Contextualizing Activities - Erica and Allison

Our activity

We selected "Happy Hopliday Hootinanny" from Dave's ESL Cafe. We're henceforth going to call it Holiday Charades. This activity essentially asks students to act out in groups different holidays from cards they draw. There is a word bank of holidays on the board. The cards list the holiday and activities related to its celebration. Each team must act out what is on the card, and points are given and taken away based on correct guesses, good acting, etc.

We feel this activity would be appropriate for students school age and up into adulthood. It could also be used in any setting. The proficiency level is appropriate to at least intermediate students and beyond. It might be difficult for beginning level students because of the vocabulary and exposure to the specific holidays.

For advanced learners, you could remove the listing of activities from the card, leaving only the holiday name. This way the students demonstrating cultural awareness as well as literal understanding of the language.

For very beginning level learners, we would modify this activity to involve physical activities instead of holidays. For example, the students would play charades while practicing the basic vocabulary for physical activities like jumping, standing, sitting, walking, etc.

In terms of institutional setting, this activity might vary depending on ESL vs. EFL settings. The original activity called for the teacher explaining the holidays more in-depth after they were guessed correctly. Depending on the proficiency level in an ESL setting, more prep work to familiarize students with the holidays needs to take place before the activity, and the game could actually be used as an informal assessment.

In an EFL setting, depending on the proficiency level of your class, you could adjust this activity to include native holidays in translation for beginners, to teach vocabulary of already familiar concepts. In intermediate settings, the game could involve holidays in common between the native country and English-speaking countries (for example, in China, you could play the game with New Year's, and after the holiday is guessed, explain the difference in celebrations in the two places). For advanced level students, the game could be played exclusively with holidays in English-speaking countries, to familiarize students with not only vocabulary, but cultural expressions in English-speaking locations.