What day is it Today????

Sunday, February 17, 2008

rain :(

with a weather like this whatelse can we say ...

Sunday, February 10, 2008

Valentine's day - Friend's day

Stage 1: Introduction to Valentine's Day
Draw a large heart on the board and elicit the word 'heart'. Check pronunciation of the 'h' sound. Ask : 'What's the date today?' A :'The 14th of February.' Say : 'Today is a special day. Why?' Some may answer with no problem at all. Remeber you can replace 'today' with 'tomorrow' or on 'Saturday' etc.
Show the class a photo of yourself and stick it up on the board on the right hand side of the heart. Then show the class a photo of your mum, dad, other family member or a friend and stick it on the left hand side of the heart. This should grab their attention and arouse their interest through personalisation of the lesson. Explain that you love this person and today you send them a card, flowers, chocolate and a poem to show them that you love them because it's Valentine's Day. Write 'Valentine's Day' at the top of the board.


Stage 2: Word Find
This is to generate and share known vocabulary and is adapted from a game on the
Kids' Domain website. The aim here is to lead into the subject of Valentine's Day through a fun and involved activity while looking at related words. This works better with more advanced levels as they have more vocabulary.
In the middle of your large heart write up a Valentines day related word such as: Valentine, Chocolate, Romance, Flowers etc. and ask the class to find as many little words as possible within the word in a two minute time limit. Example: ChocolateWords: late, at, ate, tea, cool, hat, hot, cat, coat...
You can split the class into teams of four students to increase the pace and excitement of the activity.Scoring: give points for each word found, extra points for longer words and extra points if the team is the only one to have found the word.
You will need to check pronunciation and meaning as they feedback with their words.


Stage 3: Roses are red
Introduce the poem:
Roses are red.

Violets are blue.
Sugar is sweet.
And so are you.
-Anonymous


Explain that anonymous means we don't know who wrote it. Wipe off the split in your heart from the board and the two words which demonstrated the previous activity. In its place write up the traditional Valentine's card love poem.
Drill the poem a few times touching the words on the board as you and the class say them.
Now wipe off one of the words e.g. red and continue to say the poem and pointing to the words remembering to point to the gap where the word 'red' was.
Then wipe off another word. This time it could be blue. Say the poem and point to the words and gaps where words were. Do this until there is no poem left just gaps. Your class will then be reciting the poem rather than reading it.
Now write the poem back onto the board. Better still get one of the students with the help of his/her classmates to write the poem back onto the board.
Now draw their attention to the fact that with 'Roses' and 'Violets' we use 'are' but with 'Sugar' we use 'is'.
Elicit from the class whether we use 'is' or 'are'. Apart from saying that in English some nouns use 'is' and some use 'are', you shouldn't develop this further today but they do need to know whether the nouns you've provided take 'is' or 'are' in order to write their poems.

Stage 4: Writing the poem
Ask the children to choose a friend in the class they would like to write a poem too. You can also suggest family members so they can take the poems home. The advantage of choosing someone in the class is the potential to distribute the poems and for them to have to read another poem.
You could put everyone's name into a hat and then they all pick a name of the person to write a poem to. This way you ensure that everybody has a poem. Make sure you're sensitive to their age. They may only want to write a poem to another girl and not a boy etc. You know them best so if need be work it so that you choose who they send the poem to.
Distribute a worksheet with a poem frame on it. eg

______ are ______
______ are ______
______ is ______
And ____ ____ ___

Do an example with them on the board using nouns in the first slots and colours in the second. Maybe if they are short of ideas you could suggest brainstorming suitable words so there is a word bank on the board otherwise they'll all be asking how to spell words, or sitting there doing nothing.
Remind them that lines 2 and 4 must rhyme or 'sound the same'. If they are struggling to write on their own or you anticipate that they may find it difficult, you could get them to do it in pairs.

Stage 5: Review
Distribute the envelopes.
Tell them to put the poem into an envelope and to put the person's name on the front.
Tell them that they mustn't write their name on the poem as it should be a secret or anonymous.
They could post the poems into a box and one of the pupils can be the postman and deliver them.
Get them to read out their poems.
They could vote on the best one. Remind them they are anonymous.


Adapted from http://www.britishcouncil.org/languageassistant-primary-tips-valentines-day.htm