This is a PowerPoint in Google Docs that works as a zero prep Christmas lesson. It's designed as a fun, low difficulty lesson geared around Christmas culture around the world.
https://docs.google.com/presentation/d/1fJ7OjqMdQB28Ad-gvMY4pHCAI3zefsaACLSVn6SeRMA/edit?usp=sharing
Breakdown:
Warm Up - Would You Rather: Have students stand for this activity. Slides ask a series of questions with 4 options for what the students would rather do. Instruct them to stand in a corner of the room based on their answer. Good opportunity to talk about what you prefer, or to ask questions to students about the choice they made.
Game 1 - Traditions Real or Fake: Have the students break into groups. Each slide has a Christmas tradition from around the world with a short description. Some are real traditions, some are made up. Have the students discuss with their group whether or not they think the tradition is real, then guess the answer by either using a white board, or answer cards. Each group to guess correctly gets a point.
Game 2 - Christmas Food by Country: Students should still be in groups. Each slide has a food that some country eats around Christmas, and 3 countries. Have the students guess which of the 3 countries that food is from. You can tell the students the name of the food first to help (its written on the answer slide) Each group to guess correctly gets a point.
Other Holidays: 3 Slides to use as an opportunity to talk about other December holidays. Can be skipped if short on time.
Activity - Santa Dating Game: This is less of a game and more choose your own adventure. Santa needs someone to take on a date for Christmas! Each slide has a question Santa wants to ask one of the 3 guests. Have the students vote on who to ask the question to, then click on the character to go to their answer slide. From the answer slide, click on the "Heart" image to go to the next question. At the end, have the students vote on what guest Santa should date.
That's it! This activity took almost exactly 50 minutes for my high school classes. Fun and low stress after they all just finished their term finals.
Nice one!
Reading your instructions I instinctively knew that pavlova would be in your presentation and that you would attribute it to Australia.
As a Kiwi I could not resist the urge to inform you that it is actually is a New Zealand dish (notice the 'Kiwi' fruit on top!).
Don't let an Aussie tell you otherwise! ; )
Hilarious, I love the Santa dating game. Guest 3 is a riot.
I recommended your activity to some ALT friends!
Thanks for the wonderful idea!
@Matthew Haha I wondered if anyone would call me on that! I wasn't sure which country to put and wound up choosing Australia. Hopefully the New Zealand transfer student in one of my classes doesn't mind too much!
This is amazing! How do you guys have the time to put this together lol?
@Matthew, as a Kiwi I hear ya! Absolutely a Kiwi dish.
saving my life with this one
"black" Santa being the "bad" guy is kinda
@nickalt Ah that's a good point. So "Black Santa" is an urban legend in Japan. Unfortunately in Japanese, the word "Black" is often used to mean "Bad", like "Black Company", but obviously that has some unfortunate parallels. Possibly "Evil Santa" would be a better alternative than the direct translation.
@annefonicello omg I had no idea they have a black santa here. I didn't mean to throw shade. I appreciate the reply and thank you for teaching me something! I should've said it in my first comment, but it's a great presentation regardless!
Pavlova is kiwi!
Is there any way I can edit the slides for when I use them? Like, to change the "black Santa" name and to credit the pavlova to New Zealand? I'm not used to Google slides, so any hints would be great.
Thanks for making and sharing such a super set of slides!
@Castilleja linariifolia not the creator, but in Google slides, click "File" then "Make a Copy" to make your own copy of the slideshow, which you can then edit. Click on the text box or image you want to change to edit it.
@annefonicello Thank you for sharing!
@Castilleja I can tell you how to download it but you have to admit pavlova is Australian.
Easily my favorite Christmas activity and it's gone over a treat in my classes! Thank you for the variety of interesting ready-to-play activities!
For those with younger classes who might be interested - when I used it, I changed it some down to an ES 3/4 level by:
- changing "Would you rather..." to "I want to..." and telling them it's the "___ したい" game.
- modifying slides and removing one slide from each of the sections to make it a little faster/easier to explain.
- trading out the Santa dating game for a musical chairs game where the last one standing had to answer a review English question. (ex. "What shape is this?" and drawing the shape on the board.)
The modifications didn't take long at all, and it was easy to run through with an extremely basic level of Japanese, or some JTE help!