Valentine's Day

For Valentine's Day, I didn't do a whole lesson on Valentine's Day, but we did dedicate part of the lesson to it. Before class, I found a copy of the first Valentine's story and then cut/reworded so that it wasn't too difficult for intermediates. I printed it and cut the story into strips, by sentence. The students' task was to try to put the story in the correct order. After that, we read through and translated it. By the time that we finished it, it was almost time to end class, but we did ask/ answer/ discuss several questions. Here's the version I used:

Valentine was a priest who lived in ancient Rome.

He refused to obey a law by the emperor that ordered young men to remain single.

The emperor supposedly did this to grow his army.

He believed that married men did not make good soldiers.

The priest, Valentine, however, secretly performed marriage ceremonies for young men.

When the emperor found out about this, he had Valentine arrested and thrown in jail.

On the evening before Valentine was to be executed, he wrote the first "valentine" himself.

It was to a young girl that he had become friends with.

It was a note that said, "From your Valentine."