No matter where in the world you teach, the upcoming season is abundant with holidays that offer excellent opportunities to expose your English learners to our multicultural world through history, cultural practices, and intercultural exchange. Here are a few resources from around the web that we’ve compiled for you.
Getting Started
Before you begin planning holiday activities or lessons, it’s important to take care with your content and show respect for your students and for the cultures you may be discussing. Ensure your plans to bring culturally enriching content into your classroom are respectful to all students and, in the case of religious content, appropriately academic. Start here:
These videos feature or are focused around holidays or holiday themes. Use these as a springboard for discussion or other activities.
The Christmas Gift Experiment
The lesson plan included with this 2-minute video, from the British Council, is for teenagers and adults and focuses on vocabulary, creativity, fluency, and writing skills.
English Lesson | December Holidays Around The World
Three YouTube English language teachers from different parts of the world discuss their various December holiday traditions; they also go over useful vocabulary and phrasal verbs in English.
Christmas Around the World
This slideshow from The New York Times archives shows 10 images of how people celebrate Christmas around the world.
Arthur's Perfect Christmas (Full Movie)
Use this episode with your younger students to introduce several winter season holidays (Christmas, Kwanzaa, Hanukkah) and related vocabulary.
Reading
These articles and webpages offer interesting and informative perspectives into some big (or, in some cases, new) holiday traditions.
“Christmas becoming less religious in the U.S.”
This short article from Breaking News English can be viewed in three different difficulty levels, and it comes with multiple activities, including a text jumble and match, spelling practice, and a gap fill activity.
“The Gift of the Magi”
This classic tale of sacrifice and giving by O. Henry is set during Christmas, but its lessons can resonate throughout the year.
Lessons and Activities
These lessons and activities can be used in your classroom this holiday season.
3 New Year’s Activities
This TESOL Blog post shares three writing activities focused on the New Year that can be adapted to different ages and proficiency levels.
Ideas for Language Learners: Celebrate the Holidays
This collection of activities from The New York Times includes learning about your students’ unique holiday traditions, creating a small holiday gift with students, teaching about a number of international holiday traditions, and writing about New Year resolutions.
Teaching Culture: Festivals of Light Around the World
This TESOL Blog post shares the traditions and practices surrounding light festivals from several distinct cultures, which occur from October through December, and the author includes classroom activities for each.
EL Civics offers lessons on various holidays, including these upcoming ones*:
2019 Diversity Holidays
No need to limit your holiday lesson plans to the month of December! Have students choose and research any holiday from this extensive list of observances celebrated by cultures around the world.
May the season bring you and your students joyful learning experiences! If you have any of your own December or holiday activities to share, please do so in the comments.
Tomiko Breland is TESOL project editor. She received her BA in English from Stanford University, her MA in writing from the Johns Hopkins University, and her certificate in TESOL from Anaheim University. In her free time, she writes and edits fiction.
I recently came across a report published in 2018 by the National Academies of Sciences, Engineering and Medicine that concluded that English learners (ELs) do not have adequate access STEM (science, technology, engineering, and math) education in U.S. schools. The report, entitled English Learners in STEM Subjects: Transforming Classrooms, Schools and Lives, is the result of a consensus study from educators from universities across the United States.Read more.
Welcome back to another edition of the TESOL Games and Learning blog. To kick off this month’s post, I wanted to encourage everyone to visit the new Ludic Language Pedagogy journal by James York and Jonathan DeHann. The journal strives to encompass all forms of play and how teachers support that play through their classroom practice. Check it out or, even better, submit an article!
Since we are on the topic of journals and article writing, this month’s post highlights several digital games that can be integrated into your writing classroom. These are all single-player games which engage students in a storyline that makes for interesting writing prompts. Read more.
Portfolios for assessing students’ writing have been around a long time, but I believe it’s worth another visit, particularly given the tools we now have available online for collecting and sharing our work.
What Is a Portfolio?
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This ebook is designed to help meet the needs of TESOL professionals in the areas of visual literacy and communication inside and outside ESOL classrooms. It includes practical ideas for writers and teachers and shows how TESOL practitioners can make their own materials more accessible and appealing to their learners and other audiences.
This book goes beyond theoretical discussions to provide concrete methods for integrating intercultural communicative competence into the language classroom through its inclusion of practical examples, engaging activities, and real-life case studies.
Copublished with NAFSA
Supporting English Learners with Exceptional Needs Patricia Rice Doran and Amy K. Noggle With Heather Wayson Wilson, June Lucas Zillich, and Gregory Knollman
Educators working with English learners face challenges beyond teaching academic content in languages new to the students. This book provides a discussion of strengths-based and deficit-based mindsets, collaborative problem-solving, and universal supports for curriculum access.
Active TESOL members may read current and recent issues of TESOL Connections online at http://www.tesol.org/tc. Inclusion in TESOL Connections does not constitute an endorsement by TESOL.
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No matter where in the world you teach, the upcoming season is abundant with holidays that offer excellent opportunities to expose your English learners to our multicultural world through history, cultural practices, and intercultural exchange. Here are a few resources from around the web that we’ve compiled for you.
Videos and Multimedia
Previous Article
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Welcome back to another edition of the TESOL Games and Learning blog. To kick off this month’s post, I wanted to encourage everyone to visit the new 
Portfolios for assessing students’ writing have been around a long time, but I believe it’s worth another visit, particularly given the tools we now have available online for collecting and sharing our work.
Creating Visually Effective Materials for English Learners
Navigating the Intercultural Classroom
