Holidays and Celebrations: English Lesson Plans for Primary School Students
Holidays, celebrations, and other festivities offer fantastic opportunities to teach English, especially to young English language learners. Holidays let teachers and students break out of their normal classroom routines with fun activities.
Teaching about traditions and celebrations may help keep students engaged throughout the year. And incorporating interactive English activities like songs, dances, and games make these holiday-related English lessons even more fun!
I created the English lesson plans on this page to use with first, second, and third grade students in a bilingual primary school in Spain. As an auxiliar de conversación, I taught my students the English language through academic and extracurricular classes. My job also included teaching about my home country and the culture and traditions I was exposed to growing up. So whenever it came time for a holiday, I took the opportunity to teach my students about how my family celebrated the holiday in the United States.
Since I put together these English lesson plans for kids in Spain, these are technically materials for teaching English as a foreign language (TEFL). However, I think these materials could also be used with students who are learning English as a second language (ESL), and for teaching English to speakers of other languages in general (ESOL).
The English lesson plans below include a variety of activities to help keep kids engaged and excited to learn. In the presentations, you’ll find English songs, dances, educational videos, games, and other classroom activities.
I’ve listed these holiday English lesson plans alphabetically. On this page, you’ll find lesson plans for Andalusia Day, Christmas, Easter, Halloween, Thanksgiving, and Valentine’s Day.
Andalusia Day
I created this lesson plan for Andalusia Day to teach about Andalusia and its holiday in English. I know it might seem a little counter-intuitive to teach about a Spanish autonomous community in English in Spain, but as an auxiliar de conversación, it was my job to provide a complementary English lesson to whatever my students were learning about in Spanish.
The lesson plan starts with some informational questions about Andalusia Day and Andalusia itself. Then, there’s a brief English speaking activity where students have to say where they live and where they are from. Finally, there are a couple of YouTube videos about Andalusia to break up the lesson a bit and to engage the students with a visual component.
To download the English lesson plan for Andalusia Day as a Google Slides or Microsoft PowerPoint presentation, click here.
Christmas
This lesson plan teaches students about Christmas traditions common in the United States of America. It describes decorating Christmas trees, giving and receiving presents, making gingerbread houses, singing Christmas carols, and doing acts of kindness to spread Christmas cheer.
The Christmas lesson plan includes two English songs, an English dance, and an English speaking activity for the entire class to participate.
To download the English lesson plan for Christmas as a Google Slides or Microsoft PowerPoint presentation, click here.
Easter
For Easter, I created a colorful spring-themed presentation with a variety of activities to teach about the holiday in English. There are a couple of English songs, a few English dances, and a couple more English videos about Easter. This one is a lively lesson, and the Easter dances in particular are great for getting students moving and engaged in English language learning.
To download the English lesson plan for Easter as a Google Slides or Microsoft PowerPoint presentation, click here.
Halloween
Halloween was the first holiday I celebrated with my students in Spain. So I was really excited to prepare this English lesson on Halloween. At the time, my students were learning about the parts of the body in their natural sciences class. Because of that, this presentation includes a lot of English body parts vocabulary.
This Halloween English lesson plan also includes a few songs help students engage with the English language by listening and singing. My first, second, and third grade students had a lot of fun with this lesson.
To download the English lesson plan for Halloween as a Google Slides or Microsoft PowerPoint presentation, click here.
Thanksgiving
To teach about Thanksgiving in English, I had to start from scratch since my young European students didn’t know anything about the holiday beyond the involvement of a turkey. So this lesson plan includes the story of Thanksgiving as well as a description of how people celebrate Thanksgiving in the United States today.
There’s an English video, an English song, and an English dance. Plus, there’s an English speaking activity where students say what they’re thankful for!
To download the English lesson plan for Thanksgiving as a Google Slides or Microsoft PowerPoint presentation, click here.
Valentine’s Day
Valentine’s Day is a great opportunity to teach English, because you can have your students make their own Valentine’s cards in English! Writing Valentine’s letters is an excellent way to get your students to practice writing in English without making them feel like they’re mindlessly copying the board. Instead, they get to be creative as they think of the kind things they want to express to the recipient of their Valentine.
In addition to that activity, I created a lesson plan to teach primary school students about Valentine’s Day in English. This lesson plan includes some questions and information about the holiday and how it is celebrated. There are also a couple of fun English songs, and there’s a Valentine’s Day dance, too.
To download the English lesson plan for Valentine’s Day as a Google Slides or Microsoft PowerPoint presentation, click here.
Happy holidays to you and your students!
