READING

Objectives:

• To produce a well organized discourse with the appropriate grammar structures and lexicon.
• To enhance fluency and accuracy in the spoken given situation.
• To use the linguistic and strategic resources suitable to the given situation.
• To automatize the knowledge about the English language itself and the rules of its linguistic system to speak in a correct, coherent and cohesive way.
• To develop learning strategies in order to use the English language in an autonomous way.
• To know the social and cultural features of the English language in order to understand and interpret better the different cultures that the English language accomplishes.
• To value the use of the English language in order to get access to other kinds of knowledge and cultures, recognizing the importance that the language has got as a tool of communication and international understanding, being aware of the similarities and differences among cultures.
• To understand different written texts and interpret them using adecuate comprehension strategies, identifying the essential elements of the text and understanding its function and layout. 
• To understand different oral texts of general interest (its general and specific information).
• To read autonomously texts with different interests and needs ,valuing reading as a source of information, leisure and enjoyment.
• To use the knowledge of the language and its linguistic use rules to speak in a suitable, coherent and correct way, to understand oral and written texts and reflect upon the use of the English language in communication situations.
• To acquire and develop different learning strategies, using all the available resources, including Information and communication technologies, in order to use the English language in an autonomous way and to progress and develop in the learning process of the language.
  
  

Contents:
Listening:

• Specific and general understanding of broadcasted messages in the media where  standard English is used. 
• Understanding of interpersonal communication about general interest topics with the aim of answering and speaking in the suitable moment.
• Use of strategies to understand and infer non explicit meanings to get the general ideas of a speech.
• Consciousness of the importance of understanding a speech globally without the need to understand every single word used in it.

Speaking:

• Participation in informal conversations with their peers to make hypothesis and exchange information about Thanksgiving celebration and the use of extreme adjectives.

Reading:

• Prediction of information from written texts about different celebrations in English speaking countries.
• Understanding of general, specific and detailed information of the written texts; identification of the main and secondary ideas.
• Identification of the communicative purpose of the text, its textual and paratextual elemenets and its layout to organize the provided information.
• Identification of the reference elements and linkers that help the text to be coherent and cohesive.  
• Autonomous reading of different texts about different celebrations in English speaking countries, using reading strategies and valuing reading as a source to get information, widen knowledge and enjoy.
   

Linguistic content:

• Celebrations, festivals and civilization lexicon extension.
• Improvement of pronunciation, intonation and pitch.
• Production and interpretation of different rhythms, intonation and pitches to understand a speech.
• Accuracy when speaking in the target language. Use of correct extreme adjectives.

 
Learning to learn:

• Recognition of the different registers of the language: written and oral, formal and informal speech. 

• Autonomous use of different learning digital and bibliographical resources.
• Application of strategies to revise, widen and consolidate lexicon and grammar structures.
• Analysis and reflection on the use and meaning of different grammar structures by comparing and contrasting the peers' and your own's.
• Reflection and application of self-correction and self-assessment strategies to progress in the autonomous learning of the English language.
• Recognition of errors and mistakes as something necessary in their learning process.
• Interest to take profit of the learning chances inside and outside school using information and communication technologies.
• Value of trust, entrepreneurship and cooperation in the learning of the English language.

  

Sociocultural aspects:

• Social contact with peers showing respect towards other people’s opinions and attitudes.
• Knowledge and value of the most relevant cultural elements.
• Significant similarities and differences among costumes, behaviours, attitudes, values and beliefs among speakers of the English and Spanish language.
• Use of suitable registers according to the context, speakers and communicative purpose.
• Interest to establish communicative exchanges to know cultural information of English speaking countries.
• Value of the English language as a tool of communication and understanding among peoples which provides with the access to other cultures and that helps to enrich ourselves personally  
• Value of the English language as a means to access knowledge in students' future academic and professional lives.

Procedure: 

Students are divided in two groups of 6 people. They are told they are going to be working in two different stations with the members of their group. They will move from one station to the other and when they have completed the tasks of these two stations, all the group together will move to the third station and will work together. This lesson will take place in the English lab, where there are computers and headphones that can be used by students.

  

In the first station, students are told to listen to an audio file created by the teacher. In this file, students will listen to the story of Thanksgiving in the United States. Students must listen to it twice in order to get the general gist of it. In order not to disturb the other group of students with the reproduction of the listening file, students will use some headphones.

In the second station, students are told to have a look at the glogster. In it, they are presented some festivals and national celebrations of the four countries we have been working with: Thanksgiving Day in USA, Gun Fawkes in England, Burns Night in Scotland and Saint Patrick's Day in Ireland.

They must read the information about these celebrations and later on, answer some reading comprehension questions.
The first group will move from the first to the second station and the second group from the second to the first.
Once they have finished both activities, students gather around the third station where they will a parchese board. Students will be divided in four groups of three students and will start working the parchese. Here, students will work with extreme adjectives and the Thanksgiving story. The winner group will get a kind of prize (typical American candy).



Assessment:

• Oral exchanges: asking and answering, participation in the parchese game.
• Answering the proposed questions cohesively and coherently after reading the texts of the glogster. 
• Peer-assessment: students assess their peers' production when making up sentences with extreme adjectives.

ACTIVITIES:
Writing skill

WARM UP/ INTRODUCTION: Students are told they are going to work in three different stations. To do so, stations will be placed in different corners of the English lab. Students will be working in two groups in stations one and two and all the group together in the third station.

STATION ONE, LISTENING TO AN AUDACITY FILE: Listening activity. Students listen to an audio file recorded by the teacher about Thanksgiving Day history. After listening to the file, the teacher asks them some  questions about it like for example:

- What is the name of the ship in which all the pilgrims travelled to the New World?
- What kind of food is mentioned in the audio file?
- Who taught the pilgrims to harvest new foods?

STATION TWO, READING A GLOGSTER: Students are presented a glogster in which there are four little texts about the different celebrations and national festivals in USA, England, Scotland and Ireland. After they have read the different texts, they watch a video which is inserted in the glogster about Thanksgiving day celebration. After that, in pairs (three groups), answer some reading comprehension questions:
- What are the typical foods in Saint Patrick's day?
- When is Thanksgiving Day celebrated?
- What does the Thanksgiving dinner consist of?
- When is officially Gun Fawkes Night celebrated?
- Who was Gun Fawkes?
- What does Gun Fawkes Night represent?
- Who was Robert Burns?
- When is Burns Night celebrated?
- What is the main dish of Burns Night dinner?

STATION THREE, PLAYING PARCHEESI: All the group together, after having completed stations one and two, gather in station three. They are now divided in four groups of three members in order to play a Thanksgiving Parchese in which they also revise extreme adjectives.

Each group has got three tokens and they have to follow the rules of whichever parcheesi:

The goal of the game is to move each of the group's pieces (3) home to the center space. There are 68 spaces around the board and twelve of them are darkened safe spaces where a piece cannot be captured and the student does not have to answer any question.

The three pieces of the same color are placed in their starting area of the same color. The game board must be positioned so that each player's starting area is to their right. Pieces enter play onto the darkened space to the left of their starting area and continue counter clockwise around the board to the home path directly in front of the player. Each group rolls the dice. The highest roller goes first. On each turn, players throw both dices and use the number obtained to move their pieces around the board. Each time a five is tossed, the player must start another piece, if viable.

Whenever a group tosses the dice, count and get into a specific space, they must answer a question. There are 59 cards with 59 different questions. All the questions are related to Thanksgiving Day and the use of extreme adjectives in English. All the questions are open questions since more than one student can get into the same space. Thus, the teacher must say if the answer of the student is correct or not together with the students' opinion.

This is an example of a parcheesi card:

Make a sentence with the extreme adjective of "cold" to 

describe the conditions of the Mayflower journey.

Any piece that is not on a safe space or a part of a blockade can be captured by an opposing piece. When this happens, the captured piece is sent back to its nest and the player is awarded 20 bonus spaces for capturing the opposing piece. The 20 spaces cannot be divided between pieces and must be moved, if possible. 

If opposing team has two pieces on player's exit area, the player cannot exit.

When two pieces occupy the same space, they prevent any pieces behind from advancing past the blockade. No more than two pieces can occupy one space. Two pieces of different color can never occupy the same space excepet at the moment one piece captures another.

The dark spaces are safe spaces. A piece cannot be captured as long as it sits on one of these spaces. Two pieces that form a blockade are also safe.

When a doublet is tossed, the player gains another roll of the dice. The third consecutive doublet rolled in one turn is a penalty and pieces are not moved the number of spaces shown on the dice. Their turn ends.

The center home space can only be entered by exact throw of the dice. Home counts as a space. Each group has their own home path and cannot enter another's. So, when a piece is on its home path, it can no longer be captured. When a piece enteres the center space by exact count, that player is awarded ten movement pints that may be moved with any other piece still in play at the end of their turn. 

The first player to get all three pieces home wins, at which point the winner must yell "parcheesi!".