It’s that time of year again! And if you still don’t know what to do with your students, check out our list of 15 ideas for your Christmas and New Year’s lessons.
#1 Christmas dinner recipe
Prepare a few photos of a British Christmas dinner, or a video on how to make it. Go through the vocabulary and then ask the students to write the recipe.
#2 Christmas songs
You can’t go wrong with Christmas songs! Get the lyrics of any Christmas song, remove a few words and phrases, and ask your students to fill in the gaps while they listen. Or, if you want to skip all the prep, just go to lyricstraining.com. It’ll save you a lot of time!
#3 Christmas commercials
Choose a commercial that is at your students’ level, pick out all the useful vocabulary, and come up with a few interesting questions (for comprehension or for discussion on the topic of the commercial). Lesson ready!
#4 Christmas cards
If you’re students are into arts & crafts, organise a classroom project in which you all make Christmas cards. Remember to ask the students to put some Christmas wishes in English!
#5 Cracker jokes
Google a bunch of cracker jokes, print them off, and ask your students to guess the answer.
#6 Christmas presents
Make a list of some more or less useless presents (or use the section “Presents” from Convo Pack: Festive). Students’ task is to say which ones they would give to their family and friends. They also have to explain why.
#7 Christmas decorations
Prepare photos of some Christmas decorations and ask the students to come up with instructions on how to make them.
#8 The Royal Christmas broadcast
The Royal Christmas speech is a very important British tradition and can be a very useful teaching aid! Especially for RP lovers. Get some of the previous speeches (you can find them on YouTube), pick out some interesting vocabulary and just let your students listen to it. If you have time, make a gap-fill type exercise.
#9 Controversial Christmas
Christmas away or at home? Christmas in a hot country or surrounded by snow? Christmas with family or friends? Prepare a few similar questions, and for each one ask your students to choose one option and justify their opinion. If you’re using Convo Pack: Festive, you can find some ready-to-use cards for this activity.
#10 Boxing Day for business English
This is such an interesting topic for your business class! Simply search for the phrase Boxing Day in any of the business magazines online, such as “Business Insider” or “The Economist”. Pick out an article that would be good for your students and build your lesson around it. But remember: don’t print and make copies of the article!
#11 Christmas in Ireland, Canada, America, New Zealand & Australia.
If your students already know all the British Christmas traditions, it’s a perfect opportunity to talk about traditions from other English-speaking countries.
#12 Real Story of Saint Nicholas
You can find a good few videos and articles on the history of Saint Nicholas on the Internet. Choose one that best matches your students’ level and prepare some comprehension questions. You can add some extra discussion questions about “modern” Santa Claus.
#13 New Year’s resolutions
Prepare a few photos and verbs. Distribute them among the students. Their task is to make New Year’s resolutions using all the photos and verbs that they got. You can get a ready-to-use selection in our Convo Pack: Festive. This is a great opportunity to practise future tenses.
#14 New Year’s Eve party
Divide your students into smaller groups. Each one has to plan a New Year’s Eve party. When they’ve finished, ask them to share their plans with the other groups.
#15 The Big Fat Quiz of the Year
If you have students at higher levels and they love British panel shows, this is the perfect show to finish the year on. And if it’s not suitable for your lessons, you should definitely watch it yourself! You can find some of them HERE.
We hope you and your students enjoy your festive lessons!
