Five Easter Inspired Class Activities
It’s that time of the year again – the Christian festival of Easter. From Palm Sunday at the start of the Holy Week to Easter Sunday, Christians around the world celebrate the rebirth of Christ. And for those less pious, there are chocolate eggs.
Easter also provides a perfect opportunity for those teaching English as a foreign language to spice up their lesson by giving their class some interesting activities. So, here are a few suggestions to do the same with your own class…
Easter Sentence Matching
A well-known game, but with an Easter twist. Make up a worksheet displaying two columns of phrases. Your students must match a phrase on the left column with another on the right to correctly create a sentence. Remember to make them Easter related – this way, your students will be improving their English whilst learning about the holiday! This activity, like the others on the list, are more suited towards younger students. However, the difficulty can be increased for more advanced students.
Easter Egg Hunt
A favourite activity for many on Easter, finding chocolate eggs will go down a treat for students of all ages (well, perhaps mainly the younger ones). Of course, there needs to be a little bit of TEFL involved, too. So, for every egg a student find, you have to ask them an Easter related question in English and expect an answer in English. This game may be a little difficult for larger classes – imagine 30-odd children running around your classroom hunting for eggs!
A popular tradition amongst many families (including my own), painting Easter eggs can be a great way for your students to improve their vocabulary. Get your class to paint faces, they can be Easter related, favourite movie characters etc. and then ask your pupils to name the various facial features drawn on their eggs. Letting your students create what they speak should help them to memorise the vocab much more easily. For a bit of fun, find a hill to roll down your eggs – make sure they’re boiled first!
Egg and Spoon Race
Get students out of their seats competing against one another in this fun Easter game. To effectively teach whilst having fun, split your class into two teams. Then, race a person from each team at a time. The team with the most winners has to then come up with Easter-related questions to ask the other team. Use your already decorated eggs if you want.
Fill in the Blanks
A fairly basic but interesting class activity. For this, create a worksheet where there is a paragraph telling the story of Jesus Christ’s resurrection. Every few words should be left blank for your students to figure out. Underneath, have a word bank to aid them. As well as a fun little story, it also forces your pupils to think carefully about which words work and why. Again, for more advanced students lengthen the text and increase the difficulty of the missing words.
And, of course, there are the simpler games: word-searches, colouring in, crossword puzzles etc. – all of which are just as useful when it comes to teaching English and injecting some fun into the classroom. All you need is a little bit of imagination and Easter passion, and you’ll be sorted for class time.
Make sure to try some of these out. Happy Easter!