節慶教學 < Christmas: Writing>

Level: Junior High (8th grade) 

Activity: Christmas film watching, listening handout

Material: laptop, film, worksheet

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On Christmas, I prepared a film watching activity for my students to let them have a peek into how Americans celebrate Christmas or what they would do during that day. 

I decided to let them watch "Mr. Bean's Christmas". As we all know, Mr. Bean do not talk much in his films. Thus,my aims for the students to watch the film are as follows.
First, to have a general idea about what people would do on that day.
Second, to be able to understand the film and answer the questions on the handout.
Third, to be able to make a connection between the content of the film and the provided answers on the handout.

Teaching Processing:
In the beginning of the class, I helped students read through the questions on the handout. Then, I asked them to predict what things would happen in the clip. At this part, students are able to make some predictions about the film and teachers can try to encourage them to make their predictions in English.

After the prediction, I played the film for them to watch. Students could answers the questions on their handout while watching the film.
The film is provided below.

After watching the film, you can let students have 2-3 minutes to discuss their answers to the questions. Then, the teacher can check the answers with the students together.

Before dismissing the class, the teacher can assign writing homework to the students. I asked the students to write the letter for Santa Claus. In the letter, they have to write about what they hope to get as a gift. They also have to write about what nice things they plan to do to get the gift. They are required to practice the sentence pattern ( want, plan, hope to V) they have learned in the previous class.

P.S. I told my students to put effort into writing the letters. It's because they might get a mysterious present if they write the letter well. The incentive did encourage some students to do better on writing the letters! For some low achievement students, they even tried to use "Google Translation" to help them finish the homework. I was very happy to see this for I knew they tried hard to do the homework.

The following is the work of my students.

* This student worked very hard to finish her homework with the help of Google Translation.