Ideas for teaching theme lessons can come from the holidays, special days and current world events. Students suddenly have something to say.
It is a quiet Friday afternoon on the kibbutz where I live. People are either resting or still getting ready for the Shabbat.
In light of this quietness, I taught few lessons this week due to Remembrance Day of the Fallen Soldiers in Israel and then the very next day, was Independence Day for Israel's 59th birthday. Out of the sadness and into holiday merriment and jubilation. My lesson plans respectively were taught in the same vein using the themes as a primary way to motivate my High Schol students.
What I like about teaching holidays, is that it gives a special teaching edge that ultimately connects to the human side of education.
However, the real magic of connecting to the students began when I drew their attention to the theme of the fallen soldiers and their families under the one umbrella topic of 'victims' of endangered animals. We brainstormed for words, fishing for relevant examples wherever appropriate. I asked the class if there were any similar words to the topic of Endangered Animals, the topic they were currently studying from their textbooks.
A word rose was then created using one of the words from either groups. The purpose was to try and see if there were any further connections that they could make from the two closely interrelated topics.
We had a short discussion on what it meant to be a victim and then students took to writing short sentences with some of the vocabulary words as they are a weaker group and I wanted them to express themselves as best as they could. I gave them short sentence stems:
- A victim usually feels _____________________________
- The victims I know are____________________________
- Many victims in Israel are ____________________________
Being that this was theme and also ESL related, I wanted the students to also express themselves in English that best suited them without overdoing it and keeping best to the spirit of the topic. Ordinarily, I don't like using the word victim, but it made such a strong impression on the students in their own language, I decided to use it for appealing to the ESL side of teaching.
The students quickly reached the conclusion that these families are victims all throughout the year as opposed to killing animals, who are killed and then forgotten.
