Tuesday, December 11, 2007Christmas Activities
- The first year I worked overseas, I was shocked to learn that it was business as usual on Christmas Day.
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- The management of the school where I worked requested that the teachers design some Christmas lessons to offer the students on December 24th and 25th. The Christmas lessons would be offered to students at all levels from beginner to advanced.
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- Designing lessons for the advanced students was easy. Teachers could lead discussions about Christmas and Christmas customs, and ask students to share their experiences/memories/impressions with the class.
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- Designing lessons for the lower levels was more challenging. At first, many teachers started thinking about word games that could be played….jumbles, crosswords, word searches. These activities are not communicative, but students might enjoy the break from their usual lesson activities. On the other hand, they would probably get bored spending two to three hours doing word puzzles.
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- After much discussion about the pros and cons of word puzzles, it was decided to just teach our regular functionally based lessons, but change all the vocabulary to Christmas vocabulary. So the lower level classes reviewed countable and uncountable nouns when discussing what food they needed to prepare a Christmas feast. “I need a few onions, a little milk, a few potatoes, a little salt, etc.” The intermediate classes had lessons on describing likes/dislikes, wants, and preferences. They described what they wanted for Christmas, and what their friends and family members also wanted for Christmas.
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- The lessons went well. The students enjoyed them, and management was happy. The teachers didn’t mind teaching them. Management provided coffee and cake to the staff and students on Christmas Eve, and snacks on Christmas Day. It was not a really Merry Christmas for the teachers, but it wasn’t a miserable Christmas either.
POSTED BY Cecelia Sumi AT 7:28 PM
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