St.Patrick's Day

[asia23bb]

Hi,

I'm an English teacher and I'm planning to organize St.Patrick's Day celebration for my high school students. I've been thinking about some exhibition, contests, etc. Can anyone give me some ideas what to do? Maybe you've prepared such day before.
Any ideas welcome:)

Thanks in advance!!
Rachel [/b]

[Sally Olsen]

Hard to know what to do when you don't say the level. For elementary students we played Bingo with words from the St. Patrick's Day story (available on various sites). They cut out four leaf clovers for their playing pieces out of some cheap green material and then stuck these all over their clothes when they got a word ( we had a cheap glue that didn't work for long). We suggested that they wear green if possible for that day. You can do all sorts of exerices with the St. Pat's story with crosswords, cloze exercises, getting them to write a similar story from their own culture. You can make neat little elf hats from stryofoam cups - just turn them upside down and melt them in an oven. They go down to almost nothing. You can drink green juice and bake and eat scones. You can get some particularly Irish words and sayings from the Internet.

There is a good story about St. Pat who they said visited Brittany in France after or perhaps it was before he drove the snakes out of Ireland. Evidently he was asked to be the judge in a case against a poor man. A farmer had been sitting down to his plentiful meal when he noticed a poor man sniffing loudly outside the window taking in the smells of the good dinner. The farmer brought the poor man to St. Pat and asked to be reimbursed or for the man to be punished. St. Pat picked up a coin and threw it on the stone floor where it rang out loudy and pronounced, "May the sound of the coin pay for the smell of the food".

[asia23bb]

Thanks Sally!

I' dl ike to do some things for all the school (high school, so 16 years-old and up), like some contests, etc.

More ideas welcome!
Cheers
Rach

[Cruza]

We use the Phonicball boards during these days as they are so adaptable. I plan to get students in teams with the words St Patrick written vertically.
Students try to hit any of the letters in the word S-T-P-A-T-R-I-C-K.
once they hit the letter they write another word beginning with that letter. Set rules eg word must have five letter. EG ..P =please
If correct, kids cross out the P. Its a bit like "hang the man" but a lot more fun and active. First team to complete the task wins.

With other theme days we have had it is obvious the students love to compete and the games really reinforce vocabulary and spelling....as well as making them think.

[Sally Olsen]

With older kids we got them to write plays and act them or to make a video and show it based on the theme of the holidays. There were groups that sang U2 songs. We had a kind of contest that is popular on Korean TV where they have questions and have to answer them as teams. It can be on the words of the holidays. We did an English Day this way as well. The kids on the team had to sing an opening song or rap. Then we gave each person on the team of five a word and they had to make a story out of the words by taking turns saying a sentence with that word. It is really hard for the last couple of team members to fit their words into the sentences so they saved their best players to the last. We judged the stories out of 10. They had to do a play on the spot with about 10 minutes prepartion and we gave them the characters. We gave them 10 minutes to draw something that was on the topic and judged the best picture. They brought pictures they had done in class for judging and so on. It takes about 4 hours to get through everything but is a lot of fun.
They made up a team name and had team costumes..