Christmas classes Juniours

Christmas classes are always an exciting way to explore a world cultural event. Below I will give a lesson plan and materials for a fun and festive Christmas class which can also be a great review lesson. Note that the below stages are for a 2 hour class and should be edited accordingly.

Aims & Objectives: Students will learn about Christmas and Christmas vocabulary. You can also review previous grammar structures.

Age: 6-10

CM system: Stick decorations on the Christmas tree for good behavior. See across for examples of decorations.

Materials: Printouts, paper, Coloured card, Interactive whiteboard, Super simple songs (Christmas) (https://www.youtube.com/user/SuperSimpleSongs), Envelopes, The snowman and the snow dog film (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yPfj4ioJQlg), crayons, pictures of Santa/snowman/child/elf.

Before class: Cut out card green and brown and stick together to make a big Christmas tree. Stick it to the wall.

Stage aims:

1) Introduce topic: Show students the Christmas tree elicit the word Christmas. 2 minutes

2) Warmer - Christmas carol: Teach students a Christmas song. Use a Super Simple Christmas Song such as S-A-N-T-A, 10 little elves (good for toys vocabulary), We wish you a merry Christmas (revising action verbs), Jingle Jingle little bell (I can) etc. 5-8 minutes

• Demo the actions and use TPR or Simon says to teach the children.
• Next practice once stage by stage.
• Then practice again full song.
• Practice a final time all together.

(Note you may not need to use all of these stages).

3) Set context: Tell students a story about a past Christmas and use vocabulary like Christmas tree, Santa, Christmas, Presents, Toys, Snow. For example: One Christmas when I was a child it snowed and I didn't know if Santa would make it... (Use flashcards for each image). 2 minutes

4) Vocabulary meaning practice - Snowball fight: Students draw the vocabulary on pieces of paper and scrunch up the paper into balls. they then have a  snowball fight for 30 seconds. They then pick up the paper and try to explain, mime, or draw the vocabulary item to their partner. repeat and change task each time (depending on level). 5 minutes

5) Pronunciation practice: Make a circle and drill vocabulary as a class then as a group and finally as individuals. Make the children speak like Santa or an Elf, hold up the picture of each and demo before. 3 minutes

6) Form practice - Guided discovery: Students work in pairs. Students are shown an image and have to find the right word around the room. 8 minutes

Optional activity- pass the paper: Students are shown an image and work in pairs to write each letter one by one. 5 minutes

7) Controlled practice - Letter to Santa: Students write a letter to Santa talking about themselves and Christmas. Example image provided across, adapt to suit whatever changes you make.  8 minutes



8) Listen and Watch - The snowman and the Snowdog: Students Watch the first 5 minutes and shout the Christmas word when they see it. Students then watch the rest of the film and complete a review sheet where say what they Like/liked and dont like/didn't like. They also put the story images in order. Image can be found below.  32 minutes


9) Optional activities - Make a Christmas decoration/make a Christmas card/ Christmas colouring/ More Christmas songs.

Metacognition and language activities

There are many options using language and its structures for metacognition. These can allow your students to explore language in a fun and creative way. More than anything these activities will get students to think about the nuances of language and how it is used. Other skills practiced include creativity, writing skills, word stress and sentence stress.

• Jokes - Write a joke on the board and get students to review the meaning of the joke and tell the joke, As a follow up you can get students to tell the joke.
• Riddles - Tell students a complicated riddle and get them to find the answer. This will also improve their logical thinking and lateral thinking.
• Limericks/Haikus - Students read a limerick or Haiku and check meaning, pronunciation and structure. They then create their own about a topic. These can also be great for practicing gerunds and infinitives or idioms.

Metacognition activities (philosophy)

Philosophy and Ethics have been a big part of Education throughout history. Although they sometimes get a bad reputation for either being 'wishy washy' or 'too abstract' we should question these assumptions and look carefully at these and the numerous benefits they can provide. Philosophy and ethics can be useful as they get students speaking and exchanging ideas. Philosophy practices many skills such as lateral thinking, evidencing, listening, Logic, questioning, concision etc.

• The dream machine - This is an ethics problem which asks students if you could live forever in a machine which creates a perfect world where there is only happiness and beauty would you? If you say yes you cannot return to this world and although you can simulate a family and friends who are the same you can never return would you? Useful for practicing the second conditional and speaking.
• The trolley problem - A tram is hurtling towards a cliff, you can either change its course and kill only one person otherwise everyone dies. Would you do it? Useful again for speaking but also good for modal verbs of advice and ability.
• Controversial statements/questions - You can practice things like the first conditional e.g if you are rich you will be happy. Yes or no. present continuous is eating animals bad? This works well with the sushi line activity, or a debate format.
• The Simpsons: The Simpsons episodes often carry philosophical themes. They are also hugely popular and therefore very accessible. Good episodes include 'Bart sells his soul', 'Lisa the Vegitarian', 'Homer the Heritic'. You can use clips as speaking activities or you can base a whole lesson around the episode and adapt a grammar and vocabulary point.
• The School of life: If you type this into Youtube they have some great short videos which require only a little adaptation. Topics include Relationships, Philosophy, Culture, The World and Current affairs. You can adapt these for any grammar or vocabulary point. https://www.theschooloflife.com/
• Ted Lessons: There is a great website with a range of EFL lessons for all levels using Ted talks.  (https://tedxesl.com/)

Metacognition A few questions

Metacognition is one of the newest buzzwords floating around Education but what does it mean? How useful is it? What exactly does it do? How can I use this? I will try to answer these questions and provide some useful links which will allow for further study.

What does meta-cognition mean? Literally meta-cognition is thinking about learning. It is an approach based on the idea that by developing thinking skills students will be better able to apply these to all subjects.

How useful is it? Although there still needs to be more long term research there are lots of short to mid-term studies which show that younger learners in particular improved their grades across a range of classes.

What exactly does it do? The idea is that students develop cognitive skills such as lateral thinking, logical thinking, creativity and can be taught using almost any subject. Through the use of skills such as: independent thinking, team work, and cognitive skills.

I will follow this with some more posts about activities that can be used.

Further reading/Listening
http://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/p04k005d
https://www.teachingenglish.org.uk/article/metacognitive-awareness
http://www.bbc.com/news/uk-30210514

Reading activities

 Reading can too easily be a boring activity, many teachers question how to make this fun. Here I will share some ideas on how we can tackle this skill.

Chopsticks Jigsaw - Cut up the reading into sections corresponding with  the questions, number each section to match the question. Students have to race to the centre of the room to find the correct section, they then have to read through and  find the answer in the text and match each section to make the text complete.

• Skills practiced: scanning.
• Materials needed: Chopsticks, photocopies of reading texts.
• Preperation: Low
• Difficulty: Easy

Reading as guided discovery - Again cut the sections up and number each section to match each question. Place these outside of the classroom, put students into pairs one student runs and one writes the answer to the question and then they alternate.

• Skills practiced: scanning, detailed comprehension.
• Materials needed: Blue tac, photocopies of reading texts
• Preperation: Low
• Difficulty: Easy

Kahoot - Put students into pairs and get them to read each section of the text corresponding to each question. Do each question at a time, Students have to race to answer each question. (Note: You cannot go onto the next question until everyone has submitted an answer, set time limits and be careful if you have very slow readers.)Skills practiced: detailed comprehension.

• Skills practiced: scanning, detailed comprehension.
• Materials needed: https://kahoot.it/
• Preparation: Low - Medium
• Difficulty: Medium

Game - You can use many games for this including: Noughts and Crosses, Machine Gun, Connect 4 etc. Put Students into teams and use the same timings as Kahoot. Teams that answer correctly get a go and the team witht he most points win.

• Skills practiced: scanning, detailed comprehension.
• Materials needed: Whiteboard, pen, timer.
• Preparation: Medium - high
• Difficulty: Medium - hard

Dictogloss - Find a short text and place it outside of the class Students work in pairs and one person reads part of the text to their partner who writes it down. The fastest wins.

• Skills practiced: detailed comprehension.
• Materials Needed: Copy of a reading text.
• Preperation: Low
• Difficulty: Challenging

Classroom management and Young Learners

Classroom management can sometimes be a challenge for new and experienced teachers but there are some great options out there. Too often teachers use stars and although these can be somewhat effective there are much better options out there, also the star system can reward behavior which should come from an intrinsic motivation rather than something external. Stars also just aren't right for every class some students respond well but others don't. Below I will list some great classroom management systems that you can try with your young learners classes.

Class Dojo - My favorite has to be Class Dojo, I frequently use it in my classes because it is easy to manage and fun. You create a class, you input students names which in turn gives each student an animated monster. The idea is that you give students points for good behavior and take away points for bad behavior. When you do this it gives the student the reason why for example: Javier +1 point for working hard or Enrique -1 for not doing homework. You can then set targets for rewards such as 100 class points = sweets or stickers etc.

• Ease of use: 8/10
• Effectiveness: 10/10
• Student friendliness: 9/10
• Age range: 4 - 13 (Older teens may find this a bit babyish).

 https://www.classdojo.com/

Tom & Jerry - This is a good system to use with really young learners and is really simple. This system gets students policing each other, and is very young learner friendly. You can make your own Tom & Jerry cut outs which you stick to the board. If the children are good Jerry moves closer to the cheese, if the children misbehave Tom gets closer to Jerry.

• Ease of use: 9/10
• Effectiveness: 7.5/10
• Student friendliness: 9/10
• Age range: 7 and under

Wildcard - This one is great for Teens, it is fun, cheeky, and quite effective if you can build up a good rapport with your students. If students are good as a class they get points which can be used to claim a reward e.g games time, chocolate, free English time etc, If students are bad you can make them do something mildly embarrassing like sing a song in front of the class or do a silly dance like Gangnam Style. It works because it makes you seem less harsh than traditional Classroom management, and makes classes more fun (also teens love rewards and hate embarrassment.

• Ease of use: 6/10
• Effectiveness: 8/10
• Student friendliness: 8/10
• Age range: 11+

(This system has to be used with the best intentions and in a fun way, or may cause problems)


Game - Yes classroom management can be a fun game, put students into teams and create a 4 by 3 board on the table. You can play several games in fact for example you can move students so many spaces depending on how good they are and reward the first team to reach the end of the board, or you can be more creative. You can play a little game called machine gun where groups who are good choose a square which has a symbol which i turn alters points e.g Heart = 2 points, Crown = 5 points, Bag = steal another teams points = sad face = - 2 points. Again at the end there should be a prize, this will add some energy and make Classroom management more fun.

• Ease of use: 6/10
• Effectiveness: 9/10
• Student friendliness: 10/10
• Age range: 8+

Modal verbs of possibility ability and advice

Here is a fun activity that you can use to review modality and its many uses.

Materials: Pictures of weird Japanese inventions, creativity, whiteboard, Paper and pens, worksheet and guided discovery

Level: Intermediate

Pre class - create a guided discovery work sheet and place answers around the classroom.

1. Students work in groups and look at pictures of weird Japanese inventions (type this into google images), they discuss what they think? (print out the pictures and give one of each to each group, the sillier the better)

2. Students share their opinions with the class.

3. Students complete a guided discovery that gets them to think about how modal verbs are used e.g. 'Can' is used for, 'should' is used for, find the incorrect sentence, or on a scale of 0% - 100% put these modal verbs of possiblity in order: won't, may, might, will probably etc... Place the answers around the room.

4. Students use the modal verbs to talk about which inventions they will use, won't use, might use etc.

• Students also say what you can/could do with the crazy inventions and why people should/ought to use an invention.

5. Students create a poster advert for the product saying how this product could help you and why you should or ought to buy it.

6. Students put the posters on the wall and review each others.

7. Students create a new product and create a new tv advert or dragons dens style sales pitch.

Error correction

Error correction is often difficult to get right. Teachers can find it dry and students can find it demoralizing, intrusive, or just uninspiring. However we all accept that it is a fundamental part of language learning. Error correction doesnt have to be a bad thing, I am a big believer that the best teacher is often your past mistakes. Below I will outline 3 approaches to error correction.

1) Grammar auction: Write some correct and some incorrect sentences on the board, students are allocated so much money and asked to bet on which are correct and which are incorrect.

• Pros - fun and friendly, easy to set up.
• Cons - You can only focus on 1 or 2 grammar points.

2) Groupwork: Write down mistakes on pieces of paper that you hear or see in communicative activites. Give a few to each group and get the students to correct the mistakes.

• Pros - less invasive, student centered, uses peer learning.
• Cons - Students only see some of the mistakes.

3) Wall of shame: The name sounds bad but this is actually a very simple and friendly way of doing error correction so please bear with me. You will often hear the same mistakes time and time again from students who often know its wrong. This is frustrating for the teacher and for the students who realize after it is said or when the error is presented.

1. On pieces of A3 or A4 paper write down in marker pen common mistakes and the corrections e.g if you teach Vietnamese students write: My name Vy :(. And below write: My name is Vy :)

• Pros - Saves time on correcting mistakes, students will police themselves and others, friendly if done right.
• Cons - Can be unfriendly if done wrong. 

Make & Do

Students often struggle with Make & Do and the difference in English. I remember in Spain where the verb 'hacer' covered most of make and do that they would often make silly mistakes.

Below I will underline a creative and fun lesson which will help to Clarify this a little bit more.

Level: Pre-intermediate Teens or Adults

Materials: pen, paper, whiteboard, picures of activities.

1)  Place pictures around the room of people doing activities..

• Students move around the room in pairs and guess the activity.
• Students tell you the activities and you write these on the board with make or do before e.g doing the washing up, making a cake etc.

2) Board race: Get students into teams and get them to run to the board 1 by 1 and write down phrases with make and do.

3) Guided discovery: Studnets have a question sheet and around the classroom or outside are the answers one person runs and the other writes.

• Questions and answers can include: Which is for a process and which is for something new? Which of the following sentences are incorrect?  Draw the phrase.

4) Miming: Get students to mime a phrase in front of the class whilst their class mates guess.

5) Speaking activity: Students discuss what they make and do?

6) Homework: cut up phrases using make and do. put them into two piles, students pick one from the 'make' pile and one from the 'do' pile. They then have to do one of these, take a photo of them doing or making it and tell the class about it at the beginning of the next class.

• phrases can include: make peace with someone, make a friend, make someone smile, do something kind, do a new activity, do somethign that scares you etc

Gerunds & Infinitives

Gerunds & infinitives can often leave learners confused and unsure in themselves. The problem arises primarily in the fact that it really just depends on the verb which preceds (don't even tell them that a gerund is a noun or their minds may actually explode). Teachers can also find these to be a problem because finding engaging activities which stick with the learner and fire up their inner curiousity are seldom to be found, and it's just something that we know without explanation. Gerunds and infinitives used to drive me and my students crazy for a long time.

Below is one lesson idea which helped both my students and myself.

Level: Pre-intermediate - Advanced/Adults or Teens

Materials: Whiteboard, paper, paper aeroplane instructions.

1) Elicit: Write the word happiness on the board. Ask students what makes them happy?

• Write answers with the gerund or infinitive and the noun e.g learning to speak languages,
• Students then discuss each of the phrases and say if it makes them happy.

2) Demo/grammar auction: Write down some sentences that are correct and some that are incorrect.

• Students do a grammar auction.
• Quickly explain which verbs preceed a geund and which preceed an infinitive (You can change the verbs depending on what level the students are and what they are studying etc).

3) Receptive skills reading: Students Write an activity that makes them happy on a piece of paper in the gerund form (explain that gerunds can function as nouns and activities).

• Students read some instructions on how to make paper aeroplanes.
• First they read for gist to tell you what the article is about.
• Second they read for specific detail and find the infinitives. (explain that often infinitives talk about process). 
• Third they read and build a paper aeroplane with the paper.
• Finally they throw the paper aeroplanes and each collect a different paper aeroplane. They then read and share the advice.

4) Homework: Students  complete the activities and say how it made them feel.