Want to do Christmas activities but your students have an exam coming up? Don’t worry, I’ve got you covered. Here’s some Christmassy proficiency speaking part 2 tasks. Students work in pairs on a timed collaborative task. Download the PowerPoint below:
You could also give them this speaking phrase sheet:
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This is yet another Christmas based activity, this one is for low-levels and young learners. Students work together to complete a Christmas themed crossword. Download the lesson plan and handout below:
Warmer – Hangman
Play hangman with “Merry Christmas” to go over the alphabet. Then, once they have guessed the word test and teach students ordinal numbers (first, second, third etc.) like so:
Write up the different ordinal numbers and drill pronunciation if necessary.
Christmas Crossword
In the handout above there are two versions of the crossword: The first version is just a standard worksheet that students could complete in pairs. The second version is a more communicative version.
Communicative Crossword
If you choose to try the communicative version, follow these steps:
Note: This activity works best as revision as it might be too difficult for young learners if they haven’t encountered these words before.
The winning team is the team that completes the crossword correctly first.
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This is another Christmas themed lesson plan for intermediate (B1+) teenagers and adults. Students will be required to use smartphones, tablets or laptops as part of the activity. Download the lesson plan below:
Warmer
Tell your partner about your most memorable Christmas ever.
Report back in open class.
Planning the perfect Christmas
Put students in pairs or groups of 3. Write a range of amounts of money on small pieces of paper, for example: €100, €1000, €10,000, €100,000. Put the pieces of paper in a hat, each team picks a piece of paper.
The amount of money that they have picked is their budget for the magical Christmas they are going to plan. They should plan a week of activities, from Christmas Eve to New Year’s Eve. Students can use the internet to research what they are going to do with their money: book flights to or a hotel in an exotic destination, book tables in fancy restaurants, organise interesting activities etc. The only rule is that they can’t go over budget AND they must speak in English the whole time, project the language for making and responding to suggestions below onto the board.
To be nice to the group that drew the €100 you could let them come up with a money making scheme such as baking and selling cookies in order to get more money. Encourage them to use their imagination, be creative and also, decide what the most important thing about Christmas is to them. Students have 20-30 minutes to plan.
Language
| Making suggestions | Accepting suggestions | Rejecting suggestions |
| How/what about …ing…?
Why don’t we…? We could…. Shall we…? I reckon/think we should/ought to…. What do you think about …ing? Let’s… |
That’s a great idea!
Good idea! I was thinking the same thing. You took the words right out my mouth. |
That’s a terrible idea.
Are you joking? Don’t be silly. I’m not sure about that. It’ll be too cold/expensive etc. |
Presentations
After 20-30 minutes students present their plans to the rest of the class and explain their reasons:
“We’ve decided to spend Christmas in Germany because we want to visit the famous Christmas markets”
After all the presentations, students vote on the plan that they like best.
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This is a Christmas themed lesson plan for young learners. Students will learn some Christmas vocabulary then put it to use in a drawing dictation exercise. You will need and A4 piece of white card for each student and this quizlet set. Download the lesson plan below:
Warmer
Put students in pairs and give them 1 minute to come up with as many English words related to Christmas as they can. Check in open class, award 1 point for each correctly spelt word and two points for any unique words (no other group wrote it down).
Introduce Vocabulary
Use a projector and the quizlet set to introduce the Christmas target language. There are 23 words in the set which is probably too many for most groups, use the star function to select the ones you want to study. When introducing each word, associate it with a different action i.e for “bells” you could mime ringing hand bells. For slightly higher levels, introduce the word as part of a sentence: “I ring the bells”
Games
You can then play the “match” game on quizlet on the projector. Put students in pairs and have them take turns to play “match” trying to complete the game faster than the other teams. If you don’t have access to a projector, you could print out two copies of each flashcard and play a giant game of “memory” or “pairs” on the board or on the floor at the students’ feet.
Prepositions
Quickly revise the most common prepositions of place (next to, behind, under, above, on, at the top, in front of etc.) you could do this a number of ways:
Drawing Dictation
Give each student an A4 piece of white card folded in half like a Christmas card. Tell students that they are going to make a Christmas card for their parents, but they have to listen carefully to your instructions. You then start describing a festive scene: “In the middle there is a big Christmas tree.” “Next to the tree I can see Father Christmas.” “Under the tree there are lots of presents!!” Monitor and check that students are following your instructions correctly.
You can then dictate a message for them to write inside the card and let them colour and decorate the card however they like. While they’re colouring play some Christmas music to get them in the festive spirit!
