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Author Topic: Harry Potter and Making Spells Lesson  (Read 7265 times)

Offline shhowse

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Harry Potter and Making Spells Lesson
« on: October 22, 2010, 02:58:15 PM »
I have a lesson idea for Halloween that I would like to use starting Monday, October 25 for the week before Halloween. It involves Harry Potter and spell casting and potions. My basic outline so far would be to present some information/illicit ideas from the class about magic, spells, etc. and then have them make up their own spells. I have collected all kinds of things from various sources on the net, video clips, worksheets, etc, but I just can't to put it all together into something cohesive. Any suggestions? I'll post the finished product by Sunday evening. Thanks!

Offline summerthyme

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Re: Harry Potter Lesson Idea Needs Suggestions
« Reply #1 on: October 22, 2010, 03:03:43 PM »
Some of these might be young for your kids but here's the link for the HP camp:

http://waygook.org/index.php/topic,1026.0.html
Please click "Report to moderator" for posts that show harassment, fighting, rudeness, or which otherwise go against waygook's general terms and conditions.  Thanks for your assistance!

Offline nancy

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Re: Harry Potter Lesson Idea Needs Suggestions
« Reply #2 on: October 22, 2010, 03:10:31 PM »
Maybe this would work well with conditional sentences.
If I ......., I would...... Just a thought.

Offline pickle

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Re: Harry Potter Lesson Idea Needs Suggestions
« Reply #3 on: October 22, 2010, 04:25:24 PM »
Because a lot of the spells in Harry Potter are related to words in English, why don't you have them make their own magic words and then explain why they chose that word?  You can show them examples of spells and explain... like in "wingardium leviosa" you can see 'wing' and the 'lev' is similar to 'levitate,' and of course the rest just makes it sound cool.  I don't know what your kids know, but if they can use dictionaries they might come up with some good words.

Offline shhowse

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Harry Potter and Making Spells Lesson
« Reply #4 on: October 25, 2010, 01:22:51 AM »
So here is the finished product that I'll use for class tomorrow. Once I have taught it a couple of times I'll post an update with some feedback of how it went and what, if anything I'll change. Keep in mind this lesson was designed as a fun, cultural information type of lesson, with not so much English speaking.

Lesson Plan:

1. Introduce spells - get students to give ideas what spells are, why we use them, who uses them, etc (general discussion).

2. Talk about the Latin origin of many English words, give a few examples. Tie into the Harry Potter spells, most of which are derived from Latin words. Ger students to think of more examples of any English words they know of that have Latin roots.

3. Have the kids think about the book/movie series and say some spell names they can think of and what they mean. Then watch some clips from the movies (youtube link is in the PPT) and talk about some of the spells they saw.

4. Give them the matching worksheet and have them match the spell with the meaning, explaining the Latin-English connection (briefly and as simply as possible).

5. Put them into small groups to work on the "make your own spells" worksheet. Let them be as creative and funny as possible making spell words/phrases for the actions on the worksheet.  Allow them to use dictionaries if possible to look up interesting words.

6. If time permits, there is the wordsearch for enjoyment.

Offline shhowse

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Re: Harry Potter and Making Spells Lesson
« Reply #5 on: October 26, 2010, 12:37:29 PM »
The lesson is being met with mixed reviews. Some students really enjoy the topic and the using creativity/imagination activity at the end. Others are really struggling to come up with their own spells, perhaps just not understanding the instructions.

I started putting up on the board some common Latin noun/verb endings for them to play with to make their spell words, to make them sound more Harry Potter-esque and fun.  I find that giving lots of examples helps, and stress that they should find words that have similar meanings. I wish my school had bilingual (or any!) dictionaries for them to use for this assignment.

Also, the matching worksheet we ended up doing moreorless together as a class. Some of the spells have move obvious connections to English words whereas others are not so clear.


Offline dldavislee

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Re: Harry Potter and Making Spells Lesson
« Reply #6 on: October 26, 2010, 05:34:53 PM »
I think this is a great lesson idea!
I've changed it around a bit to work with my class, and I've added a bit to it.
Will let you know how it goes - thanks a lot.

 

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