Easter

by Magdalena Kondro

©

Macmillan Polska 2008 PHOTOCOPIABLE

Teacher’s Notes

First published online 05.03.08

Type of school: primary, grades 4-6

Type of activity: individual work, reading

and writing activity

Focus: vocabulary connected with Easter

traditions around the world

Level/age group: pre-intermediate

(CEF B1)/grade 6

Time: 45 minutes

Preparation: Make one copy of the

worksheet per each student.

Procedure:

1. Ask the class When is Easter this year?
Next brainstorm with your students the
symbols of Easter, providing English
translation if necessary.

2. On the board write one of the words
related to Easter, e.g. basket, and ask
students to write as many words as possible,
using the letters of the word, e.g. ask, tea,
skate, bat, at, eat, ate, sat. Allow them 3
minutes for this activity.

3. Distribute the worksheets and ask
students to quickly read the texts about
Easter traditions in different countries and
choose their favourite tradition. They
should ignore any new words at this stage.
Ask students to tell which tradition they like
best to the classmate they share their desk
with. Encourage a few volunteers to share
their opinion with the whole class.

4. Elicit or, if necessary, explain the meaning
of the following words and phrases from the
texts: native, crack, believe, hides, the
Pope, drops, tree branch, pick up, hard-
boiled, ribbons, roll.

5. Go over the questions in Activity 2. Ask
students to read the texts again more
carefully to find the answers and write them
in the places provided. They should write
one letter over each dash. When they have

finished, they should write the numbered
letters in the spaces provided below the
questions to find out what French people eat
for Easter.

Answer key:

a. Rome,
b. Easter Sunday,
c. Morris dance,
d. Bilby,
e. Church,
f. Winter,
g. France,
h. Eggs;

chocolate fish

6. Ask students to write a text about Easter
traditions in Poland, using some of the ideas
from Activity 3 and treating the texts from
Activity 1 as a model. With a weaker class,
first elicit Polish Easter traditions orally and
write them on the board in note form. You
can also turn this activity into a pair or group
work project. If you wish, encourage
students to illustrate their texts.

Extension:

Write several symbols of Easter on slips of
paper and put these in a basket. Divide the
class into two teams. The teams take it in
turns to send a representative to draw one
slip of paper, read the word and draw it on
the board for their team to guess. If the
team guesses correctly within 30 seconds,
they score a point. If they do not, the other
team has 10 seconds to give the correct
answer.