Teach ESL to Kids

Christmas Lesson Plan

This is the Christmas lesson plan that I will be using with my kids. Teaching a holiday themed lesson to ESL children is slightly different than teaching to native English speakers. Native English speakers will already be familiar with the vocabulary words, so a teacher would want to create a lesson plan for that day only. ESL students do not know the vocabulary and so a different approach is required. I find it best to do your main holiday lesson plan a few weeks before the holiday. This introduces the vocabulary. Then throughout the month, you can reinforce the vocabulary using the daily lesson plan.

Most likely, if you are going to be teaching Christmas to you ESL students, the school will be focusing on the secular aspect of Christmas. More Santa, less Baby Jesus. I know that this can be difficult for someone who either doesn't celebrate Christmas or who prefers to keep Christmas about its real reason. Unfortunately, this is a case where you'll have to follow the school guidelines...

FREE Christmas Lesson Plan

1. Hello Song. Do your hello song as you normally would.

2. Read the book 'Twas the Night Before Christmas. Another good book would be Rudolph the Red Nosed Reindeer. Basically you want a book that's going to introduce the (secular) idea of Christmas and I think that these two books work quite well with that. Of course, there are many other books that deal with Christmas themes, but I just like these two classics.

3. Introduce the Christmas Vocabulary. If your school does not provide flashcards for this vocabulary, print them out at mes-english.com.

4. Using the Christmas vocabulary, play the Time Bomb Game. To make this more Christmas-y, have the kids pass around a small Santa or another Christmas type item, and use Christmas music as you're passing the item around. This is a good game for playing with new vocabulary because the kids don't have to already know the vocabulary. If they don't know a word, the teacher can say it and they can repeat it.

5. Singing and Dancing. For the month of December, you can use some simple Christmas songs like Jingle Bells, Rudolph the Red Nosed Reindeer, and What Do You Want for Christmas, which can be found on the Super Simple Songs CD. The Super Simple Songs CDs are a must-have for any ESL classroom.

6. Smile Time

I hope that you find this lesson plan useful.

Love,
Shannon Sensei