SuperEnglish with Veronika: 8th grade. Unit 5. Lesson 2. Tricks and fun, April Fool's has begun.

👉Communicative area: speaking about April Fool's Day customs and traditions

👉Active vocabulary: to play a trick on, to fall for, to watch out, a practical joke, a good sport, a prankster, fake

👉Active grammar: Past Perfect and Past Simple

What do you know about April Fool’s Day?

Read some facts about the popular holiday.
Have you learned anything new?

If a person falls for the trick, then they are called an “April Fool”. Some people are not a good sport for the joke and get annoyed. April Fool’s Day finishes at midday in Britain. No more jokes after lunchtime, please! It’s bad luck. Anyone who forgets this and tries a joke in the afternoon becomes an “April Fool” themselves.

No one really knows when and where the tradition began. Some historians say that practical jokes were played in the Ancient Roman times. In Britain, April Fool’s traditions had become well kept by the end of the 17th century.

In 1698 a prankster invited Londoners to the ceremony of Washing the Lions at the Tower of London. Of course it was a fake event and the people who had fallen for the trick went home disappointed. However, the joke worked so well that they kept repeating it for about two centuries and even printed up tickets for the ceremony. Some of them are kept in the collections of the British Museum and the Tower.

The style of April Fool’s Day tricks and jokes has changed over the years. In the 19th century newspapers rarely played tricks on their readers on 1 April. It was only during the 20th century that newspapers, radio and TV stations, and websites started using the date to let their imagination run wild to fool the public with fake stories. By the 1990s a new custom had been born: making special fake ads for 1 April. The world enthusiastically celebrates April Fool’s Day. So watch out or you will fall for their practical jokes!

Quiz created by Veronika Bebekh with GoConqr

Read the beginning of the story. How did it end?

It was the early morning of 1 April, 1989. Thousands of motorists who were driving on the highway outside London saw a huge UFO in the sky. It was going down on their city. Shocked drivers stopped to take pictures of the UFO and some local people informed the police. The police arrived and at once surrounded the UFO that had already landed in a field.