Secondary Starters and Plenaries: English by Young Johnnie;

Author:Young, Johnnie;
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: Ready-to-use activities for teaching English
Publisher: Bloomsbury Publishing Plc
Published: 2019-11-23T00:00:00+00:00

Starter

Exploring theme

A great starter when you want to get the students looking at the theme of a piece of fiction.

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Explain to the class that ‘theme’ in literature means the main idea of the work. Mention that a work can have more than one theme. Read the following story to the class.

The boy who wanted to juggle

Joshua, at the age of eight, visited the travelling circus and when he went home he decided that he wanted to be a juggler in a circus. His mother bought him some juggling balls and every day he practiced juggling. At first he kept dropping the balls but slowly he became better and better. When he went to high school he practiced juggling in the evenings and at weekends. He left school and got a job in a bank. He still juggled every evening. He got married and had children and every evening, without fail, he still practiced his juggling. He got to the stage where he could juggle nine balls in the air, a feat very few jugglers in the whole world could do. He kept it private and not many people knew about his juggling skills outside of his close family and friends.

One day, when he was 50 years old, he took his children to the circus. When it was time for ‘The Great Julio, World Famous Juggler’ Joshua got very excited. But the ringmaster stepped forward with a worried face and said: ‘Ladies and Gentlemen. I am sorry to report that The Great Julio lies in bed with a high fever and we have therefore got to cancel the juggling performance tonight!’ The sound of regret rippled around the audience and then the ringmaster added ‘unless … just a long shot I know but … unless someone in the audience can juggle…’ Joshua got up and stepped into the ring to the delight of his children, the applause of the crowd and the surprise of the ringmaster. ‘I can juggle,’ he said. After 42 years Joshua’s moment had arrived!

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