Partner trivia/tic-tac-toe game
Pictures of Thanksgiving foodIn each class I started off by talking about when Thanksgiving is and why it started. Then I showed them all pictures of common dishes that Americans eat on Thanksgiving like mashed potatoes, cranberry sauce, stuffing, green bean casserole, gravy, turkey and pumpkin pie. When I asked them what foods they wanted to try the most everyone said first they wanted to eat turkey (there is no turkey here) and secondly they wanted to try pumpkin pie. Next we played a trivia game about Thanksgiving with questions like: How long do you cook a turkey for? What does a turkey say in English? In how many different languages can you say 'thank you'? etc. The game was a tic-tac-toe style competition so the students liked it.
Making "Hand Turkeys"After that they traced their hands to make turkeys and filled in each 'feather' with something different that they were thankful for. The most common things mentioned were: China, water, electricity, family, classmates, teachers, food and life. Then we got into groups and read an article about common American traditions on Thanksgiving like watching football, Black Friday, going out to the bar on Wednesday, the wishbone, the presidential turkey pardon, tofurkey, and watching the Macy's parade. The students talked in groups about how this holiday compared with some of theirs.
They wanted to show you their hand turkeys, really.
They wanted to show you their hand turkeys, really.Next we played a game about recipes. I gave each group six unlabeled recipes for common Thanksgiving foods. They had to decide which dishes the recipes described. The recipes that stumped almost every group were dinner rolls and gravy. I think the favorite game of the day was when we played "I'm going to Thanksgiving dinner and I'm going to bring . . ." For this game I had students stand in circles of ten. One person started and said "I'm going to Thanksgiving dinner and I'm going to bring turkey." The next person had to say "I'm going to Thanksgiving dinner and I'm going to bring turkey and mashed potatoes" and so on. The students loved it and many groups wanted to go around the circle twice.
Here's some turkeys up-closeIf I had extra time the students competed to see how many words they could find in the word "Thanksgiving" the record was around 40 words and they were really good at it. I suggested they could try the words "Mayflower" or "Cornucopia" in their spare time outside of class. Overall it was a really fun lesson and I hoped they learned a lot while also relaxing and enjoying themselves a little.
Playing the "I'm going to Thanksgiving dinner and I'm going to bring...." game
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