ceciliafelsenstein Engaging Students with the Holiday Spirit
The holiday season is a great time to bring some festive energy into the classroom. As a high school English Language Arts (ELA) teacher, you can integrate Christmas-themed activities into your lessons, blending the joy of the season with educational objectives. These activities not only engage students but also foster creativity, critical thinking, and a love for literature. Here are some fun and meaningful Christmas activities that will make your classroom festive, educational, and memorable.
Exploring Christmas Stories with Critical Thinking and Grammar Skills
Combine the joy of reading Christmas-themed stories with skill-building in critical thinking, reading comprehension, and grammar. Two wonderful stories for this season are: “The Gift of the Magi” and “Christmas Day in the Morning“.
Expanding Christmas Vocabulary
Work with your students on Christmas vocabulary. You can make them use the words in context, make a crossword puzzle, look for specific parts of speech, etc. If you want to go on practising the words with your students, you can check out some written or oral activities to review vocabulary items.
Exploring and Using Christmas Idioms
Christmas idioms are a fun way to connect language learning with the festive season. This activity helps students understand the meanings, origins, and applications of Christmas-related idioms while improving their figurative language skills.
Christmas-themed Taboo Game
This festive spin on the classic game “Taboo” encourages students to build their vocabulary, think creatively, and practice effective communication—all while getting into the Christmas spirit!
Split the class into two or more teams, depending on the size of your group. Each team takes turns trying to guess the target word based on one teammate’s descriptions. The describer must get their team to guess the target word without using any of the taboo words on the card.The describer cannot use gestures, rhyming clues, or spelling out the word. If they use a taboo word or break the rules, the opposing team gets a point.
This Christmas-themed Taboo game is a lively, interactive way to build vocabulary, foster teamwork, and enjoy the holiday season in your classroom!
Writing Christmas-themed Haiku Poems
This activity combines the simplicity and beauty of haiku poetry with the festive spirit of Christmas, helping students practice creativity, word choice, and syllable counting.
If you click on this link, you will find a resource with information on what a haiku is, how to write one and 3 Christmas- themed templates.
Holiday-themed Creative Writing Prompts
Encourage students to write by offering them a variety of prompts to cater for different interests. Check this post for more activities on narrative writing.
This activity nurtures creativity, strengthens writing skills, and adds a touch of holiday magic to the classroom!
Project: Analyzing a Christmas Song
This activity combines music appreciation with critical thinking and literary analysis, encouraging students to explore themes, language, and the cultural significance of Christmas songs. This is another activity which seems to be just fun but aims at working on figurative language, song analysis, research and communication skills. Your students won’t even realize they are working!
Incorporating Christmas-themed activities into your ELA classroom keeps students engaged while continuing to build their literary and language skills. These activities can help foster a sense of community and joy as the semester winds down.
What are your favorite holiday activities for high school ELA? Share them in the comments!
