With the holiday season approaching, it’s good to add some fun into teaching to keep your students engaged and motivated. We’ve created 12 simple classroom activities and tips that you can carry out with your primary class to encourage them to be good.
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Fact: Father Christmas, St. Nicholas, Sinterklaas – whatever we call him, many countries around the world have a tradition that naughty children will only receive coal, twigs or even onions. But do children always know how to be good?
Classroom tip: Catch students being good
Watch out for good behavior and praise it when you see it - much more effective than dealing with problems as they arise.
Fact: Advent calendars count down the days to Christmas, and for children that usually means gifts! But is the festive period all about presents?
Classroom tip: Kindness calendar
Challenge students to carry out one act of kindness every day in December. They can plan this on a blank calendar and tick the kind acts as they complete them.
Fact: Did you know that greeting students individually at the door improves learning and engagement?
Classroom tip: Holiday password
Have a holiday-themed password for children to give as they enter the classroom. Students choose a new password every lesson.
Fact: The largest snowman in the world was actually a snowwoman. and had trees for arms.
Classroom tip: Concrete poems
A concrete poem written in a shape that reflects the topic of the poem, for example a poem about a snowman written in the shape of a snowman. Challenge your students to write their own concrete poems about Christmas (or a current holiday for them).
Fact: Chinese New Year is the most important winter festival in China. Like Christmas, one of the main activities is putting up paper decorations.
Classroom tip: Collaborative tree
Each child draws around their hand, cuts it out and either draws a picture or writes a sentence about themselves. The whole class makes a display out of the handprints.
Fact:Stars feature in many Christmas traditions. For example, in Poland, the Christmas eve feast only starts when the first star appears in the night sky.
Classroom tip: 2 stars and a wish
Give focused feedback on written tasks by identifying two positive aspects of work and one area to work on. Works great for peer assessment too.
Fact: Everyone loves getting presents. In Liberia, instead of Santa bringing toys, you’ll find Old Man Bayka, who walks the streets asking for gifts!
Classroom tip: My gift to the world
Brainstorm things students can do to help make the world a better place, such as volunteering at a local charity or planting a tree. Challenge them to do one thing as a holiday gift to the world.
Fact: Famous fried chicken in Japan, caterpillars in South Africa, hot tamales in Venezuela and oysters in France. Christmas dinners vary greatly as you move around the world.
Classroom tip: Recipe for success
Students can make their own Recipe for Success by thinking about what they need to be successful in the new year.
Example (to be designed to look like a child wrote it):
Fact: Festive saunas in Finland, roller skating in Venezuela and Christmas cobwebs in Ukraine, no two countries celebrate Christmas in exactly the same way.
Classroom tip: Venn Diagrams
Students choose 2 countries and research how they celebrate during wintertime. They record their findings as Venn Diagrams. They record the different traditions of the two countries in the sections on the left and right. Anything they have in common goes in the middle.
Fact: Anticipation plays a big part in the excitement of Christmas. Will Santa come? What presents I get? Who will win the annual family game of charades?
Classroom tip: Big questions
Start lessons by posing big questions to engage students’ natural curiosity and motivate them to find answers. Open questions work great, such as How do animals communicate? or What makes someone a hero?
Fact: Forget the Grinch, the festive season is a time for feeling good and spreading happiness.
Classroom tip: Compliment corner
Allocate a space in the classroom as the compliment corner – a notice board or a big piece of paper. Students can write compliments to each other on sticky notes and put them on the board. Such as ‘I love the pictures you drew of your favorite hobby’, or ‘You’re so good at singing’.
Fact: The start of a new year is a great time to focus on self-improvement, but only 8% of people are successful in sticking to their resolutions.
Classroom tip: Self and peer reflection
At the end of each lesson, ask students to reflect on their learning. Support students by providing sentence stems such as I learnt…I enjoyed …I’m good at…To improve I will…I didn’t understand…
Make these activities your own and adapt them to your class. They should help you turn the lead-up to the holidays in the classroom into an exciting one for your students and almost make them forget they're learning at the same time.
For more inspiration and general activities for your primary learners, try reading5 quick and easy ESL games for teaching young learners.If you're looking for inspiring and engaging English courses for young learners check out our range:
English is one of the most widely-spoken languages in the world, but how much do you know about the language? Here are 11 facts about Englishthat you might not know.
Students all over the globe learn English for many reasons. Some of these motivations may come from the students themselves – perhaps they are learning because they are travelling to an English-speaking area, or they want to be able to converse with English-speaking friends and colleagues. Other reasons for learning could include meeting school requirements, studying abroad, or progressing their careers.
As well as different reasons to learn English, there are also different goals. Many students are still focused on becoming fluent in English, and we are seeing an increase in people who want to learn the language for specific reasons. For example, immersing themselves in a particular culture or simply being able to order from a menu while travelling abroad.
Teachers are focusing on these personal needs to help students achieve their actual goals. It’s likely you’ve already spoken to your students about why they want to learn English. Understanding this is important as different motivations can influence a student’s attitude towards learning the language – and it may be necessary for you to adapt your teaching strategies for different groups of learners.
Let’s meet some different groups of students, learn a little more about their motivations and explore whether different motivations alter how students learn English. You may recognise some of these learners in your classes.
These students are learning English for pleasure or personal reasons. It might be because of travel, social or family reasons or perhaps because a better grasp of English might assist them with their careers. There are also adult learners who could be learning English as an immigration requirement.
For example, 23-year-old Alice decided to learn English so she could meet people and have more meaningful interactions with her English-speaking neighbours. She says: “I was very shy and not very confident in speaking to people, but learning English helped me connect with others and meet new people. I have changed a lot.”
A motivation like Alice’s requires strong teacher support and peer motivation woven into structured learning. Alice can set her goals and with the GSE Learning Objectives map out what she needs to do to achieve them. Teacher encouragement and personal support – and easy access to digital coursework, a social community of others all learning English, and small classes that emphasise conversation – keep people like Alice engaged and motivated to achieve her language goals. “I cannot do it without them”, she says.
These learners are typically in a more formal type of English programme and are learning the language to achieve specific career milestones, such as a promotion. Their employer might even be paying for their learning or they might be reimbursed for the cost of their lessons.
Vincenzo is 33 and works as a Product Manager in Milan for an international organization with offices around the world. He says: “I asked to take English classes as part of my professional development. My company chose an English provider and gave me a choice of group or one-to-one classes. I chose one-to-one classes as I’m easily distracted.”
Professional learners like Vincenzo succeed using a blended learning model of learning in class and at home that they can tailor around their lives. They have a strong motivation to succeed – that’s why learning at home works for them – but step-by-step progress provided by the GSE Learning Objectives is also important to keep this motivation alive. “I met with my teacher once a week where we would work on mistakes I would make while speaking English. He would also give me extra practice materials, like interesting games and videos to listen to in my own time, to help me really get a better understanding of the language,” Vincenzo says.
Learning English is a requirement for many school programmes and students will continue this at college or university. Many of these students will be learning English with a formal course that offers practice tests for high-stakes exams.
Seventeen-year-old Subra is from Malaysia and learns English at school. Some of her family live in Australia and she is considering studying abroad to attend a University that specializes in health care. When she was young, she learned in a traditional classroom backed with tests that helped her see how she was progressing. Now she uses technology, such as her Android Huawei phone to practise her English but still needs the validation of regular testing to know she is on track.
Subrasays: “I am used to studying for tests as I prepared hard for exams to get into middle school and senior school, which was totally determined by test results.”
Academic learners like Subra need to see demonstrable results to help them stay motivated and guide them to the level of English they need to achieve to get the required score on high-stakes tests. With the clear GSE Learning Objectives and a placement test, academic learners can map out where they are right now and where they need to be in order to reach their academic goals. These learners need encouragement and validation of their progress from their teachers to help keep them on track.
Understanding student motivations will help you teach to their specific needs, thus helping them to stay focused and motivated in achieving their goals.
A shared language is central to many families, and this can carry extra meaning when your children are growing up in a country that speaks a different language. It's not just about words; it's about culture, identity and connection. If you'd like to teach your kids the language that holds a special place in your heart, here are some tips to get you started.
