EASTER ESL GAMES
By Mia Tarau
Spring, sunshine, flowers blooming, chocolate – how could anyone NOT love Easter?
Bring this excitement into your classroom with these ESL games below 😊
1. Read-and-Paint Easter Eggs
If you are able to source enough supplies such as wooden eggs, paints, and brushes for your entire student cohort, this is a fun way to engage a higher-level class in a creative, artsy reading-based lesson.
Activity steps:
1. Start by introducing Easter traditions with a reading activity; you could use parts of Cadbury’s ‘The Story of Easter and Easter Eggs’ (you can access it here: CLICK HERE ) – adapt it for the needs of your class.
2. Develop a set of questions based on this sheet: adjust the difficulty of the reading questions to your students’ level, getting them to engage with the history of painting Easter eggs while also practicing their reading skills. Win-win!
3. You could then show some videos of Easter egg painting traditions from around the world to inspire the next step of the activity.
4. Have the students paint some Easter eggs of their own.
STEP IT UP: Make it a competition with a nice prize that your class would be excited about, based on a class vote – just make sure EVERYONE receives an Easter egg as a reward for their effort!
2. Easter Egg Vocabulary Hunt and Story Writing
This activity is great because it can be adjusted to any vocabulary level.
Activity steps:
1. Prepare a set of Easter-related words relevant to your class (from ‘eggs’ and ‘bunny’ for a beginner class to ‘traditions’, ‘manufacture’, or ‘assortment’ for a higher level class); hide them in plastic Easter eggs or just around the classroom/classroom floor/schoolyard or garden, if appropriate.
2. Split your class into pairs or into groups of 3 or 4 – whatever best suits your cohort.
3. Give your teams or groups a time limit to hunt for the eggs; encourage them to find as many as they can.
4. Students will write a story using all the words in the eggs they collected. Set the word limit for the story depending on the level of your students.
STEP IT UP: Make it a group competition with a nice prize that your class would be excited about. Display the stories around the class; get all groups to walk around the class and read the story, voting for their favourite – just make sure EVERYONE receives an Easter egg as a reward for their effort!
Happy Easter!