Thanksgiving

This English lesson plan is suitable for pre-intermediate and low-intermediate students. It is dedicated to Thanksgiving and trains all 4 skills – listening, reading, speaking and writing. You can combine it with the video-based lesson “Self-care“, where the topic of gratitude is touched upon, or for more advances learners, the worksheets “Idioms: gratitude“, and  “Phrasal verbs: parties and celebrations“. Other lessons you might like are: “Diwali“, “Halloween“, “Day of the Dead“, and  “Three Kings’ Day”

After an initial discussion about Thanksgiving, students work on pre-listening vocabulary (feast, marching band, float) by matching the words to the photos given.

Video: Students watch a video “Your favorite Thanksgiving traditions explained“. And complete 2 tasks. First, they match the years to the event they refer to and then they complete the transcript of the video with the words given.

Vocabulary extension: Students look at a few verbs from the video (pardon, spare, date back, take place) and match them to their definitions. Next, they work on the typical Thanksgiving dishes (turkey, mashed potatoes, pecan pie, etc.) and talk about the traditional festive dishes in their countries.

Functional language: Students learn different ways to say “thank you” and “you are welcome” by putting the phrases given in the correct category (e.g. thank you for having my back, I appreciate it, don’t mention it, no worries). They practice with a few role-play situations and after that, they are asked to come up with their own situations.

Speaking and writing: Students are asked to talk about and write a short description of a well-known holiday from their country. A few useful phrases are given to help them. The lesson wraps up with a few conversation questions. The printable conversation cards provide an additional opportunity to speak about the topic of Thanksgiving and to practice the target vocabulary from this lesson.