5 Minutes Prep - 2 Hour Interactive Lesson!
Did you know that Boxing Day, the holiday on the day after Christmas, does not exist in America? It is a federal holiday celebrated in Canada, England, Scotland, Wales, Ireland, Australia, and New Zealand. Boxing Day is often characterized by shopping since stores usually have their best sales of the year on that day, similar to Black Friday in the U.S. Teaching about holidays helps our students crack our cultural code.
The Christmas story below is geared for literacy and low beginner ELL students. It is adapted from Callan’s Canadian Holidays for Low Beginner ESL, but is suitable for use in America as well. Further low beginner exercises on Christmas, with pictures, are found in that book. An audio CD and cloze exercise are also available. (For free material for mid-beginner or intermediate level, check out my blog post on Christmas from last year, here. Or why not try a jigsaw lesson for Christmas? Check out Callan's Holiday Jigsaws.)
As tax season approaches, we often teach a unit on money. With low beginners, I structure my unit around learning numbers, counting, asking and saying prices, the names of bills and coins, and finally the task of asking for change. I've put together some exercises for Canadian and American teachers on asking for change.
Many teachers who teach English as an additional language are mothers. In the spirit of thanks to mothers everywhere, I'm sharing a couple pages from my low beginner holidays book for free, to use in your class. I hope you find them useful.
I've created an interactive activity for low beginner ESL to practice page directions. You'll find your class runs smoother when you can draw students' attention to where the class is looking on the page you're working on and make sure everyone is following. You're welcome to download my materials for free to use in your classroom.
Anyone who teaches very low beginner ESL knows that you spend a lot of time going over basic personal information questions and answers, often trying to come up with yet another new way to approach the same old material.