Halloween

1. Introduction

1.1. Class Profile

Our class has twenty-two students between eight and nine years old, they are in the 4th course of Primary Education. There are eight boys and fourteen girls. Most of them are Catalan; three only speak in Spanish, two are from Romania and two from Morocco.

The vehicular language of the class is English. In the class the teacher only will speak inCatalan or Spanish with the pupils when there is a very serious problem of behavior and the student has to know and understand every word.

All the students have studied English from the first course of Primary Education and there are five who are taking English extra lessons. In general, the pupils follow properly the subject. In this class, all the students are following the same English level andwe have one child who is in a wheelchair and another one that has a lot of behavior problems. This student is always trying to disturb the other students and he does not have a good relationship with them.

Referring to the educational background, the school is in a neighborhood near to the centre of the city in a medium-status class. Near the school there is a public library where they can useInternet when they want.

1.2. Methodology, classroom management and typology of activities

Even though the teacher is going to use a lot of methodologies the three main ones will be Presentation, Practice and Production (PPP), and Comunicative Language Teaching (CLT)

PPP is one methodology that we use a lot too. With this, the teacher is going to introduce a topic and the students willpractice and then they will be able to produce it alone in a lot of contexts. In our didactic unit we can find a lot of activities for example when using a Power Point presentation to teach the Haloween traditions.

Even though we do not go outside the class to teach this topic, our final goal is that the students speak English outside the classroom. We know that the topic “Halloween” is typicalfro another culture and here we don’t usually celebrate this but anyway it is a good context to speak English because it is a topic which they enjoy a lot.

As we have said previously about the management of the classroom, the teacher only will speak in English in the classroom. There will be only one exception: If one pupil misbehaves the teacher will let it know by speaking in Catalan orSpanish.

2. Justification

The election of the topic of Halloween in the fourth level of Primary Education is the result of a period of reflection made by all the group.

Our students are still developing their own personality, including their likes and dislikes. They are still discovering the world and deciding which experiences they like and the ones they do not. So, we think it is the bestmoment to introduce this topic giving emphasis to the cultural competence so as they grew up tolerant towards a foreign culture.

Nowadays, we are surrounded by a world of diversity and this increasing diversity requires that we teach our children tolerance to prepare them for the multi-cultural life of 21st century.

We will work on this topic for six sessions of 55 minutes each, which willallow our pupils to get familiar with the vocabulary related to the Halloween’s festivity, as well as how to use the imperative and the past simple forms.

We follow three types of methodology in this didactic unit: The Presentation, Practice and Production (PPP), the Task-based Learning (TBL) and the Communicative language teaching (CLT).

• Presentation Practice and Production (PPP):

Thisapproach considers three steps. In the first step, the teacher presents an item of language in a very clear context to get across its meaning. Here, we have used two techniques: an oral and written text and the visual aids (flashcards, videos....).

In the second step, the students are asked to develop a controlled practice of the language with techniques, like filling the gaps focusing on their...