This is based on Joey_Ph's World Weird Festivals activity. I made some edits to the powerpoint, and the way I do the activity is different. All credit for this activity should go to them.
Materials
- Powerpoint
- Worksheet (if you want the students to write, but it's not necessary)
How I do the Activity
- Split the class into pairs or triplets. Depending on class size, groups of 4 is okay, but I think pairs works the best.
- Show the first slide with the Japanese festivals and ask the students if they know them? What do they think about them? If you haven't taught the "think that" grammar yet, this is where you should teach it to them. For this, they can make really simple sentences like "I think it's interesting." "I think it's in X-prefecture."
- After asking a few of the students for their thoughts, tell them that there are interesting festivals from all around the world. Then, move on to the next slide.
- For each slide, introduce the festival. Tell them a little about it. What do they do and why do they do it? What's the history? Then, present them with the question.
- For each question, the students first ask their partner "What do you think?" Their partner then makes a sentence using "think." For example, for the first festival, they'd say "I think they roll (their answer)." Depending on the question, they have to change what comes after their "I think" start. I recommend writing an example sentence on the blackboard for the students to follow when answering the questions. Underline/color the parts that they will be changing.
- After the students ask their partner what they think, they write down their answers on their worksheet. Again, for example, "I think they roll (their answer)." They can have different answers. After all, this grammar is about expressing your opinion.
- After they're finished writing, ask a few students "What do you think?" The students answer with their sentence.
- Then, ask the class "Who thinks they roll tires?" (for example), and get them to raise their hands. Then, show them the answer and have them mark if they're correct or wrong on their worksheet.
- Repeat this for each festival slide, but you can shorten steps 7 and 8 depending on how much time you have remaining in the class.
- At the end, the people who had the most correct answers win. Although, you don't have to have a winner. I think the events by themselves are interesting and motivating by themselves.
Other Notes
- I simplified all of the sentences so that the students can make sentences with various subjects and verbs.
- I changed the last slide to be about Hawaii since I'm from Hawaii. You should change it to be about your hometown / area as well.
- Feel free to rearrange the order of the slides. I tried to order them in a way where we weren't looking at the same country for too long, but sometimes the grammar for the sentences is a little difficult. For example when they have to use "be ~ing" with "think" in their sentences.
- Obviously, you need to research the festivals before doing the presentation. There's barely anything written on the slides, so you need to provide extra context for the students. A quick google search can find any of these festivals, and most (if not all) have a wikipedia page that you can glance over.
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