other person to guess as soon as they are certain of the gender of that person. They are only allowed one guess, and lose five points if they are wrong.

9. Personality and gender discussion
Students could also discuss if certain personality words (e.g. “stubborn” or “vague”) are connected more to one gender than the other, or are more desirable or unacceptable in one gender than in the other.

10. Find the personality word
While they are watching a video, students shout out every time that they think they see a personality word illustrated by what is on the screen and the class discuss whether their statement (e.g. “Mr Bean is cunning. He is fooling the little kid”) is really represented by the video. These sentences can be from a list of personality words or just whatever the students can think of.
Positive Personality Adjectives List
Negative Personality Adjectives List

15 games for the language of describing people

1. Blind date quiz show One person asks questions of 3 to 4 students, who should answer about the person on the photo they have. The person who asked the questions should then decide who would make the best date, and after being shown the photos of the one they rejected will finally be shown […]

1. Blind date quiz show
One person asks questions of 3 to 4 students, who should answer about the person on the photo they have. The person who asked the questions should then decide who would make the best date, and after being shown the photos of the one they rejected will finally be shown the photo of the one they chose. This works well with photos of famous people.

2. Internet dating chain letters
Another fun variation on the dating theme is for students to write one line about the person wanting a date (from their imaginations), fold over the paper so what they wrote can not be seen, pass the piece of paper to the next person to continue the description etc. When each piece of paper has been passed around at least 6 people, the next person can unfold it and decide if the letter makes sense and/or sounds like a good date.

3. Describing people 20 questions
Students ask yes/no questions about the people whose photos or written descriptions they have (“Is it a woman?” “Does she have long hair?” “Does she have a high pressure job’”) until they guess which person their partner was thinking of.

4. Describing people memory games
For example, students test each other on what people in class look like and are wearing while the person answering the questions has their eyes closed.

5. Guess my description
Students write 10 sentences about themselves and then pass the piece of paper to someone else. The person who received the paper reads the sentences out, starting with the most difficult clues to guess from, until everyone guesses who it refers to.

6. Ranking traits
For example, rank personality words by how important they are for a particular job. Other groups then guess what the job is from the ranking and then say if they agree or disagree.

7. Brainstorm sentence endings board race
Teams race to write as many correct ending to a sentence stem as they can, e.g. “He has blue…”, “He has a big…” or just “He is…”

8. Picture dictation
One person explains a picture of a person to their partner, and their partner tries to draw what they hear. This can be done with the person explaining being allowed to see it being drawn or (more difficult) not being able to see and just having to ask and answer questions to make sure they have got it right. It can also be done with the original picture being a line drawing or a photo, with the former obviously being much simpler.

9. Alibi game
Each pair of students is told that they are a suspect for a murder last night and that person’s alibi, and must construct a story about what they were wearing, what the people around them looked like etc when they were at the pub rather than at the scene of the crime at the time of the murder. The two people are then questioned separately on all the details, and the pair in the class with most inconsistencies between their stories are the guilty ones.

10. Project/research
Students are set a task to find out as many things about a famous person as they can. They get points either for the number of details they found, or for every detail they found that no one else did.

11. Dominoes/jigsaws
Students are given different parts of a cut up picture or pictures showing many different people, and have to match the pictures up without showing them to each other.

12. Magazine search
Students challenge each other to find people of a certain kind in the magazines or textbooks that they have (e.g. “Look for someone wearing a blue hat/with a six pack”), and then race to be the first to find that thing. This works with different people having both the same and different books, but if they have different publications you might want to allow them to swap occasionally.

13. Guess the nationality
People describe one person or make generalizations about someone from a particular country, and the others try to guess the nationality. You can do the same thing with regions of their country. This can lead onto language of generalization such as “Most people think that…” or “People in this country tend to…”, which is good for speaking exams such as IELTS, or discussion of the truth and acceptability of stereotypes.

14. Sentence expansion
Give students a very short description of someone, e.g. “He has hair”. They then take turns to make that sentence longer and longer, until someone makes a mistake or gives up.

15. Generalization vary the sentence
This is similar to Sentence Expansion above. Start with a sentence that is an over-generalization, e.g. “Spanish people are short”, then take turns expanding or changing the sentence to make it more generally true.

ESL Describing Games

Describe it

Age/Level: Elementary and above     Time: 15 minutes     Players: Pairs     Preparation: None

Aim: To describe and define groups of words

You can use this describing game to help students practice or revise categories of words such as adjectives, jobs, animals, sports, etc. You can also use it to revise any vocabulary you have been teaching your students.

Procedure

Divide the students into pairs (A and B).

Each student will need a pen and a piece of paper.

Have all the A students move their chairs so they can’t see the board.

All B students should sit so they can see the board.

Write five to ten words on the board that you want the students to practice or revise. For example, if you wanted to revise sports you might write tennis, football, cycling, badminton, volleyball, etc.

Student B describes the first word on the board to Student A without saying the word, and speaking only in English, e.g. People play this sport on a court. They use a racket and ball to play. This sport is usually played between two people, etc.

Student A listens and then writes down the word he/she thinks it is and shows it to Student B.

Student A is not allowed to speak during the game. He/she can only write down the words on the paper.

If the word is correct, Student B moves onto describe the second word on the board and so on.

If it’s wrong, Student B must try to give a clearer definition or clue to help their partner guess the word.

When they have finished, the students swap roles and a new set of words is written on the board.

Describe it.PDF

Details

Age/Level: Elementary and above     Time: 25 minutes     Players: Small teams     Preparation: 5-10 minute video clip

Aim: To write descriptions of what you see in a video

This describing game is a wonderful way to incorporate media into your lesson. You will need access to a VCD/DVD player or the Internet for this game. Choose a 5 to 10 minute clip from a movie, TV programme or music video. The clip should contain numerous things and have a diverse backdrop.

Procedure

Divide the students into small teams.

Give each team a piece of paper and a pen.

Tell the students that they are going to watch a video. Explain that they have to write down as many descriptions as they can from what they see in the video.

Tell the students they will receive one point for every adjective + noun combination.

However, if the students write down a complete sentence describing part of the video, they will get five points.

Example:

Red car = 1 point

The bright red sports car is travelling at highspeed. = 5 points

At the end of the video, go through each team's answers and total up the points.

The team with the highest number of points wins.

This game also can be used to practice verbs, nouns, etc.

Details.PDF

Describing Dodgeball

Age/Level: Any     Time: 20 minutes      Players: Individual      Preparation: A soft ball

Aim: To listen and match descriptions of people

Here is a fun ball game that can be used to help students practice describing physical appearance, clothing or personality. This describing game is a variation of dodgeball. It works particularly well in large classrooms where there is room to run around.

Before you begin the game, you will need a soft ball.

Procedure

Clear a space so there is room to run from one side of the classroom to the other.

Have all the students stand at one end of the room.

Choose one student to be the ball thrower and have that student stand to the side with the ball.

You start describing one student, e.g. This student is wearing white trainers. This student has short brown hair and blue eyes. This student is hard-working, etc. Alternatively, you could choose a student to do the describing.

Depending on the language focus, the teacher/student describes physical appearance, clothing, personality, etc.

The students at the end of the classroom listen to the description. When they figure out who is being described, that student runs to the other side of the room.

The ball thrower then tries to hit the student as he/she runs.

If the student is hit, he/she becomes the new ball thrower.

You could also use this game to describe other things, such as furniture, food, famous people, etc, by giving each student a picture to hold up.

Describing Dodgeball.PDF

Felix the Cat

Age/Level: Young learners     Time: 20 minutes     Players: Individual     Preparation: None

Aim: To think of adjectives beginning with a certain letter

Here is a very simple game for adjectives of appearance and personality.

Procedure

Draw or copy a picture of a cat on the board. 

Above the picture, write 'Felix the Cat'.

Then write on the board: Felix the cat is an awesome cat.

Next, write the letters of the alphabet (b, c, d, e, f, etc.) down the board.

Tell the students that they will take it in turns to think of a new adjective to describe Felix using the letters on the board.

Students then take it in turns to come up with a new sentence to describe Felix.

Examples:

Student A: Felix the cat is a bad cat.

Student B: Felix the cat is a crazy cat.

As each student says a new adjective, you write it on the board. You could also have the students write the sentences.

Felix the Cat.PDF

Hot Seats

Age/Level: Elementary and above     Time: 20 minutes     Players: 2 teams     Preparation: A list of revision words

Aim: To describe words to a classmate

This is one of the most popular describing games for teachers to play with their students. It is an excellent game for teaching or revising any vocabulary.

Procedure

Begin by separating the class into two teams (A and B).

Place two chairs facing away from the board at the front of the class.

Get one player from each team to come and sit on one of the chairs, facing their team and having their back to the board.

These chairs are the 'Hot Seats'.

Write a revision word from your list clearly on the board.

The team members describe the word to their player in the hot seat, using definitions, synonyms, adjectives, etc.

The two players listen to their teammates and try to guess the word.

The first player to say the word wins a point for their team and gets to change places with someone else from their team. Then, the game begins again.

The other team has to keep the same player in the hot seat until he/she is first to answer correctly.

Hot Seats.PDF

Swat

Age/Level: Any     Time: 20 minutes     Players: 2 teams     Preparation: 2 fly swatters and a list of revision words

Aim: To listen to a description and match it with a word

This is an active describing game for ESL students.

Before you begin, you will need two fly swatters (or similar objects) and a list of words you wish to review.

Procedure

Write all the words from your list randomly on the board.

Then, move any chairs or desks away from the board, so the students can run up to the board easily.

Separate the class into two teams (A and B) and give each team member a number.

Call out a number. The two students with that number come up to play first.

Give the two students a fly swatter each.

Then, give a description of one of the words on the board, e.g. It's something you sit on, what is it?

The two students run to the board to find the word 'chair'.

The first student to swat the correct word wins a point for their team.

Then, another number is called out and so on.

Swat.PDF

Teammates

Age/Level: Elementary and above     Time: 25 minutes     Players: Teams of 4 to 5     Preparation: None

Aim: To write a description of a classmate's appearance and personality

In this ESL describing game, students use adjectives to describe their teammates to the class.

Give each team a piece of paper and pen.

Tell the students to secretly choose a student from their team to describe. Ask them to describe their chosen teammate by writing down adjectives on their paper.

Explain that they should start by describing the student's physical appearance and then they write about the student's personality.

When everyone has finished, ask the teams to come to the front of the class one by one.

The teams read out their descriptions and the other teams try to guess who they are describing.

Teams win points for correct guesses.

When all the teams have described their teammate, put the students into new teams and play another round.

You can also ask them to write about other information, e.g. likes and dislikes, favourite colours, etc.

Teammates.PDF

Ten Words

Age/Level: Elementary and above     Time: 30 minutes     Players: 2 teams     Preparation: Small slips of paper

Aim: To describe recently studied words

This ESL describing game motivates students to use vocabulary they have learnt in class.

Procedure

Give each student ten small slips of paper.

Ask the students to write down one word on each slip of paper. Tell the students that the words must be vocabulary they have learnt recently in class.

When they have finished writing, collect the word slips and put all the slips into a bag or box.

Divide the students into two teams.

One student from each team comes up to the front.

You pick a word and show it to the two students.

The two students then race to describe the word to their teammates.

They can use any means to explain the word, e.g. synonyms, adjectives, actions, drawings, etc.

The first team to correctly guess the word wins a point.

Then, the next two students come up and so on.

Ten Words.PDF