As winter vacation and the holidays approach, it can be difficult to keep the focus of ESL students in the classroom every day. However, the Christmas season is an opportunity for ESL teachers to take a subject kids love to talk about and incorporate it into educational (and fun) daily activities!
With a wide variety of Christmas songs, games, and subjects, teachers have a great variety of resources to make sure students are learning English concepts right up until the day before vacation. Here are a few Christmas-themed ideas for teachers to use in the ESL classroom.
Christmas Songs for ESL Students
The great thing about Christmas songs is that many students will already know some of the words, even if they don't know the meaning! Christmas classics such as "Frosty the Snowman" and "Santa Claus is Coming to Town" are played in shopping malls and public places all over the world in December.
Teachers can find free mp3 downloads of Christmas tunes at websites like Feels Like Christmas. Finding transcripts of the lyrics is easy, or the teacher can create their own lyric sheets to hand out in class.
With these, free materials comes an opportunity for several activities.
- Create a lyric sheet with words missing and hand them to students. Play the song, and have the students fill in the missing words.
- Create a lyric sheet with incorrect lyrics (wrong words, misspellings, etc) and have students listen while they correct the sheet.
- Divide the students into two or more groups and assign each a song. Have a karaoke contest and let them judge the winner!
Christmas Games for ESL Students
With a little creativity, teachers can find dozens of fun and educational games for the ESL classroom.
- Stocking Stuffer: Have students bring a stocking to class, or make one from paper during arts and crafts. Using a wide selection of magazines, have the students cut out pictures of things they want for Christmas. Mix up the pictures and give each student a stockpile. Then, have the students visit one another's stockings and put a picture of a gift inside. Afterwards, have each student show the class their gifts and name them (in English, of course!)
- Santa Says: Just like Simon Says, but with Santa Claus of course! Try introducing winter concepts into the commands – for example, say "freeze!", and have the students rub their arms as if they are cold.
- Christmas Word Slush: Write or print dozens of words on a grid. Be sure to include Christmas nouns (Santa, snowman, sled), verbs (give, skate, fly), and adjectives (cold, excited, happy), along with regular nouns and verbs the students are familiar with. Cut the words into slips and give each student a selection (individually or in pairs or groups). Have them race to see who can come up with the most sentences out of the slush!
Christmas Crafts for ESL Students
From decorating a classroom Christmas tree to making simple paper snowflakes, the possibilities for Christmas crafts are endless. A few easy ideas include:
- A Christmas tree drawn on large paper or a poster, with a gift with each student's name drawn underneath to hang in the classroom.
- An Advent Calendar used to count down every day until Christmas – with a simple template and construction paper, each student can make his or her own!
- Paper angels with handprint wings for students to take home to their family.
For a wide variety of free, printable Christmas crafts, visit DLTK-Kids.
Bring Christmas to the ESL Classroom
As the holidays approach, harness that energy and excitement in the classroom and turn it towards learning English! All it takes is a little planning for any ESL teacher to turn Christmas time into fun and worthwhile activities for their students.
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