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6. Christmas wishes

Here are three practices you can try with your students around Christmas time.

Liar’s Club and Christmas tree of wishes

The first one worked really well with my Intermediate blended-learning group as a complement for our own version of Liar’s Club (a game based learning activity brilliantly presented and performed by volunteer students, based on an American production by Ralph Andrews where a panel of celebrity guests offered explanations of obscure or unusual objects; contestants attempted to determine which explanation was correct in order to win prizes). We used our own Christmas vocabulary definitions, for instance, two false descriptions of “poinsettia” next to the real one which contestants had to get right before receiving their Christmas gifts.

The Christmas tree of wishes is made up with star-shaped cutouts of different size and colour, given to students to write their wishes. All wishes are good. And some in particular are excellent for reading out loud, discussing and reflecting upon them!

There is a grammar structure involved here —I wish— which the students not always understand, so the activity, which may seem naive at first, ends up being an extraordinary “memory game” that helps students fix the structure quite well. Some time before the show allow a few minutes for the students to write their sentences on the stars, then get them pinned up on a board somewhere visible in the classroom. Soft Christmas lights can be added around the stars to give the classroom a good background light that makes the Liar’s Club show look really professional.

This third activity adapted for ESL students from Emotional Intelligence training courses was organised during the run-up to Christmas in the beginners group. The Advent Calendar is a non-complicated activity that can complement your lessons as a vocabulary revision and consolidation unit. To build up a vocabulary Advent Calendar we displayed images representing the objects in the textbook Vocabulary bank under a real chocolate advent calendar, and provided a box with “Christmas wishes” tags. The Advent Calendar (with photos and tags available) is put on display where every one can see. Every day a volunteer comes to the Advent Calendar and writes a sentence on the tag before it gets pinned around the Advent Calendar, for example, all I want for Christmas is a mobile phone. Then they take the chocolate hidden under the numbered cardboard windows in the calendar.

Encourage students to read out loud the dates on the calendar for pronunciation practice before they eat their chocolates!. The result is quite spectacular as the tags will grow in number day after day and will surprise everyone that gets closer to read wishes like “a wallet” but also “health”, or “happiness” and “peace”.

All I want for Christmas