The world is about to celebrate the 80th anniversary of a cornerstone day: VE Day, on May 8th. What about celebrating this day with your students by reading letters and testimonies from the period?
These B1 activities based on authentic letters and testimonies from people who experienced WWII and VE Day will help the students get an insight into the period and should make them realise what it was like to be a young man and woman in the mid 1940s.
Thanks to group work and pairwork, the students will be able to either prepare an interview or a promotional article to celebrate VE Day.
These tasks could even be used to prepare an exhibition in the school media center; This could even be a means to work with the history teacher and help the students learn / revise their lessons from a different perspective.
Vocabulary and structures
- dates: May 8th, 1945…
- talking about past events (preterite)
- hypotheses about past events: must / may / might… + have + v-en
- feelings: to experience / to feel relieved, desperate, dejected, miserable, elated, overjoyed…
- celebration: celebrate, dance, bonfire, gather…
- war: fight, soldiers, prisoner of war...
- cause and consequence: because, as, since, as a consequence, therefore…
- contrast: even though, although, however…
- explaining / giving details: as a matter of fact, actually, indeed...
Copyright(s) :
IWM
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> Commemorating D-Day
> Lee Miller: Photographing War
