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What Are You Going to Do?
The activities below provide fun exercises for the entire class when you have extra time. They are designed to be taught with specific exercises in this unit. Click on an activity in the list below or scroll down the page.
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Birthday parties
This activity is designed to be taught with Exercise 2, "Conversation."
Time: 10–15 minutes. This group activity provides a framework for expanding on the vocabulary in Unit 11, Exercise 2.
- Put students in groups of four to six students. Students work together to plan the perfect birthday celebration.
- Write these questions on the board to guide students' discussions:
Who comes to the celebration?
Where does it take place?
What do people do?
What do people eat and drink?
Note: Students can have this discussion using the simple present. It is not necessary at this point for students to use the future with be going to.
- Groups share their plans with the class. The class votes on the best celebration.
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How much did you find out?
This activity is designed to be taught with Exercise 10, "Holidays."
Time: about 20 minutes of class time. This activity reviews asking questions and describing customs. It gives students the opportunity to find out more about the customs in English-speaking countries.
- Choose one holiday for this activity or ask students to suggest one.
- Write a set of questions about the holiday on the board. Students should copy these questions and include additional questions of their own. Here are some example questions about Christmas:
Do you celebrate Christmas?
How do you celebrate it? What do you do?
Do you give presents?
Do you have special dinner on Christmas day?
Do you have Christmas parties?
Is it your favorite holiday? Why or why not?
- Students should try to find a native-English speaker and interview him or her using the questions. Alternatively, students could go to the library and get the information from a book, magazine, or the Internet.
- In class, students take turns sharing their information with the class. Encourage students to ask follow-up questions to find out about one another's research experiences during this task.
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Word associations
This activity is designed to be taught with Exercise 11, "Reading: What are you going to do on your birthday?"
Time: 15 minutes. This activity reviews vocabulary used to describe holidays.
- Write six holidays or celebrations on the board. Explain the task: Students brainstorm and try to think of as many word associations as they can for each one.
- Model the task by eliciting word associations for the word Christmas and writing them on the board under it:
| Christmas
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presents
December 25 |
snow
Santa Claus |
- Students work in groups. Set a time limit of about ten minutes for groups to finish brainstorming for all six holidays. Walk around the class and give help as needed.
- Groups take turns sharing the word associations they made. Find out which group made the most word associations for each holiday.
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