20 A Day at the Beach
Richmond Embeywa
"Max Liebermann 'Strandszene mit Strandkörben und Spaziergängern' (1905)" by pittigliani2005 is licensed under CC BY-NC-SA 2.0
Level
Intermediate/Advanced
Keywords
Beach culture ⧫ vacation ⧫ leisure activities ⧫ description
Summary:
This lesson can work well for topics such as hobbies/leisure activities or travel that are common in many college-level foreign language programs. The activities in this lesson invite students to think about their experiences at the beach in general and reflect on their understanding of “beach culture” in both their countries and the target country. Students are not only asked to imagine themselves and their friends/family doing various activities at the beach, they also get to experience these activities using all their five senses and write a journal entry summarizing their day at the beach.
The first set of activities lay a foundation for students to become familiar with relevant vocabulary and phrases as they think through their own ideas about the beach. These activities can be done as individuals, in pairs or small groups. The instructor will have discretion to decide on what works best for their students. The students will then analyze target language texts (in this case, an image and a video) that help them contextualize their vocabulary and reflect on the social, cultural and historical aspects of the texts and topic. Finally, students will apply this knowledge by first imagining themselves at the beach and exploring the aesthetics of the beach using all their senses and later (as a homework assignment) describing this experience in the form of a journal entry.
Learning Objectives
- Can describe the beach and its surroundings using all five senses.
- Can reflect on and compare the beach culture between their country and the target country.
- Can describe and aesthetically experience various beach activities
- Can write a journal entry in the past tense describing these experiences.
Lesson Plan
Experiencing the Beach
Students can be given a few minutes to complete this activity (individually) and write down their ideas first, before discussing these answers as a class. This will make sure everyone has some notes to refer back to as they gain global comprehension (as a class) of the beach and make conceptual associations, habits and activities that are common at the beach.
A. Think about the following questions and write down your notes.
- What do you understand about the concept of the “beach”?
- Have you ever been to the beach? If yes, which beach? If no, what not?
- What are you likely to see at the beach?
- What are you likely to find at the beach?
- Which activities are you likely to do at the beach?
- What do people generally bring/carry to the beach?
- Do you plan to visit a beach in the (near) future? Which beach?
Conceptualizing the Beach
This video helps students (re)familiarize themselves with helpful phrases and vocabulary and can help intermediate learners who