Teachers' Zone 7

Teachers' Zone 7

TEACHERS’ ZONE 7 - EASTER CELEBRATIONS

The most beautiful and hopeful time of the year has just started, which means some of us are about to begin Easter preparations. I have found two suggestions to be used in our lessons that I consider to be quite versatile and not so obvious.

The first one comes from https://www.fluentu.com/blog/educator-english/easter-esl-activities/ and is about creating an Easter Lunch Menu. It is not only an opportunity to revise food-related vocabulary as well as cooking instructions language, and learn in more details about hot cross buns, chocolate eggs, roasted leg of lamb or chicken but also to have students design their own Easter menu. It can be used to find out more about any given dish- its origin, way of cooking, it can be used to compare Polish and foreign traditions.

Another great source is  https://www.engvid.com/learn-all-about-easter/, where you can find an 18-minute long video that tells us all   about Easter- its  symbols, religious origin, way of celebrating. Our upper-intermediate and advanced students may find it too easy, still it a great option for groups that are not so comfortable when it comes to English. We could  ask students to watch the video and then answer  comprehension questions such as:

  1. What are the Easter symbols connected with?
  2. What are the religious origins of Easter celebrations?
  3. How is it celebrated in the UK?
  4. When is Easter celebrated?
  5. What are your traditions connected with Easter?

If  the video seems  too long  for you we can  focus on symbols only ( then it is about 5 minutes long) or any other chosen part. We can also divide students in groups and ask them to watch a different part each. After watching their bit they could tell the other what it was about and sum it up all together. To give you some tips here is how you may split Gill’s lesson:

What are Easter symbols? 01:30

What is Easter bonnet tradition about? 06:03

What does a “ public holiday” mean here? 07:10

What are the religious origins of Easter? 09:02

What is the secular side of Easter? 13:53

When is Easter celebrated? 15:31

In that way we involve each student and can increase student talking time as well as encourage group work.

So, I hope the ideas help you at that busy time of the year!

Happy Easter and have a magic spring!