Why celebrate Christmas in the classroom?
Well, the main reason in my school is that the kids will expect it. If I don't do something Christmassy, I risk being classified as the Boring One, the Humbug (yes, I'm sure some of my teens know what that means!).
Like Halloween, the value of which I had to explain to some parents in an official letter, Christmas in the classroom is not an opportunity for the teacher to evangelise - although I wish I could - but an essential part of life in an English-speaking country. Even if you do not celebrate it, you could not avoid it if you found yourself in London over the festive period. And there, I've just proved another point, that the vocabulary surrounding Christmas is so widely used that our students have to be aware of them or miss out on a lot of natural conversation coming up to December 25th.
So we can just watch a Christmas video, can't we?
I'm not against video in the classroom if it is restricted to short sections and accompanied by a task, but I personally struggle to find interesting videos, so I am going to take a different tack.
Inspired by the Supermarket.
I found the greatest Advent calendar in Tesco's last week. So great that even my mum approved of the 9 pounds I spent on it. But it's a very sturdy thing, and if I get 9 years out of it in the classroom, then it will have been more than good value.
It's a tree made of 24 boxes, each of which has a drawer filled with chocolates. Little do my darling teens know it, but the chocolates are soon to be accompanied by task sheets. The idea is that they will choose a number, but before they can eat the chocolate, they will have to complete whatever task I have added. As they're a CAE prep group, I'm thinking: creating word families (Use of English Part 3), comparing photos (Speaking Part 2), writing a five-line essay (focus on topic sentences and essay structure for Writing), sets of Trios (Use of English Part 5) etc.
Disadvantges: not personalised. For some the task may be very easy, for others, a nightmare. Also, do I bring out the tree only on Christmas Eve and have them all do their tasks at the same time (obviously more time-effective this way) or does a different student take their chances each day as we go through December (logical from the point of view of an Advent calendar, but somewhat unfair to make some wait)?
Advantges: I can increase exam task practice is a fun way that will not create resistance. The activity is guaranteed to interest the class and I am sure they will never forget the word Advent calendar again! Bringing something other than the textbook is always exciting, but the tasks are academic enough to satisfy the students who 'just want to practice the exam!)
Other Christmas-inspired activities
There are any number of worksheets, handouts, wordsearches etc out there devoted to Christmas, but doesn't it become a bit repetitive to offer a crossword of target vocabulary every time we have a national holiday with somewhat unusual words? Here are some other activities I'd like to try:
Christmas food. I have high retention because I feed my kids. Seriously. This year they requested Cadbury's Dairy Milk, and I am also planning to introduce them to Christmas Pudding. We can investigate the history of Christmas pudding and other festive dishes (they all love cooking as well as eating) and write a report on them or a review of the Pudding (Writing Paper). They can choose which dish best symbolises Christmas for the cover of a cookery book (Speaking Part 3).They can practice their advanced adjectives that we have recently been working on to describe their feelings when they smell the cooked pudding, recall their favourite festive food or talk about their associations with the New Year holidays.
Two of my students have confessed to making their own Jamie Oliver-style videos. I think this would make a great research project, perhaps over the holidays, and the listening practice and vocabulary gained when they watch each other's clips will be a nice addition to the regular course vocabulary.
Christmas Tree competition: The language involved in planning and executing a project to construct their own Christmas tree will cover a range of functions: suggesting, agreeing and disagreeing (politely!), giving clear instructions etc, not to mention the lexis of building materials (transparent plastic, rotating light bulb) and actions (sawing, trimming, cut a jagged line). And above all the opportunity for spontaneous language practice is huge. As they started planning last week I was thrilled to see how engaged my class was, how they spoke to everyone, not just their usual partner, and how much they interrupted each other to build on each other's ideas, whereas in a usual class they typically wait politely for one student to finish their long-winded idea before adding their own. They were truly listening to each other and collaborating, not simply adding another suggestion to a list.
More Christmas activities to follow.... :-)
