In this lesson, students learn about two festivals in November: Day of the Dead and Bonfire Night. Half of the class will read about Bonfire Night, and half of the class will read about Day of the Dead. They will then use the interview questions on the worksheet to interview somebody with the other sheet. E.g: A student who has the Bonfire Night sheet will interview a student with the Day of the Dead sheet.
1) Introduce the topic. Today, students will be learning about November festivals around the world. Half of the class will read about Bonfire Night, and the other half will read about Day of the Dead. You can use a presentation with some pictures here to get students excited (presentation linked below). Then, students will interview each other about the festivals.
2) Split the class in half. Give half of the class the Bonfire Night sheet and the other half the Day of the Dead sheet. I give students around 15-20 minutes to read the information. They can use dictionaries if they need to. Then I ask them to summarise the information to their partner (who has read about the same festival). I let them do this in Japanese or English because this step is just so that they can check their understanding with each other.
3) Then, students find a partner who has the other sheet. I asked each pair to work with a pair on the other side of the room so it was a group of four, but depending on your class you can also ask each student to find a new partner.
4) Janken. Students use the interview questions to ask about the other student's festival. Depending on your class' ability level, you could always give students the questions they will be asked in advance so that they can write their answers before the interview.
5) Summary: explain each festival using pictures on a presentation to consolidate understanding. Choose students to answer key questions along the way. Alternatively, you can choose some students to talk about their festival and show pictures to help with understanding.
Note: The worksheets are suitable for Eiken Grade 3 students.
Presentation link: https://www.canva.com/design/DAFQkv46M18/Slq-inoXkaoMxd5VG0sGLQ/edit?utm_content=DAFQkv46M18&utm_campaign=designshare&utm_medium=link2&utm_source=sharebutton
(Apologies, the presentation isn't very aesthetically pleasing but hopefully it will give people some ideas!)