Hoppy Monday everyone! With Good Friday approaching this week and Easter this Sunday, I thought that I would start off this week with an Easter activity idea. Throughout the year, I like to look for any opportunity to get my students to talk about their cultures and traditions. It’s really a wonderful practice because it gets my students talking on a subject they’re familiar with, they get to share about themselves and in turn I get to learn about them, and their fellow students get to learn about them too. Nothing feels better than watching my students find out that they have similar practices and traditions, and then watching them talk about it in English.
Holidays are a perfect example of a great opportunity to talk about cultures and traditions. Naturally, many of my students don’t celebrate a lot of US holidays, so I like to take a little time around the holidays to talk about what the holiday is about, what it means in the US, how we celebrate, and ask my students about how they celebrate (if they do) or if they have any similar holidays in their culture.
With all that said, it is almost Easter in the US and it is the perfect time for an activity that fosters discussion on culture and tradition!
For this activity I suggest starting out with a video on Easter traditions. If you have beginner student, you will want to pre-teach some common words associated with Easter. I love using videos for things like this because it’s a great opportunity for students to practice their listening skills through the video itself or your oral explanation of what’s happening. It also provides a little visual interest for students. If your classroom doesn’t allow for or have the technology to show a video iSL Collective has great Easter worksheets like this one about Easter traditions that you could use instead.
Here is a video from USA Today about 5 Easter traditions from around the world. This video is perfect for beginners because it is silent and you can explain the captions on whatever level your students are at.
If you have intermediate or advanced students, another option is this video that discusses ten unique Easter traditions around the world. The language is a bit more complex so I don’t recommend it for beginning students.
As students watch the video, you could have them write down the traditions that they hear about to incorporate a bit of writing practice into the lesson. Giving students something to do during the video also helps them keep their minds focused on the video and not wandering through a hazy sea of English words.
After the video I like to have students tell me what they thought about the video and something new that they learned from it. Some students will be able to share right away, and some students will need a little time to think about it. I personally like to give students 5 minutes to gather their thoughts before we start the discussion because it improves my chances of getting everyone to speak, but as always do what works best for your class.
Once you’re done discussing the video, share how you and your family celebrate Easter (if you celebrate) and then ask your students to do the same. I teach virtually, so I like to transcribe what my students share onto the screen in a table so that other students can read along. For your students who don’t celebrate Easter, reinforce that is perfectly fine to not celebrate Easter and instead ask if they have a similar holiday in their culture or what they do instead on Easter. If time permits, you can take this information on holiday celebrations and use it to practice all kinds of English activities. For example, Wh- questions like “Who spends Easter morning at church with their family?”, creating a chart and writing sentences about the similarities and differences between people’s celebrations.
This activity could be as short as 15 minutes or as long as 40 minutes depending on whether or not you expand on the students discussions, so it could fit into nearly any lesson plan. I hope that this activity makes into some of your classrooms this Easter! If it does, make sure to come back and tell us how it went in the comments below. If you have a different activity planned for Easter, feel free to tell us about it in the comments as well! We love to hear about what you all are doing in your classrooms.
For more Easter activity ideas check out this blog post on Fluent U’s website that has 6 Easter activity ideas.
Check back with us later for more ESL resources, tips, advice, and activity ideas. As always, Happy Teaching!
Taynim Johnson