Lesson with a dash of cultural experience

20 years in folk ensemble finally paid off! I introduced to my students traditional Russian traditional game as well as the fortune-telling ritual. That's how Steve Jobs' principle of "connecting the dots" works!

Here is a ready-made scenario for the lesson "in Russian traditions":

Warm-up - An active game. Everyone is sitted in a circle in pairs - one kid on the knees of another. One player stays without a pair. Each one sitting on the knees is given a number. The chaser is standing on one leg or with his eyes closed. The person without a pair starts to shout out any number. A player with this number needs to rush quickly and sit on his knees. The chaser needs to catch those who are running.The one who stays without a pair, shouts out the number, and so on. To make the activity hit a new level, consider using it for vocabulary revision. Just replace the numbers with any other lexical sets.

Cool-down. The traditional fortune-telling ritual, which most often is arranged around Christmas time but may be practiced on any other occasions to mark the beginning of a new period of life to forsee the future - at the beginning of a school year or before summer holidays. Each student puts something belonging to him (a pen, a ring, a coin...) into the bowl. Originally the leader picked a random item from the bowl while singing the short chant with predictions for the upcoming year. The prediction was said to be true for the owner of the item. If you are not very much into singing you can just read the predictions. To make it more language oriented I suggest to write the predictions in advance together with the students to practice future grammar constructions. You might come into some money. You may meet love, etc.

Practice English and have fun with the dash of cultural experience!

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