Thanksgiving lesson lesson plan

“Happy Thanksgiving!”

Special lesson Level 3 Age 7-9

Lesson plans for ESL kids teachers

Special lesson

Thanksgiving

In this lesson, students are introduced to the concept of Thanksgiving and discuss things they are thankful for. They also make a Thanksgiving turkey decoration, read a funny Thanksgiving story and play lots of fun Thanksgiving-related games.

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Age: 7-9 years
Time: 1 hour – 1 hour 20 mins
Objectives: Have fun with Thanksgiving themes, discuss being thankful.
Structures: “Happy Thanksgiving”, “What is it?”, What are you thankful for (this Thanksgiving)?”, “I’m thankful for …”.
New vocabulary: Thanksgiving, thankful, cold/colder, warm/warmer, hot.

Lesson materials

Flashcards:

Thanksgiving flashcards: turkey

Printables:

I’m thankful for worksheet
Thanksgiving – I’m thankful for worksheet
The Thanksgiving turkey reader worksheet

Readers:

The Thanksgiving turkey

Supplies:

name tags for each student
board with markers / chalk
brown, yellow and orange construction paper / card
glue and scissors

Notes:

This lesson does not focus on the history of the American Thanksgiving as it would be too complex for younger learners and in many cases has little relevance within their own culture. Instead, students discuss things they are thankful for, play some fun Thanksgiving-related games and activities and read a funny Thanksgiving story!

Lesson procedure:

Warm up and maintenance:

1. Greetings
Greet each student by name as they enter the classroom and say, “Happy Thanksgiving!” – try to get them to say this back to you. Ask them to sit down.

Before class prepare some blank name tags (stickers or pin-on tags). Give the tags out and have everyone write their names and put their tags on. If you use pin-on tags, you can keep and give out every class.

2. Review time
Play some review games from previous lessons for this review section. Have some fun games and go over new structures and vocabulary.

3. Homework check
Check each students’ homework worksheet and ask questions to check their understanding. Give lots of praise, and then put some kind of mark on the homework sheet (e.g. a sticker, a stamp or draw a smiley face).

Finally, tell your students to put their homework back into their bags.

New learning and practice:

1. Introduce the turkey and do the turkey walk
Show a flashcard of a turkey. Elicit / Teach “turkey” and chorus x3. Ask, “What noise does a turkey make?” and teach how to make gobble-gobble, turkey noises. Then ask, “How does a turkey walk?” and then show your best turkey impression – strut around, wobbling and flapping your elbows making “gobble-gobble” sounds.

Try and get everyone to join in, strutting around the classroom – don’t force anyone if they are shy, but let the confident ones have fun with it!

Note:

Some students may not know what a turkey is. If you can show photos / videos of turkeys so students understand (and point out that a turkey is not a chicken).

2. Thanksgiving picture chat
Before class print out the family Thanksgiving dinner picture – either blow it up as large as you can or print off copies for groups of your students to share (you can see a small version of it below but we have the full-sized version in our download materials file).

We’ll use this picture to introduce the concept of Thanksgiving. Start by pointing to the roast turkey and eliciting “roast turkey” and asking if anyone has eaten this before. Then have a discussion, asking about:

what they think is happening.
how many people there are and what [hide_on_uk]colors[/hide_on_uk][hide_on_us]colours[/hide_on_us] they can see
what clothes the people are wearing
what food they can see

Finally, explain / elicit that they are a family in America having a dinner of thanks. You can explain some food (e.g. mashed potatoes, pumpkin pie, etc.).

For higher levels, you can have a class discussion on giving thanks – first give some examples of things you can give thanks for (food, good health, family, friends, etc.) and then get your students to come up with ideas they are thankful for – any answers should be accepted, however strange (e.g. thankful for their PlayStations, etc.).

3. Play ” Thanksgiving picture quiz”
Take the picture away and say you are going to have a quiz on this picture. Put students in teams and get each team to come up with a name – write the team names on the board.

Ask questions from below – students have to put their hands up if they know the answer – the first one with their hand up can answer and win a point for their team. If they answer incorrectly select another student to answer form another team. Keep track of the score on the board – at the end the team with the most points win:

QUESTIONS FOR PICTURE QUIZ

How many people are in the picture? (7)
How many children are in the picture? (2)
How many adults are in the picture? (5)
How many people are wearing glasses? (2)
Is the table full or empty? (full)
What color are the cans? (red)
What color are the boys’ clothes? (blue and red)
What jewelry can you see? (a necklace)
What is everyone sitting on? (chairs)
What is everyone doing (praying / giving thanks)
What things are on the table? (plates, glasses, food, drink, salt, cans, napkins, jugs, bowls, a turkey, etc. – 1 point for each item)
Is anything missing from the table? (knives, forks, spoons!)

Thanksgiving Turkey hand & foot decoration

4. Make a “Turkey hand & foot decoration”
Before class, make the turkey decoration for yourself so that students can see what to do. Take out your pre-made turkey craft decoration and ask the class what it is (elicit “turkey”). Ask what shape the body and wings are and try and elicit that they are the shapes of your hands and feet (you can show this by placing your hand over one of the hand cut-outs).

Pair up students and tell them they are going to help each other make the craft:

i) Using brown construction paper, students help each other to draw an outline of their foot. This is then cut out (help younger kids with the cutting).

ii) Now pairs help each other to draw outlines of their hands on yellow and orange construction paper. Again, these need to be cut out.

iii) Finally, get the students to cut out little feet and beaks from the construction paper and glue everything to the body. Eyes can either be drawn on or if you have craft eyes you can stick them on.

5. Play “Hunt the turkey”
Using their turkey crafts everyone is going to play a fun game. Keep the students in pairs for this activity. First demonstrate with a student. Ask the student to close his/her eyes whilst you hide your turkey decoration (e.g. under a book, behind a bag, etc.). Then tell the student to look for your turkey. As the student is looking you can help by giving the following hints:

“cold” – the student is far away from the turkey
“colder” – the student is getting even further away from the turkey
“warm” – the student is near the turkey
“warmer” – the student is getting nearer the turkey
“hot” – the student is very near the turkey

Once the student has found the turkey and everyone understands the game have the student pairs play together. Each time they finish they can change roles. Monitor each pair and help out with the vocabulary (warm, cold, etc.).

6. Read and write time
This segment can be part of all your lessons. Spend 10 to 15 minutes building up your students’ writing and reading skills. You’ll need to assess your students’ reading/writing level and then choose to start at one of the following stages:

Reading and writing activities by level:

1. Beginners: students cannot read or write the alphabet.
Each lesson introduce 3 lower-case letters of the alphabet (first lesson will be a, b, c). Use flashcards to do this. Play alphabet games and do printing worksheets.
» See our ‘Alphabet a-z (lowercase)’ mini-lesson plans for full details.

2. Early starters: students have experience with the alphabet but need phonics practice.
Each lesson introduce 5 lower-case letters of the alphabet (first lesson will be a, b, c, d, e). Use flashcards to do this. Start by working on the sounds of the letters and then move onto letter clusters (e.g. sh, ee, etc).
» See our ‘Alphabet’ and ‘Letter clusters’ mini-lesson plans for full details.

3. Early readers.
Work on reading and writing simple sentences with lots of practice activities.
» See our ‘Early reading’ mini-lesson plans for full details. (click on “Early reading” tab)

4. Elementary readers: students can read and write simple sentences well.
Work on reading and writing short texts and stories.
» See our ‘Reading short texts’ mini-lessons for full details. (click on “Reading short texts” tab)

7. Read classroom reader “The Thanksgiving turkey”
This story focuses on the concept of being thankful. Before class, download and print off the reader “The Thanksgiving turkey”. As you go through each page, point to the pictures and elicit what is happening in the story, for example:

Teacher: (pointing at the turkey picture on page 2) What is Mr. Turkey doing?
Students: Eating!
Teacher: That’s right, he’s eating his food. (Reading) “I’m thankful for my lovely food each day.”

You can use the story as a basis for discussion on what they are thankful for, for example:

Teacher: (pointing at the turkey picture on page 5) What is Mr. Turkey doing?
Students: Reading a newspaper!
Teacher: That’s right, and where is he?
Students: In his home!
Teacher: Yes, he is! And do you think he’s thankful for his home?
Students: Yes!
Teacher: Why do you think so, Ema?
Ema: Because it is nice.
Teacher: Yes, it is very nice isn’t it? Let’s see (reading) “I’m thankful for my cozy home.” Are you thankful for your home, David?
David: Yes, I am.
Teacher: oh really, why?
David: Because it is warm and comfortable.

After reading the story, give out a reader worksheet to each student and have everyone fill in the blanks.

At the end, ask students what they are most thankful for. This can lead to a great discussion.

Alternatively, watch our video version of the reader (Internet connection required).

8. Do the “I’m thankful for” worksheet
Now that everyone has the understanding that Thanksgiving is about being thankful, we’ll get your students thinking about what they are thankful for in their lives.

Start by modeling: hold up the worksheet and read the question. Then think of a couple of your own ideas and write them in the circles, such as your family, your health, delicious food every day, etc. Don’t put too many of your own ideas as students are likely to copy them.

Then give out the worksheets and have students work individually on their worksheets. Circulate and help with spelling, etc. Also check that their answers are appropriate!

9. Mingle to find out your classmates’ answers
We are going to have everyone stand up and mingle to find out what their classmates are thankful for. Model by pairing up with one student and asking him/her, “What are you thankful for?” (write this on the board). Have the volunteer give a couple of answers. Then get him/her to ask you.

Get everyone to stand up and mingle about, asking different students what they are thankful for. Run the activity until it appears some students has asked everyone in the class.

Have everyone sit down and ask individual students to report back on some of their findings.

Wrap up:

1. Assign homework: “Thanksgiving – I’m thankful for”
Hold up the homework worksheet and model what to do – read the first two example sentences and then write a couple more things to be thankful for. Indicate that there are 14 spaces for answers – set the challenge to do all, if they can!

Give out the worksheets and say, “Put your homework in your bags”.

2. Do “Quick check” and say goodbye
Time to leave the class. Make sure everything is put away and the students have gathered their belongings. Have them line up at the door and place yourself between the door and the students.

For each student ask, “What are you thankful for this Thanksgiving?”.

When they give you an appropriate answer say goodbye and let them leave. If their answer is wrong, have them go back to the end of the line – they will have to try again once they reach the front!