Tailoring your class to celebrate Thanksgiving day!

Learning language is important, but so is learning about the culture from which it comes. It might be interesting, even, to plan a class based around various holidays common in English speaking countries and discuss their origins. Classes focusing on the history, or on different types of celebrations, are often a great way of expanding the students’ knowledge of another culture. Therefore, let's not miss this opportunity and get the most of the upcoming celebration: THANKSGIVING DAY!

 A quiz can be a great way to get your class to compete, hence getting and keeping their attention. The more heated the quiz becomes, and the more involved the students are, the more frequently they will slip into English. Of course, beforehand it might be a good idea to give them a brief overview of what Thanksgiving is. Below you will find a list of quiz activities and a text about the history and origin of Thanksgiving day:

http://funschool.kaboose.com/fun-blaster/thanksgiving/quiz/index.html

http://homeschooling.about.com/library/quiz/blquizholthanks.htm

http://www.theholidayspot.com/thanksgiving/quiz.htm

http://home.aristotle.net/Thanksgiving/trivia.asp

http://thanksgiving.spike-jamie.com/quiz.html

A brief overview of the history and origin of Thanksgiving day

Almost every culture in the world has held celebrations of thanks for a plentiful harvest. The American Thanksgiving holiday began as a feast of thanksgiving in the early days of the American colonies almost four hundred years ago.

In 1620, a boat filled with more than one hundred people sailed across the Atlantic Ocean to settle in the New World. This religious group had begun to question the beliefs of the Church of England and they wanted to separate from it. The Pilgrims settled in what is now the state of Massachusetts. Their first winter in the New World was difficult. They had arrived too late to grow many crops, and without fresh food, half the colony died from disease. The following spring the Iroquois Indians taught them how to grow corn (maize), a new food for the colonists. They showed them other crops to grow in the unfamiliar soil and how to hunt and fish.

In the autumn of 1621, bountiful crops of corn, barley, beans and pumpkins were harvested. The colonists had much to be thankful for, so a feast was planned. They invited the local Indian chief and 90 Indians. The Indians brought deer to roast with the turkeys and other wild game offered by the colonists. The colonists had learned how to cook cranberries and different kinds of corn and squash dishes from the Indians. To this first Thanksgiving, the Indians had even brought popcorn.

In following years, many of the original colonists celebrated the autumn harvest with a feast of thanks. After the United States became an independent country, Congress recommended one yearly day ofthanksgiving for the whole nation to celebrate. George Washington suggested the date November 26 as Thanksgiving Day. Then in 1863, at the end of a long and bloody civil war, Abraham Lincoln asked all Americans to set aside the last Thursday in November as a day of thanksgiving.

source: http://www.homeschooling.com/