Are you looking for some fun Christmas middle school activities to do with your students? Then you’ve come to the right place! I’ve got just the activities to do during the time before Christmas that will help your students talk and write about Christmas, learn about Christmas and Christmas carols, and that will help them revise Christmas vocabulary. Let me tell you what I do in my lessons!
The time before Christmas break is always a very busy one. In my school there’s lots of testing going on and there’s just stuff that needs to get done before the holidays. But it is also a really fun time to teach. By the time Christmas rolls around we will already have talked about Thanksgiving and Halloween, and then it’s time for the biggest holiday of all. So what can we do with our students for Christmas?
The best Christmas activities for students in middle school: speaking
What is one of my fav Christmas activities for middle schoolers? My absolute favorite thing to do with students is hands-down getting them to talk. I love to hear their opinions and their thoughts on all the things! They are always so original! So what I like to do is ask my students questions about the holiday. For this year I’ve already prepared a set of discussion cards that I will give each small group and that they will have discussions on.
If you’re looking for ready-made questions because you don’t want to come up with them yourself, then check out my set of discussion cards here. But you can also easily come up with your own questions. Ask them what they like about Christmas, what foods they eat at Christmas, and what they think of Santa Claus.
Or writing..
Another thing I love to do with students is writing. I love to give my students writing prompts that they have to answer. It will really give them a chance to think about their opinions and their thoughts and it will help them practice their language skills, their grammar and vocabulary. This activity also gives them a chance to show how well they can write a paragraph, how persuasive they are, and how much flow they can bring to a piece of text.
For that purpose I have prepared lined sheets with writing prompts at the top for my students to complete. Wanna check those out? Go here.
Vocabulary of Christmas activities for middle school
One of the most important things about learning about a holiday is also learning about the vocabulary that is used in connection to it. I try to come up with original ways to teach my students Christmas vocabulary that I hope they will remember. You can easily use a worksheet for this or a crossword puzzle, but for this purpose I use games.
In my lessons I use dominoes and memory games, in which students have to find matches between the words and the pictures. Once they have already learned the vocabulary I can also use a ‘match the pictures’ game. I feel like connecting words to pictures is very valuable in learning new vocabulary. You can probably find some games like these online but I have some too in my store! Check them out here if you wanna see.
Free Christmas activities for middle school students
One of my favorite things to do with students is teach them about any holidays that are celebrated in English-speaking countries. That’s why I use my choice board with 9 activities for students to learn more about Christmas. It contains exercises in which they have to watch videos, read texts, practice celebration vocabulary, and analyze an infographic about Christmas spending. It’s a freebie I have in my store, if you want to check it out!
And now for my favorite activity..
… deconstructing Christmas carols! I’ve made a packet of worksheets with the lyrics to six different Christmas carols, and a set of questions about all of them. Questions are about vocabulary, about the meaning of the song, and about conventions of lyrics. It’s always a super fun lesson that I really enjoy teaching, and students really enjoy learning the meaning behind songs they know so well! If you feel like it, check out this packet here!
So there you have it, my plans for teaching about Christmas! I hope I’ve given you some ideas for your lessons. Remember to start planning those lessons ahead of time, because before you know it we’re there! Good luck and have fun!
If we’re not near enough to Christmas when you’re reading this, check out these articles:
Top 3 awesome Halloween writing prompts that students will love
How to create the easiest and most fun lessons about Thanksgiving
