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April Fool’s Day

— Content Learning challenge: Learn about fictional news stories on April
Fool’s Day and talk about them

Speaking and listening

Teacher Instructions
1. Familiarise the learners with the vocabulary:
- Show each flashcard.
- Say the words.
- The learners repeat the words.
- Practise this until they are familiar.
2. Learners can also translate the sentences into their language on the lines below if they want.
3. Show the sentence flashcards to your learners and discuss the following questions:
-What can you see in the pictures?
-What is this news story about?
-Is this a real story? Why or why not?
4. Get your learners to practise talking about the news stories using the following sentence pattern: ‘This news
story is about...’. You can use the below sentence visual to help your learners with this language structure.
5. Expected language output: ‘This news story is about a tree made of spaghetti that has grown in the King’s
garden’, ‘This news story is about a tree made of spaghetti growing in the king’s garden’.

Extension: Discuss the meaning of the word ‘fictional’ and add it to the sentence pattern: ‘This fictional news story
is about…’. You can use the below sentence visual to help your learners with this language structure.

This news story is about ...

This fictional news story is about ...

 Talking about fictional news stories

Breaking News!

A tree made of spaghetti grows

in the King’s garden.

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Breaking News!

A chocolate fountain replaces the fountain in Trafalgar Square.

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 Breaking News!

A pot of gold is found at the end of a rainbow.

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Breaking News!

A teddy bear hops on a puffy cloud.

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Reading

Word ordering

the tree made spaghetti in of

grows garden King’s A

in fountain chocolate Trafalgar

square fountain the replaces A

end at the rainbow pot of is

a found gold of A

puffy a on hops teddy cloud

bear A

Instructions
1. Make sure the learners are familiar with the vocabulary.
2. Print the words for each news story and arrange them into four piles.
3. Divide your class into four groups and hand out one pile of words to each group.
4. Ask them to work together in their group to put the flashcards in the right order to recreate their sentence.

Extension: Mix up the words from all four sentences to make it more difficult.
Moving into writing

Cloze procedure
This ................................................................ is about ............................................................

made .............................................................. in the king’s ......................................................

This news ............................................ is ...................................... a ........................................

............................................................. replacing the ................................................................

in Trafalgar ..........................................................................

................................ news story ....................................... about a ............................................

of ....................................................... found at the ................................................ of a rainbow

This .............................................................. is about ................................................................

bear hopping ............................................... a puffy ...................................................................

story chocolate fountain cloud This fountain gold

about of spaghetti pot a tree news story is on

news story garden a teddy Square

Instructions (cloze procedure)

This activity provides an opportunity for learners to recall and spell the previously taught vocabulary in the correct
grammatical context.

Instructions (independent writing)

Get your learners to come up with their own fictional news story lines. They can be as funny and imaginative as
possible. Learner can also draw a picture of their news stories.
 Write your own fictional news stories

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