Tasks:to learn some basic facts about Memorial Day (its history & traditions)

to contrast Memorial Day and Veterans Day

to recreate a text

Preparation:make copies of the worksheet (1 copy for each student) – cut off the bottom part of the worksheet

Skills:speaking, reading

Language:basic vocabulary connected to the American Civil War

general grammar and vocabulary

Sources:WIKIPEDIA (en.wikipedia.org) – the FREE encyclopaedia

Task 1&2 – lead-in
(speaking, reading)

■Write the expressions from Task  on the board. Ask Ss to work in pairs and discuss their meaning. Collect any associations and ideas on the board. Help them with grammatical/lexical problems but do not offer any solutions.

■Distribute the worksheets (without the last task) and let your Ss read the text in Task .

Key

Key / All these words are names given to the opposing sides in the American Civil War (1861-1865).
Task 3 & 4
(speaking, reading, vocabulary)

■Explain that the American Civil War is one of the most important events in the American history and that it is connected to the festival Ss are going to read about.

■Ask Ss to look at the words in Task  and guess some facts about the holiday. Again, collect their ideas on the board (helping them with language). Then, let them read the text to confirm their guesses.

■Ask Ss to read the text more carefully to find the three phrases.

Key

Key /
  • to be formerly known as
  • at half-staff
  • from dawn until noon

Task 5
(speaking, reading)

■Before Ss read the text in this task, work as a group and revise some basic facts about Veterans Day. Ask Ss to guess the main difference between the two festivals. Finally, ask Ss to read the text.

Key

Key / These two festivals honour different people:
  • Memorial Day – those who died in wars,
  • Veterans Days – those who survived.

Task 6
(writing, grammar)

■Ask Ss to remove the worksheet from their desks. Make sure that no-one will be able to see their worksheet.

■Distribute Task . Ask Ss to work individually and try to recreate the text. Explain that their goal is to produce a text which will be as close to the original as possible. Explain that they should use all the words in square brackets. The words are given in the right order but only base forms of verbs are given (in capitals).

■After a few minutes, ask Ss to work in pairs and compare their texts (even if some Ss still aren’t ready with all the sentences). Ask each pair to agree on one version of the text. If you have enough time, you may ask your Ss to compare their text in groups of four.

■Finally, let them compare their new texts with the original. Ask Ss to count the number of exact/different fragments between the two texts.

Key

Key / [The text in Task  is the correct, i.e. ORIGINAL, text.]
Notes & comments

■[TASKS ] You can explore the topic of the American Civil War by naming the states which formed the Union and Confederacy. You can get extra information from WIKIPEDIA:

oa map of the US during the Civil War (

oa list of states which seceded (

■[TASK ] Do not skip this task because Ss need some time to forget about the text in Task  before you ask them to recreate it.

■[TASK ] To learn some basic facts about Veterans Day see Task  for elementary Ss, or go to the Festival Worksheets Archive (Veterans Day worksheets available at

Designed by Bartosz Michałowski for Pearson Longman1