This is a lesson plan I have produced.
LEVEL: pre-intermediate / intermediate
OBJECTIVES:
- VOCABULARY: revise Christmas vocabulary.
- GRAMMAR:
- practice past simple and past continuous in context.
- express opinions about the best and worst Christmas presents using expressions such as I think, in my opinion, from my point of view, among others.
- CULTURE: learn about Christmas traditions in other countries around the world.
- WRITING: for students to develop their creativity and plan the writing of a poem.
- READING: for students to develop strategies to understand general and specific information about different Christmas traditions around the world in order to carry out specific tasks.
- VIEWING: extract specific and global information from a Christmas commercial to perform required tasks.
TASK 1: WARM-UP ACTIVITIES.
- Chat about Christmas and traditions. Ask your students what kinds of activities they usually do, what special dishes they eat, what is their opinion about the over-commercialisation of Christmas and so on.
- Display the wordle with Christmas vocabulary on the overhead projector and ask students to place them into the correct category FEELINGS/ACTIONS, THINGS, FOOD. Discuss how they relate to Christmas.
TASK 2: WRITING AN ACROSTIC POEM
- Ask your students to write their own acrostic poems using a Christmas word.
If you have many students in your classes, it would be a great idea to ask them to create a class poems book using GoogleDocs and publish the document in the class blog. Students vote on which is the most original poem.
TASK 3: READING COMPREHENSION: Where in the world?
Pre-reading: ask students to predict a series of facts related to the celebration of Christmas in different countries.
Post-reading: once they have read the text, they confirm their predictions.
https://docs.google.com/document/d/1ce_Ctkntk7JHu6j0lC7IhtnK9uNKte0x4ZH3oqdTSbM/edit?hl=es by Inma Alcázar
If there are students from different countries in your class, ask students to write five questions to know about how their partners celebrate Christmas in their countries.
TASK 4: VIDEO ACTIVITY: John Lewis Christmas Advert 2011 - This is a wonderful advert I discovered in Pilar's blog some weeks ago. I think it is great, not for listening but for developing their viewing and oral skills. There is not speech in the advert, just scenes which are part of the child's story.
Pre-viewing: create a series of screen shots using Vidinotes and ask students to predict what the story is about.
While-viewing: check that they have understood the ad with a series of questions about the video. The activity is corrected orally.
- Why was the boy so nervous?
- What was he really waiting for?
- What activities did he do to kill time?
- How did his parents feel?
- What is the slogan for the advert?
Post-viewing: ask students what was the worst gift they ever received. Then in small groups (3-4 students) they read the description of some unusual Christmas presents and put them in order from the best to the worst explaining the reasons for the order they have chosen.
To all, my best Season's Greetings! Enjoy, dream and be happy!
