This summer Brazil will be hot news and not just for the tropical weather there for, in June, it hosts the 2014 FIFA World Cup and two years later will host the Olympic Games.
How much do you, your friends or your family know about the country and what it has to offer the visitor? This set of activities will help you to become a Brazil boffin and maybe teach those around you a thing or two.
Suitable for: Year 2 to Year 6
Learning Focus:
- Writing for different purposes
- Recognise the style and vocabulary of persuasive writing and use them in your own writing
- Recognise how information can be presented in a variety of forms
This summer is all about footie fun so let’s make the lessons the same. Start off with a quick appetiser, finding out how much your class know about Brazil. It’s a good introduction to the country and should get some speaking and listening started!
Pop Quiz
Which continent is Brazil in?
What language do they speak there?
What’s the name of the huge rainforest found there?
Which big sporting events will be held there this summer and in 2016?
Which is longer the Amazon River or the River Nile?
Activity One:
Distribute pages from some holiday brochures around the class and give the pupils five or ten minutes to look through them. Don’t give them ones for South America though as that may negate part of what they’ll do later.
Ask them whether they would like to visit the destinations in the brochures and to tell you why.
Continue by getting them to tell you what it was in the brochures that made them want to go there.
What kind of writing is it? (This is slightly tricky – you’re looking for them to tell you it’s persuasive, despite the lack of persuasive vocabulary in the brochures.
How do the brochures persuade? List their ideas on the board.
You’re looking for…
- Pictures
- Hotel facilities
- Details of excursions they may want to do
- Price
- Offers
Now show the pupils this year’s TV advertisement for Brazil found at…
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=F2h6jDoabLE
You may need to show it a few times as there’s a lot of information in it.
List what they can remember of the highlights on the board and tell them they are going to produce a brochure or poster persuading people to come to Brazil this summer.
Beforehand, try to get some folded leaflets from your local tourist information office to show the layout and style of language used in travel marketing.
Younger pupils could produce a simple poster, older ones should try to do a double sided folded leaflet and be encouraged to think carefully about the images they use, the language used and the audience – is it to attract young people, football fans, couples, as in the TV ad, or families?.
Once the leaflets or posters have been completed, get the pupils to swap them with their friends so they can find out different information from them then allow the pupils to take them home to inform their families about Brazil.
Activity Two:
These days, many travel websites rely on reviews from members of the public to provide the reviews and this activity will help get your pupils on board too.
Look on any travel review website and you’ll be told that the future of travel reviews is on wikis or blogs. Setting up a wiki isn’t easy but setting up a travel blog can be quick easy and free.
WordPress is a very easy one to use with lots of great templates, you can set up one for individual pupils, pairs or groups which they can all contribute to. It’s easy to type straight into them or copy and paste from a word processed document. You can add your own pictures easily (avoid ones with them or their relatives or friends in) and when you’re done you’ll have a professional looking website or blog that will impress all.
For this activity they could imagine they have been to many of the sights of Brazil, including some of the World Cup matches, and write about their time there. It won’t be so easy having not been there but with a bit of research on websites like wikitravel, it won’t be too hard to put together a great piece of work. Older pupils should be expected to put an emphasis on text and the style and content of the text, younger pupils should collect photos and annotate them.
You can make WordPress private, viewable only by those you want or public. But allow the pupils to give their parents access to their work.
