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Technology Tip of the Month

October, 1996: Creating Holiday Lessons

by Deborah Healey and Deborah Kohler

In many countries, it's the beginning of the holiday season. Teachers interested in adding Internet-based holiday activities to their classes have a number of choices.

Some ready-made ESL/EFL lessons for Halloween, Thanksgiving, Martin Luther King, Jr. Day, Groundhog Day, Valentine's Day, St. Patrick's Day, Passover, Easter, and Memorial Day are available at Suzan Moody's Holidays Web site at the University of Kansas:
https://www.aec.ukans.edu/leo/holidays

Suzan offers several options for teachers and students to use the Web for holiday activities. Halloween, for example, includes visiting a virtual haunted house, sending electronic postcards, doing a Halloween word search, and reading about Halloween.

Do be aware that most of the Halloween sites use a lot of images, so loading will be slow.

The key to successful use of instructional technology, of course, is its integration into the curriculum. A reading about Halloween by itself is not nearly as useful as one where the teacher introduces unfamiliar vocabulary, sets a task, and does follow-up activities in class.

Here are some suggestions for using the Halloween material in class:

Pre-task activities
Vocabulary (intermediate)

(Click on the pictures to see them in a larger size. Click on Back to return to this page from the larger picture.)
tradition

trick or treat
costume
jack-o'-lantern
pumpkin
carve
skeleton
bones
rattle
haunted house
scary
frightening
witch
broom, broomstick
ghost, spirit
haunt
goblin

Discuss what people are afraid of; (where culturally appropriate) what happens after people die.

Computer-preparation: remind students to wait until the files are completely loaded before clicking anywhere. On Netscape, the stars at the top right corner will stop moving. On Internet Explorer, the globe will stop moving.

On-computer tasks

Post-computer task



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If you have questions, comments, or for more information, contact Deborah Healey, dhealey AT uoregon DOT edu<

https://www.deborahhealey.com/techtips/oct1996.html
Last updated 26 June, 2009