At the time of this activity, the head of the high school English department had the idea of having the older advanced students create museum-like displays of Thanksgiving. Working in groups, they had the freedom to create their own designs. Each group had a different topic: history, food, art, typical traditions, "Thanksgiving" in other countries, and Black Friday. A separate group was given the task of creating an interactive activity where students write something they are thankful for on cut-outs that have the shape of a hand, and then they paste the hand on a poster of a turkey, each hand forming the turkey's "feathers." The students final work was displayed in the school hallways. I have pictures of all the displays, with the exception of the "Thanksgiving Around the World" section. The students for this display created a world map with various pinpoints marked. Each pinpoint is on a different country, and below the map, students placed envelopes labelled by the countries' names. Inside each envelope was a piece of paper, on which was written a description of that country's version of Thanksgiving. Below are pictures of the remaining displays:
Obviously, there are ways these displays could've been better. Moreover, there are many other possible designs that the students' could have made. But this is where the students' creativity are given freedom.
With the younger groups, I led the students on a "tour" through these displays, having them work in pairs to complete a scavenger hunt worksheet. The worksheet includes various questions about the displays. The questions do not directly state which display they belong to; students must decide this through the nature of the questions. Below is the worksheet I created:
My groups were too big to take them all out at the same time, so it was necessary to have one half of the group stay in the classroom with the lead teacher while I, the teacher's language assistant, led the other half out to complete the worksheet. Those in the classroom worked on a separate activity related to Thanksgiving.
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