Wondering how you can use the Easter story cards pack with your students? Here are some ideas to get you started…
Pre-teaching – Presenting new vocabulary
- Using realia, present the vocabulary needed for the Easter story (e.g. toy handcuffs to represent ‘arrest’ or a rose to show the students what ‘thorns’ are). Where this is difficult, use pictures (e.g. ‘tomb’). For the verbs or adjectives and also the main characters of the story, you could use a worksheet listing the new words on one side, and synonyms or simple explanations on the other.
- Ask the students to try and match them up. For example: ‘to mock’ – to laugh at someone in a horrible way.
Reinforcing the newly presented vocabulary – Bingo
- Hand the class bingo grids you’ve created which are made up of the various new words.
- Tell the story very simply.
- The students listen out for keywords in their grids and cross them off as they hear them.
- At the end, the first student to have a line (or completed grid, depending on how you choose to play) tells the class which words they heard.
Miming
- Put students into groups of four or five and ask them to choose one student to go first.
- That student comes to you and you show them a word (e.g. ‘crown’ or ‘soldier’).
- The student then returns to the group to mime out the word. The person in the group who guesses correctly returns to you for the next word and so on.
Hot Seat
- In groups of four of five, students choose one of their group to be in the ‘hot seat’.
- The rest of the group then choose one of the words they’ve learnt and describe it to the person in the hot seat who has to guess which word they’ve chosen.
Past simple revision – matching pairs memory game
- Make cards each with one verb (from the story) on it. Make sure that for each verb, there is one card with the present participle and one card with the past participle on it.
- Students turn over two cards at a time and if they are a pair, that student keeps that pair. If not, they need to be turned back over.
- The winner is the student with the highest number of cards.
This can be a played a number of times to give students as much practice as needed.
- Using the same cards, make it harder the next time around by asking students just to turn over one card.
- They have to say the participle which would complete the pair. If they get it right they can keep that card. For example, a student who turns over ‘eat’ would need to say ‘ate’.
Story sequencing
Give the students the pictures to put into order. Reassure them that they can guess if need be. This can be done in groups with the two:nineteen small picture cards and then as a whole class with a washing line at the front of the class and bigger versions of the pictures to peg up.
- Ask students to look at their list of vocabulary and verbs (see pre-teaching section) and identify which words will be needed for which pictures.
- Give them a blank strip of paper to go under each picture on which they can write any nouns or verbs they think are relevant from earlier in the lesson. They don’t need to write sentences at this point.
Running dictation
- Write the story out in simple sentences using the pre-taught vocabulary.
- Students work in pairs and take turns in going to the wall and memorising the next sentence in the story, before returning to their partner and repeating it for him/her to write down.
- Students continue with this until they have the complete story.
Elementary students – variation
- This is quite a difficult exercise for elementary students so reduce the story to under ten simple and very short sentences.
- Then ask the students to put the sentences under the relevant pictures and read the story aloud to each other. At this point you could have a short and simple quiz to check they understand the basic parts of the story.
- This also enables them to practice key vocabulary again. Why not offer mini Easter eggs for correct answers?
Vocabulary/simple past/adverbs for sequencing
- Put students into groups of four or five.
- Place the picture cards on the table face down.
- Students take turns to pick up a card and try and make a sentence in the simple past using the pre-taught vocabulary.
Extension idea
If you wanted to add in an extra teaching point, you could also introduce the idea of sequence words here eg. ‘later’, ‘suddenly’, ‘all at once’ and ask students to create sentences of the Easter story including these.
- Finally divide the story into sections and give each group a different section.
- They then decide how to tell the story using the pictures (but without looking at the dictation sentences if possible to avoid a copy of that).
- The groups can take it in turns to come to the front and recount their section of the story.