Thanksgiving: Sarah Josepha Hale

Objective & content

This Look Closer episode (the mini-series Thanksgiving, four episodes on where the holiday comes from and what Americans do today) is a short documentary about Sarah Josepha Hale, the American writer behind the national Thanksgiving day. A single narrator says that she wrote the children's poem "Mary Had a Little Lamb" in 1830 and later chose what went in a popular magazine as its editor. The story then follows her long fight: in her time each state chose its own Thanksgiving day and some had none, so every year she wrote about it in her magazine and wrote letters to the presidents. Four presidents said no; in 1863, while the country was at war, she wrote to Abraham Lincoln, and five days later he chose the last Thursday of November. Among the pictures are the real documents: her portrait, the magazine's title page with her name, her 1863 letter and Lincoln's proclamation. It is a comprehension episode: the narration uses the past simple (with was, wrote, chose and said) and the present simple for today; no grammar point is taught. Learners listen, then answer the 10 questions in the app: 7 on facts and 3 on vocabulary (editor, letter, celebrate).

Materials & prerequisites

The folder holds the audio, the slideshow and the script. Each pack is a one-page PDF with the text, three pictures, the key words and the 10 questions: a pupil pack, and a teacher pack with the answers highlighted. It also has a pupil sheet and a teacher sheet with the answer key. It has no lesson plan. Play the episode twice, hand out the pupil pack, then use the closing question (Why did Sarah Josepha Hale write to the presidents?) for a short class discussion. Learners should know the words write, day, country and year, the days of the week and the months, and be able to read years such as 1830 and 1863. The pack's key words explain the new words (poem, famous, magazine, popular, state, president, war, together, writer).