Keep Calm and Teach English

Happy December!  The twinkling lights are up, the cocoa is warm, and it’s time for one of my favorite traditions: my yearly Advent calendar. Let’s count down to Christmas together! There is a new fun activity behind each door, from Kahoot quizes and filling in Christmas songs lyrics for the weekdays, to making easy Christmas crafts for the weekends. The doors open only on the relevant day so they can be a real surprise.  If you are not sure how these calendars work visit my page with my older calendars here to get an idea. You can make your own digital Advent Calendar in  adventmyfriend.com/ . It's free and does not require registration.

It's the most wonderful time of the year again and here in Greece, as in most European countries, we are spending it at home in quarantine. However this is no reason not to be festive; in fact we should try to keep our spirits up as much as possible so as to be able to support our students as well. So why not share an online Advent Calendar with our students as a treat? photo by  JillWellington An Advent Calendar is a special calendar used for counting the days of Advent in anticipation of Christmas.  Advent calendars are usually a large rectangular card with "windows", one for each day of December leading up to and including Christmas Eve (December 24). Consecutive doors are opened every day beginning on December 1. The calendar windows open to reveal an image, a poem, a portion of a story, or a small gift, such as a toy or a chocolate item. The advent calendar that follows is a digital one. There is a new fun activity behind each door, from Kahoot quizes and filling in ...

An Advent calendar is a special calendar used for counting the days of Advent in anticipation of Christmas. Many Advent calendars take the form of a large rectangular card with "windows", one for each day of December leading up to and including Christmas Eve (December 24). Consecutive doors are opened every day leading up to Christmas, beginning on December 1. The calendar windows open to reveal an image, a poem, a portion of a story, or a small gift, such as a toy or a chocolate item. The advent calendar that follows is a digital one. There is a new activity behind each door, from crossword puzzles and short stories to filling in Christmas songs lyrics and making easy Christmas crafts. The doors open only on the relevant day so they can be a real surprise. I have been making online advent calendars since 2016 and every year I change some of the activities. This year I have included two Kahoot quizes which can be played with the whole class on mobile phones if your sc...

Last year I prepared an Advent Calendar full of ELT activities for the classroom and the home. The truth is I cannot resist the daily surprises Advent Calendars hide behind their small doors so I made a new one for 2018. photo by Gellinger In the calendar that follows there is a new activity behind each door, from crossword puzzles and short stories to filling in Christmas songs lyrics and making easy Christmas crafts. Some are the same as last year's but there are some new activities as well: Day 1: Make easy candy cane sleighs to give as Christmas presents Day 2: Make some easy Christmas Angels to hang on your tree Day 3: This is Britain Christmas video and worksheets Day 4: Print and solve a Christmas crossword puzzle Day 5: Christmas shopping in London! (British Council video and activities) Day 6: Read and listen to the story "The Gift of the Magi" by O. Henry (abridged) Day 7: Play a Christmas quiz with your friends Day 8: Write an email to Santa D...

Celebrating Valentine's Day on February the 14th?     Here you can find a Valentine's Day cloze with the story of Valentine suitable for young teens at B1 level and a love song to work on its rhyming pattern and sing. photo by  TerriC Photocopiable handouts can be downloaded from the last page of the presentation or from here . Older students will appreciate this video from History.com , which explains w hy we celebrate Valentine's Day on February 14th and where the holiday customs come from. or this one If you decide to use the worksheets leave me a comment and tell me how it went.

On day 1 of my Advent Calendar you can find a "This is Britain" video on  YouTube about Christmas customs and traditions including that of Advent Calendars.  photo by  PublicDomainPictures Below you can find the worksheets I prepared to accompany the video. Can you think of a more appropriate way to start the festive season? 

Who can resist the daily surprises Advent Calendars hide behind their small doors? They not only count the days till Christmas but they are great fun too so why not use them in the classroom? photo by  jill111 In the calendar that follows there is a new activity behind each door, from crossword puzzles and trivia quizes to filling in Christmas songs lyrics and making easy Christmas crafts. Day 1: This is Britain Christmas video  Day 2: Print and solve a crossword Day 3: Make easy candy cane sleighs to give as Christmas presents Day 4: Print and solve a Christmas cloze  Day 5: Write an email to Santa Day 6: What are you going to do this Christmas? Online matching activity Day 7: S olve an online Christmas Crossword Puzzle Day 8:  Play a Christmas quiz with your friends Day 9:  Make a pop-up Christmas card Day 10: Make a sock snowman Day 11: Fill in the missing lyrics of Last Christmas (online game) Day 12: ...

Thanksgiving Day is a national holiday celebrated mainly in the United States on the fourth Thursday of November. It is a special day for families and people travel long distances to be with their loved ones on this day. It also marks the beginning of the Christmas festive season.  Photo by  jill111 Thanksgiving Day  is a holiday so often depicted in American films and TV series that many Greek students are familiar with it, although they don't exactly know what it is about.  In the following presentation you will find activities on the origins of this popular holiday, suitable for pre-Intermediate young teenagers.  You can download the worksheets here: For the last activity you can use a voting tool like Mentimeter . Students can brainstorm their blessings and make a beautiful wordcloud. Here is what some of my students had to say:

A video on Bonfire Night, suitable for children and young teens in A2 level. The worksheet includes a True or False task, a link to an easy recipe for toffee apples, plus a cut out Guy Fawkes mask. photo by  Free-Photos Make sure you take a look at  my older post  about November 5th and the story of Guy Fawkes night. If you decide to use it, leave me a comment and tell me how it went!

Browsing through templates for powerpoint and google presentations, I came across a Halloween template in Slides Carnival that was just too beautiful to ignore. So I transferred one of my older lessons about the origins of Halloween into these slides making a few changes. For example, I added a KWL chart   at the beginning of the lesson to activate students' interest and have them ask their own questions about this popular custom.  Questions such as: W hy do people celebrate Halloween?, Is it really an American tradition?, Who was Jack-O- Lantern? and many more can be answered in the text.  I also changed some of the True - False questions to make them easier to remember as students are not going to have a printed version of the text.  The crossword can be downloaded separately.  If you've used it, how did the lesson go? Let me know in the comments below!

A "This is Britain" video on Halloween for younger learners together with worksheets to use in the classroom.  photo by  Bekir Dönmez

Mardi Gras is a Carnival festival that lasts for several days and ends the day before Ash Wednesday. Mardi Gras is always on a Tuesday in February or March. It is the day before the start of Lent. Lent is a period of 40 days before Easter when many Christians fast.  photo by  Leamsii People celebrate Mardi Gras by having parties, attending parades, wearing costumes and masks, and eating King Cake. Because Lent is a somber time, Mardi Gras is a last chance to live it up and celebrate. Two of the largest Mardi Gras Carnival celebrations are in New Orleans and Rio de Janeiro . You can find all this information and more in the presentation below, together with downloadable worksheets, printable masks and a short video on the basic samba steps. Suitable for B1 teens. 

An animated storybook of Dr Seuss' popular bedtime story: "How the Grinch Stole Christmas". Great for children of all ages!

This Advent Calendar is based on a lesson plan by Arjana Blazic, made for the Collaborative Teaching and Learning MOOC in the European Schoolnet Academy. The specific calendar is made purely for fun. There is something new behind each door, so make sure you come back everyday! You can make your own in Tuerchen.com , free and without registration. It can be easily embedded in eTwinning projects as well.

If, like me, you are working with minimal equipment or you just prefer the advantages a pen and paper classroom has to offer, then search no more. British Coucil's Learn English has everything an EFL teacher can dream of. Concerning Halloween, you can find a magazine article together with a downloadable audio file, a pre-reading vocabulary activity and a comprehension task. They work both on screen and on paper. photo by  Renee_Olmsted Oxford University Press offers an equally interesting array of Halloween resources for Pre-Intermediate to Higher Intermediate learners with  Scary Collocations, Ghoulish Word Forms, Frightful Idioms, a Shadowy Web Quest and guidelines for writing a Ghost Story! There is also a list of Bookworm ghost stories and activities you can do with your class.  For vocabulary consolidation you can use the crossword from my Halloween lesson . For even more Halloween fun there is the Ultimate Hal...

Growing up in Greece I always wondered how certain Christian holy days were called in English and if they were celebrated the same way or even if they were celebrated at all in England or other European countries. photo by  Pezibear With Easter approaching I searched the internet for ideas on Easter customs and I prepared some worksheets for my students concerning Easter days in the English speaking world, starting from Lent to Easter Sunday.  The worksheets can be used as a springboard for comparing customs and discussing other spring religious (or not) customs, if your class consists of multicultural students. In any case, as with any religious topic, handle with care and use accordingly!

Watch the video... ...and play the games

Black History Month is celebrated in February. One aim of Black History Month is to expose the harmful effects of racial prejudice; another is to recognize significant contributions made by people with African heritage, including artists, musicians, scientists, political figures, educators, and athletes. Below is a collection of words related to Black History Month with their definitions.  Learn more about Black History Month on the AmericanEnglish website here: http://1.usa.gov/1JCHirA .

Valentine's Day by the Numbers

An entertaining video explaining the most important British Christmas traditions. From Christmas crackers to Boxing Day, British Christmas traditions are different from what we are used to seeing in American films, because they are er... British!