ESL Thanksgiving Lesson Plan
Planning a successful ESL Thanksgiving lesson can be trickier than it might seem. Many of the classic Thanksgiving ESL activities are designed for young children, and some of the worksheets out there contain very specific vocabulary (cornucopia anyone?). On the other hand, a full discussion of the historical origins and ethical issues surrounding Thanksgiving is only really suitable for advanced classes. If these options don’t work for your students, then this lesson plan is for you.
In this class, you can introduce students to the traditions and culture around Thanksgiving, while still practising language you are currently working on. To achieve this, we focus on common actions and traditions surrounding Thanksgiving weekend, such as watching the Macy’s Day parade, travelling to see family, baking a pie, or going Black Friday shopping. You can then easily use these verb phrases to practise the past simple or future with going to (high beginner or low intermediate), or more complex narrative tenses (high intermediate or advanced).
This lesson plan is designed for a 1.5-2 hour class. Approximate timings for each activity are shown in parentheses next to the activity name. If you want to extend the lesson for a longer class, try adding the Create A Festival activity.
Please note (and mention to your students) that this lesson is focused on Thanksgiving as it is celebrated in the USA. Canada has its own Thanksgiving with its own date and traditions, so consider covering that in October!
ESL Thanksgiving Lesson Plan
Objectives: Learn verbs phrases vocabulary for actions and traditions related to Thanksgiving. Develop skills for describing past or future activities by using verbs in the appropriate tense, and expand cultural knowledge of Thanksgiving celebrations in the USA.
Warmer (5-10 mins)
You can of course pick any warm-up activity that you know your class will enjoy. However, we like to use the warmer as an opportunity to refresh students on some of the language they’ll need in the upcoming lesson.
So, if you’re going to focus on Thanksgiving actions in the past simple, you might play a game of Change Chairs with general past actions, or play Connect Four to practise irregular verb endings. If you’re going to use the future going to try a game of Hot Potato or Musical Markers with questions related to future plans (our Challenge Generator pictured below has lots preloaded).
Elicit Thanksgiving Knowledge (10 mins)
After a warm up, start by asking the class what they already know about Thanksgiving. Depending on the level of your class, you might elicit vocabulary associated with the holiday (e.g., turkey, pie), or more complete sentences. Write what the students contribute on the board in a brainstorm or mind map style. Provide some extra information and explanations when appropriate.
Thanksgiving Video Comprehension (15 mins)
Explain to the students that you are going to watch a short video about Thanksgiving. Ask them to write down or remember any actions or traditions they see or hear in the video – “things people do at Thanksgiving” – while they are watching. Then show them the video. The video below from English Portal is a nice option of a suitable length. If you can’t project a video on the board, playing the audio will also work.
Divide the class into small groups of 2-4 students. Ask the students to discuss what they saw in the video. After about 5 minutes, ask the groups to take turns contributing things they saw in the video. Add any language corrections or further explanations (including writing new words on the board) when necessary.
Thanksgiving Actions and Traditions Vocabulary Review (10-15 mins)
Next, review specific ESL Thanksgiving vocabulary for actions and traditions with the class. For example, “eat dinner”, “watch the Macy’s Day parade”, “make crafts”, “say what you are thankful for”. 10-20 verb phrases is usually about the right amount, but you could add more if your class is of a higher level.
Because we know it’s time-consuming to find the right visuals for actions like these, we’ve done the hard work for you. We’ve created a “Thanksgiving (Actions and Traditions)” category in our Vocabulary Image Generator, with 24 verb phrases and corresponding images. You can filter exactly which words you want to use, and gradually reveal the vocabulary as you elicit it from the class, as shown in the image below.
Our Thanksgiving Weekend (30-40 mins)
The core activity of our ESL Thanksgiving lesson plan is the Our Thanksgiving Weekend activity, a variation on the Perfect Weekend activity. Students work in small groups (3-4 students) to describe what they did or are going to do throughout their Thanksgiving weekend, using the verb phrases vocabulary covered in the previous activity.
Crucially, the way students use these verb phrases should match your target language. For example, if you want to practise the past simple, tell the students to write a story about an imagined ‘perfect Thanksgiving weekend’ their group had together. This should include all the activities they think they would enjoy the most, e.g., “Ari and Krista baked a delicious apple pie”, “Sam and Lola watched the Macy’s Day parade”, “…then we ate a big dinner together”. Make sure each story contains at least 10 activities, as well as some extra details where possible.
Similarly, if you want to practise the future with going to, tell the students to create a Thanksgiving weekend plan for their group (e.g., “On Thursday, Timo is going to roast the turkey, and Haruka and Mila are going to decorate the house.”). Or, if you want to practise narrative tenses with more advanced classes, a great setup is actually “a Thanksgiving disaster”! For this, students tell a story about all the things that went wrong during a Thanksgiving weekend. This way, you can incorporate past continuous plus past simple for interrupted actions (e.g., “While Marco was decorating the house, he fell off a ladder!”), or the past perfect simple (e.g., “Then Timo realized he had forgotten to turn the oven on”).
Whatever you choose, make sure every student in the group writes the story down, not just one of them. Then once the groups have finished (or around 20 minutes have passed), ask them to share what they have written with the class. To ensure everyone is contributing and practising, you may want to ask the students in each group to take turns saying sentences. You or the group sharing can also ask the rest of the class questions after, to make sure everyone was listening!
Charades / Pictionary (10 mins)
Depending on how many groups you have sharing their Thanksgiving weekends, you may be left with a little time at the end of class. If so, a good option is to play a guessing game like Charades or Pictionary with the target vocabulary of Thanksgiving actions. This helps to reinforce what students have learned, and allows you to gauge how much students have retained so far. Alternatively, this could also be a good warmer for the next class.
Given that the target vocabulary is actions, we recommend Charades, or if your students are shy and won’t want to act alone, Reverse Charades. However, if your class is particularly artistic, or won’t like acting at all, Pictionary or Pictionary Telephone might be a better option. Some clues are quite challenging to draw, but this can add to the fun!
For any of these options, our interactive Charades game (pictured below) is a good way to show students random clues. We’ve added our “Thanksgiving (Actions and Traditions)” verb phrases as a preloaded vocabulary set, in the dropdown menu.
