5 Minutes Prep - 2 Hour Interactive Lesson!
Oops! I almost forgot Victoria Day. Did you? Here's a simple Victoria Day strip story reading for low beginner ESL or literacy students that conveys the basics about the holiday. A cloze passage follows. Feel free to download the PDF for your ELLs by clicking on the image below. You can also find more free Victoria Day material here. Let me know how it goes and if you come up with any great follow up exercises.
Your ESL or EFL students will notice people wearing green on March 17th and may see shamrocks and leprechauns. Help them crack our cultural code with a lesson on St. Patrick's Day. Teachers are welcome to download the following strip story for low beginners for non-commercial classroom use. Click on the images and a PDF lesson will pop up that you can print out. If it is too low for your students, perhaps you could pass it on to another teacher as low beginner materials are often hard to find.
Labour Day / Labor Day is celebrated in both Canada and America on the first Monday in September. I've created strip stories and worksheets for American and Canadian ELL students that are free for non-commercial classroom teacher use only. Just click on the images below and a PDF will pop up that you can print out. If they are too simple for your level, please pass them on to a teacher who could use them or send them a link to this page. If you are looking for something for intermediate level, check out this page.
Not all countries celebrate Father's Day (or even Mother's Day) so it's a nice tradition to teach students about. If you have adult students, even if they don't plan to celebrate, they may be surprised to get a card their son or daughter has made in elementary school.
This lesson is suited to classes learning the names of Canada's provinces and territories and their abbreviations and to those learning the names of the statutory holidays of Canada. It is also relevant to study of employment law.
The New Year's story below is geared to literacy and low beginner ESL (ELL) and is followed by questions practising what, when, where, and why and then a cloze passage. If you are looking for something for higher beginner or intermediate ESL, try a jigsaw from Callan's Holiday Jigsaws or Callan's American Holiday Jigsaws.
I’ve heard some teachers say that their students were not interested in participating in Halloween. Many others feel that malls are safer locations for children to go trick or treating these days. Here’s a true story of an adult ESL student of mine from Taiwan and her first Halloween here, to illustrate my view that the neighbourhood tradition of trick or treating is a worthwhile one we should teach students about.