 Welcome! I hope you can all see me here even I'm disappearing half into my background and I'm also wearing this headpiece here but you can't really see it it's also disappearing in the background but anyway welcome to today's live session all about the holidays I thought we're gonna try something different try something new today and we are right before Christmas so why not have a holiday themed live session today so hi welcome if you can see me if you can hear me please just drop a hi into the comment section I would really appreciate that and let me know where you're watching from today where are you located I am in South Korea if you've watched before you know this my name is Linda and I've been living in South Korea for seven and a half years and I'm here for ITTT and yeah I just want to say happy holidays to everybody first off and I know that some of you guys might be thinking hey this is all great this topic today but why are you doing this ripe over Christmas we needed this information a little earlier and I feel you I hear you but the good thing about today's topic and the information that I'm gonna share with you today and kind of the tips and tricks you can actually adapt these to any holiday so whether it is an Easter a class or you know Halloween or whatever it is you can actually use this information that I'm gonna share with you today not only for the holidays and Christmas but for any other holiday so either way this is just good to know as a teacher because there are a lot of holidays and we love to incorporate holiday themed things into our lessons anyway it's it's a lot of fun especially if you like the holiday I really like Christmas that's why I am dressed up like this today and even though I'm a little bit disappearing in the background I hope you can still see it and appreciate it and maybe you also dressed up I don't know that be cute if you did let me know in the comments what you're wearing if you wear something Christmasy yeah and just right of the bat also don't forget to like and subscribe we have weekly live sessions and as you can see even during the holiday period we are here for you we are still having live sessions we're not going on a break so these are weekly events that are happening and they're free so why not join if you are a teacher or if you're interested in becoming a English teacher abroad or online this is all free information and if you want to stay up-to-date and just get as much information about EFL and Teflon TESOL you know just subscribe and like we're live on Facebook and on YouTube so subscribe to our YouTube channel like our Facebook page and we're also on all the other social channels as you know it just yeah why not it's free so also so this is today's topic and let me just add this in so we can see it teaching English during the holidays tips and tricks for your EFL classes that's what we're gonna talk about today and also I think this is right up next yes we do have 30% off if you're watching for the first time you might not know this but every live session I share a 30% off discount with you guys so this is not just today because it's Christmas but also every live session actually very special so what you can do either you scan this QR code that you see here and you can also see this in the upper right hand corner so throughout the live session you can just scan it with your phone if you like if you can't scan it if you're using your phone to watch obviously you can't scan it we also have a link that you can just copy paste so let me share that with you as well looks like this yeah it ends with Facebook live minus Linda and if you copy paste this link you will see an application page and you can fill out your application and I think it also says at the top right away congratulations you get 30% off or something like that so if you're not get Tefl or T-cell certified and you want to really start and kick off your teaching career in the new year this is a great chance an opportunity for you to get certified and get that certification that allows you to teach English abroad or online so yeah and maybe this 30% off is a good incentive to do so and get started and I think I talked about that in my last live session so we usually kind of recommend getting started with Tefl and T-cell and like the whole EFL teaching thing about a year before you want to teach depends on where you want to go but a year is probably very good if you start a year before your desired start date for teaching English abroad if you want to teach English online obviously this usually works a lot quicker because you don't have to move there you don't have all the visa prep and stuff but for teaching English abroad depending on where you go it's a good idea to start about a year in advance so maybe this is a good time or also six months between six months in a year sort of so yeah maybe 2023 will be your year where you go and go abroad and teach or you just finally start that teaching career so anyway a little bit maybe about myself first if you're watching for the first time and you have no idea who I am just a quick introduction so my name is Linda and I'm a travel writer and content creator under the name Linda goes East because I'm super interested in Asia I love Asian cultures and traveling Asia I've been living in South Korea for seven and a half years and before that I also lived in China so yeah Asia is kind of my thing and that's why Linda goes East so if you're also interested in maybe pursuing a teaching career in Asia I recommend checking out my website Linda goes East comm or also my Instagram at Linda goes East I share a lot of travel content on there I'm originally from Germany and the US so my mom is German my dad is American and I'm yeah I'm I live in South Korea and like I said I've also taught English in China before and I'm teaching in Korea and I'm also working for ITTT which is why I'm here today and ITTT if you don't know stands for international TEFL and TESOL training and you can find us at TEFL course net and yeah ITTT is a leading TEFL and TESOL course provider worldwide we've been around for over 25 years and have partnerships affiliations and creditations we're one of the best if you Google TEFL courses chances are ITTT is gonna show up very high in those search results that's how I also found out about about ITTT back in I think it was 2014 when I got TEFL certified and I was looking for yeah a TEFL course provider so yeah that's that and we have Amitava here today hi Amitava how are you doing how are you doing I'm very well oh and I need to mute my phone so we don't get distracted here how are you doing today thanks so much for joining yeah so yeah this is what we're gonna talk about today again teaching English during the holidays and I just see a lot more people joining now it sometimes takes a couple minutes to to get some traction with the live sessions but yeah like I said earlier so you might be thinking why are we doing this topic so last minute we should have talked about this earlier so we could have used it in our lessons but actually the information that I'm gonna show you today you can use this in any kind of holiday themed class so whether you're teaching you know Christmas or you're teaching class on Easter or on Halloween it doesn't matter you can use this information what I'm gonna present to you today in any holiday themed lesson or class that you're gonna teach in the future so yeah Amitava says I'm fine it is 7 10 a.m. in Calcutta oh yeah so early thank you so much for tuning in and I know you guys can't see because my background is hiding it but I'm a little reindeer today so I thought I would put this on because we're talking about Christmas but then the background things it is part of my background I do not have a green screen Daniel says hey Linda getting in the Christmas mood already yes you bad can't you see everything is Christmas here today and Daniel says I'm just tuning in thank you so much for tuning in I appreciate it thank you so much Daniel Amitava anyone else watching say just leave a high in the comment section you know and where you're watching from I would appreciate that so that I know who you are and who I'm talking to so that'd be great again you know the drill 30% off I just mentioned it a couple minutes ago I shared the link in the comments so you can check it out and get 30% off your TEFL course then I already did that as well so I want to move straight into today's agenda and I'm not sure if this is too small but I'm gonna keep it like that for now so today we're gonna talk about kind of the challenges and opportunities for holiday themed lessons in your EFL classrooms there are a lot of opportunities a lot of benefits why you should do a Christmas themed or holiday themed lesson in your classroom and teach that to your students but there are also some challenges so we're gonna look at that and we're gonna look at how you can exactly incorporate holiday themed lessons and activities or holiday themed well activities into your lessons or holiday themed lessons into your curriculum how is that gonna look like we're also gonna look at how you can create a festive learning environment both in the physical classroom and also in the virtual classroom because a lot of people are teaching online these days so we gotta cover that as well and then the last point is navigating cultural differences if you're teaching English abroad in different country they might not celebrate the holidays exactly the way that you do at home so we have to navigate these cultural differences they the especially young students they might not be familiar with all of that so how can we deal with it or also if you're working in a multicultural classroom right kids or students from many different backgrounds how can we navigate cultural differences and make sure that everybody is included and everybody feels welcome and nobody's left out so that's we're gonna talk about today and as you can see these topics really you can adapt these to any holiday not just Christmas you can adapt this to Halloween you can adapt this to Easter Hanukkah whatever there is you can adapt the Chinese New Year whatever Lunar New Year so everything works here alright Amitabha says you are just you are just in the pre Christmas Eve mood Linda good keep it up I am and I'm a bit upset that you cannot really see my reindeer thing here because the background but the background is also Christmasy so I guess and my outfit is Christmasy so kind of makes up for that but yeah anyway so yeah that's we're gonna talk about today and my throat luckily is also feeling better so we are getting there so let's jump right in and I am gonna make myself smaller so we can all read the slides I'm still gonna be here so let's talk a little bit about the challenges first so there are several challenges when incorporating holiday traditions and customs into English as a foreign language if lessons so the first one might be excuse me the limited time for lesson planning and preparation the holiday season in many countries actually is a kind of a is kind of a downtime in a lot of schools and a lot of school years are coming to an end even in Korea here it's kind of the end and people are on winter break and depending on where you're teaching it might be like that so maybe in some schools you might only have like one lesson where you can actually do something Christmasy so not a lot of time and you really need to pick and choose your activities and what you want to do in that limited time and also kind of prep ahead which is funny because we're doing this live session now right before Christmas but if you really want to do sort of like a Christmas holiday themed lesson you really need to plan ahead ahead of time to kind of fit it into your schedule and sometimes depending on your curriculum you need to make sure you finish everything you need to do all the book pages and everything you need to teach before your Christmas themed lesson sometimes some other schools you know they give you more time it just depends on where you're teaching and also the second point is there are many distractions and disrupted schedules for students so sometimes I know this from my own school days a lot of students a lot of my friends sometimes even did not we're not there during this holiday season you know some parents took them out and they went already on winter vacation earlier or they had to go you know visit family so you might not even have all of your students in the classroom and then also they the students get already distracted because it is holiday season so they get excited they might not pay that much attention right they might be a little bit hyper so those are all things you kind of need to deal with and then also depending on the school you work at they might be limited access to resources or materials so if your school kind of has a winter break or something and the library might already be closed and you can't really get your materials or it is a busy time and you don't have access to the computer or the printer or whatnot you need to make sure that you just have that planned out luckily with materials and resources nowadays online obviously you can find a lot of materials and I'm also going to show you some ITTT materials you can use in your holiday themed classes and there's really probably even too much to choose from to be honest when you when you Google that and you search online for like Christmas worksheets and all that so maybe you get even a little overwhelmed because there's so much material out there and you really need to pick and choose and kind of do it down I think it's probably better to just focus on a few key activities rather than having too much right so yeah those are the challenges those this is what you might be dealing with during this time when it comes to teaching and then of course we also have the benefits the opportunities so there are many benefits when teaching holiday themed lessons the first one is that it really enriches students cultural understanding and appreciation right especially if they are in a country you're teaching in a country where Christmas is not really a thing then they learn something new and they appreciate a new culture so that's really good and it is also a fun way actually to engage and motivate and energize your students because like we said the holiday season the holiday time might be a little bit of a downtime especially in countries like here in Korea where they actually have exam season and it just finished now so they might actually be not motivated to study anymore so if you come out with a fun like Christmas class they might actually get motivated and back into it before you know after this this hard exam period for example and this also is a great opportunity to learn new vocabulary because holiday vocabulary usually is very specific and is not usually part of the regular English classes in the curriculum so this is the opportunity for students to learn a lot of new words that they otherwise actually wouldn't learn and also then practice this new vocabulary and expressions in an authentic context because the great thing about holiday themed lessons is that you can use for example especially Christmas time you can use Christmas movies you can use Christmas songs those are all authentic resources and materials and it's just a great way to incorporate that because sometimes teachers are struggling to kind of fit in authentic materials so authentic materials are not made for the classroom so textbooks and like workbooks and all those things they are specifically made for the classroom students and they have a very different English than authentic materials so authentic materials are materials basically used by native speakers so this could be newspapers or like we said like songs actual songs actual like articles actual books things like that those are authentic materials and we love to incorporate those in our classrooms but sometimes it is hard so if you use a holiday themed lesson it's actually a great way to incorporate authentic materials and then lastly of course especially if you if you work in a multicultural classroom where students are from many different backgrounds this is just a great opportunity for cultural exchange and you can really motivate and engage discussion through share having the students share their own holiday traditions and customs so even if they don't maybe celebrate Christmas you could ask them you know is there a holiday that is kind of similar or has a similar vibe like Christmas where you celebrate with your family it's about getting together with family spending time with family eating a lot of food with your family so is there a similar holiday maybe in your culture that has a similar theme to it with family and usually any culture has this kind of holiday so I actually had a lesson yesterday where we talked about that and this was with a new Korean student that I had and obviously Christmas is not a Korean holiday and I explained that to her with like in Korea they have Lunar New Year like Chinese New Year so that's kind of a similar vibe where you celebrate like with your family you get together and yeah you cook food and that's kind of also what Christmas is in the West so I kind of explained it like that so you can have a cultural exchange here and I think that's really really important okay I just want to ask you guys is there another benefit or another opportunity that you would add here to this list or any comments that you have because I know you guys are also from many different cultures and countries here watching so maybe if you guys have a comment or an idea or if you already have experience with teaching holiday themed lessons let me know kind of how you approach this and what you think the benefits are if you think back maybe to your own English lessons or your own you know background your own school time let me know in the comments that be really interesting what's also for me like because I also I'm German and American and I was born and raised in Germany most of the time so we Christmas is very big in Germany and we have like a very different Christmas culture I think than Americans it is similar in many ways but also very different and a very big thing obviously in Germany are the Christmas markets and that's such a big part of our culture in Europe and I also really like kind of tell I like to tell people and my students about that part of Christmas as well because it's very special and very different so maybe something like that is there something like that in your country or in your culture let me know in the comments please I know there is there must be so somebody better comment there's always something like that so let me know right now let me know below I'm waiting I'm waiting for that I'm not moving on into somebody comments about that so do you have experience teaching English teaching holiday themed lessons and are there any other benefits that you would add to this list or something different how you would explain that to students who are not from a western country who are from a different culture how you can kind of compare Christmas to another culture let me know and then we're gonna talk about the next part of this presentation please please please let me know okay thank you Daniel I appreciate it so Daniel says I find it quite fascinating to learn about the differences between cultures regarding holidays and how they match at some point yeah perfect yeah and this is all what basically today's live session is about so that's great thank you awesome okay so these were the benefits and now let's talk about how we can incorporate holiday themed lessons and activities into our classroom and here we're gonna differentiate between the physical classroom so an actual classroom if you teach in an actual school and the virtual classroom and here I already picked a few things for example what you can do this we're gonna talk about some inspirational pictures here for you but let's jump right in so oh yeah this was first activities content ideas and then we're gonna talk about decoration alright and here I kind of split it up between three categories obviously there are more or they are kind of interlapping but I just kind of sorted it like this organized it by speaking reading and like more hands-on activities so I think with any holiday themed lesson if this is the first time that you're teaching this it's always a great idea to just start off by introducing holiday themed vocabulary right a lot of times these holiday lessons are all about new and different vocabulary so you want to get that down first so people know Santa Christmas tree mistletoe reindeer we had I taught that yesterday so I know all of the vocabulary all of these things get that out of the way first so kind of people know where the students know what's gonna happen and then you can also use different idioms in speaking and writing activities so usually every holiday kind of has an idiom attached to it so like kind of like a quote or a saying an expression right so you can really easily incorporate these in speaking and writing activities and then you can also for speaking things you can plan holiday themed role plays those really work well for example for for holidays season Christmas you have you know Santa obviously and maybe the elves in the workshop or something for you know younger students and then debates work always really well in these kinds of things so you could have that with more advanced students like debates you know even something like do you think Christmas is you know has become a commercial holiday so where it's just about giving gifts but people kind of forget that it's supposed to be all about family and getting together you have a debate about that or you could have a debate about you know what is the what is the better Christmas gift a I don't know something you buy at the store or something you made by yourself and have a debate I mean you could have a debate about literally any two things so debates work really well and then we have reading which is great for holiday themed content you can read and discuss holiday themed text so that's also something that I've done with my students texts about you know origins of Christmas about the history or even text about Santa and the reindeer so this could be any kind of texts or stories poems real articles and here you really can pick and choose for the students level which is really great and then you can also research holiday traditions and customs from different cultures and then compare them with those in your students own culture so kind of what we just talked about in the beginning right where if you teach abroad in a country where Christmas is not really a holiday you can present a few things about Christmas you know getting together with family eating a lot of food giving gifts setting up a tree and then have your students compare these four things with their own culture for example or you could find a text about maybe like four different holidays from different cultures and have them compared what is similar what is different things like that and again this I put it in the reading section of course this could be a writing exercise this could also be a speaking exercise so all of this works and then you have the more hands-on activities so here especially for younger students you can really go in and create holiday themed craft projects or decorations and you can use those decorations then to you know use them in the classroom decorate your craft classroom with it for Christmas or other holidays great singing popular holiday songs and then for more advanced students you can also analyze the lyrics right you can have a song and then focus on every line of the lyrics what does that mean what does that mean what does that mean so that's also really good and you could also if you have a lot of time this is probably hard to do in just one lesson but if you have a lot of time to do holiday content if you're for example doing a winter camp you could have students prepare a holiday themed play and you can either already have like the lines and the text the script written up and give them to memorize or you could have them come up with their own script right so they have to use the vocabulary that you taught them the holiday themed vocabulary they have to use grammar they practice writing because they write the script and then speaking they memorize it and then they act it out maybe if you have like a big i don't know holiday play at your school whatever it is you could have that or you can have it just on a smaller scale you know you could have that group your students and then tell them okay you know write a small play or even just a small dialogue between Santa and the elves between the different reindeer whatever you can do that too so those are just a couple of examples what you could do and again as you can see this is not only for Christmas you can really adapt this to any holiday so you could do this for Halloween for Easter again Lunar New Year whatever it is you can use this and adapt it to the holiday cool any other ideas you have that i maybe missed right now what you really like to use let me know i'm thinking too feel like this is mostly it for content but if there's something that i missed please let me know in the comments and then um yeah i'm sure i mean that there are endless options but these are like the main things i think or is there something different i'm not sure all right cool oh and then yes these are some things for example from ittt that you can use we have some worksheets some are more or less you know interactive um you can use some here with Christmas quizzes and tongue twisters and things like that so you can find that here at our um English minus grammar minus corner and i'm just gonna share the link with you so you can easily check it out i'm not sure if you are aware of this page on our website there are actually a lot of great teaching resources on this page not only for Christmas for anything um and if you click on it it might look a little bit overwhelming so we have it sorted by different topics um but there's just so many options so what you can do is you can just do um what is it control well i'm on max so it's command f like the surge bar and you can type in you know Christmas and then you will see all the Christmas activities um or you could even type in new year i also added we added some new year activities here so you can easily spot those so there are a lot of cool worksheets or other um speaking tips writing information pronouns grammar verbs adjectives conditionals anything you might need for your classroom for your teaching you can find it there um here sorry this is what it looks like in the comments so and this is just an example of our Christmas worksheets but not only Christmas like i said you can find many many different worksheets on here and i bet many of you actually don't know that we have this page so here we go by the way it's just really nice i'm looking out the window here and it's snowing right now it's so cool it really fits in very well with today's topic because it's it's snowing like crazy there's a lot of snow outside it's really nice i wish i could show you but i can't move my laptop right now um i kind of have it stuck on this little stand here for my live sessions but um just imagine there being a lot of snow that is it snowing where you are let me know in the comments do you have do you guys have snow there where you are daniel do you have snow i mean tava i'm probably doesn't have snow right i'm not sure let me know if you have snow oh cool daniel says this is all new teaching info to me so i'd say everything looks great linda oh awesome well i'm glad i'm glad this is all new information i love that awesome cool all right uh now i think we're moving on to um okay yeah this is also important so adapting adapting your content to different age groups and language levels so this is also very important and here kind of you can focus on two main things so one you want to differentiate content and activities based on age and language level and the second one you should provide scaffolding and support okay and have a balance of the two so let's look at the first point first provide simpler texts and vocabulary for younger or lower level students obviously right but that's very important right you might not have a lot of time to prepare this so really make sure that you adapt it to your students levels and this obviously goes with any teaching material right you want to adapt it to to the right age group and to the language level of your students so have something simpler simpler vocabulary shorter texts simpler stories for lower level students and then use more complex texts and vocabulary for older or higher level students right and then providing scaffolding and support so you can just provide obviously additional explanations or examples and this is kind of part also of your TEFL certificate this information is in there because this is part of any lesson planning or any teaching that you need to adapt your lessons and your material to the language level and the age of you students so always provide additional explanations and examples to whatever activity that you want them to do also it's a great idea to break tasks into smaller steps so instead of giving them a whole list of we do this and this and this and this you can first say okay everybody now we do this first and until everybody's done that then we're moving on to the next part so this is especially important for younger students because they cannot remember all five steps of something you really need to go slowly and step by step and then you can always provide support materials especially for texts for example such as word lists or visual aids right you could have flashcards right if you're teaching new vocabulary especially for younger students or also older like visual learners i'm a visual learner too i think so if you have a flashcard on one side you have the word and then on the other side you would show the picture or you would show it together for example that's fine too visual aids so they can kind of just process the information better and word lists so if you have a text you could have a box of the new vocabulary on the left or on the right side or just additional separate paper so they can kind of refer back to that and then you could highlight the new vocabulary and the text kind of made it make it bold or a different color so that they know oh this word is on my word list so if they don't know the word they can quickly look over to the word list and then it kind of has a good flow to it so those are just some ideas how you can adapt your material to different age groups and language levels and if you took a tefl or t-sol course before you should know this information already this is taken actually from the course basically that's why it's good to take a tefl course it teaches you how to teach basically okay great uh yeah now we're gonna jump into creating a festive learning environment so this is all about decorating and fun uh the fun stuff uh Daniel says sadly we've never experienced snow in Mexico City okay you'll probably see snow falling in the north part of the country places that are close to California for example oh wow okay didn't know that hmm i see interesting cool good to know all right all right let's jump into the fun part here so this is what i was talking about decorating ideas and here i split it between the physical classroom and the virtual learning space okay so let's have a look at the physical classroom first and i think everybody kind of knows this but just a few pointers so obviously what you can do to kind of make it more festive in your classroom is to hang holiday themed posters up or banners on the walls or even on the windows if you use like that i don't know what it's called the sea kind of see-through paper um we used to use that to make like lanterns paper lanterns so when you put the the candle in you can see the light from the candle but it's like it's like a see-through colored paper i don't know what that's called but anyway that you can use for example on the on the windows or we used to do you know like those simple like scissor-cut snowflakes um that everybody does in school you can easily do those and then put them on the windows it's just something super simple but it looks really cute um and then obviously if you do any crafts with your students what we talked about as activities to do during holiday themed lessons excuse me lessons any crafts that you do display them right you want to display them in your um classroom and i saw this really cute picture there of the tree um again Pinterest is a really great way to get inspiration so you can go on Pinterest and just type in like holiday themed classroom decorations and it will spit out so much stuff so this tree i thought was really cute because as you can see it's the hands of your students um and it looks so cute so this is so easy they just um you know draw their hands on green paper you cut it out you write everybody's name and maybe like a holiday wish that they have um and you can create this cute little Christmas tree in your classroom i think it's so cute it looks super adorable um yeah something super easy um and then yeah also below that is really cute um i do not know who those children are so i apologize but um you can take your students pictures and then you know have little elves and hang that up in the classroom i think that's also really cute um so yeah the the options are obviously endless and again Pinterest is a great resource for that um you could also have holiday themed table covers or centerpieces again centerpieces for younger students might not be a great idea because they like to mess with everything right but table covers might be cute um then we also have of course holiday themed garlands you can hang up you can also make these there are also tutorials on Pinterest you can make maybe like red and green garlands um super easily also teachers if you want to decorate your own room you can easily do that um and then also encourage a holiday themed dress up so like what i'm doing right now i have my reindeer ears so you could just encourage if you know hey on this friday we're having a christmas class everybody feel free to bring like a costume wear costume or wear something this is really cute that always kind of gets people in a festive mood so and obviously they're endless other ideas so this is just a few that i've picked that i've also used before so i just wanted to mention those and then let's talk about the virtual learning space right so here you can actually do many things and i think a lot of online teachers they think you cannot decorate your room your virtual classroom but you actually can there's so many options okay so first up and this is also what i did today use a holiday themed virtual background right like this super easy and if you're teaching on zoom you can google this you can type in zoom background you know zoom christmas background zoom halloween background zoom easter background whatever it is and you can easily download it and then also google how to how to add it to zoom if you don't know but it's super easy super easy and it just makes a difference every time i do this with my online classes the students love it they they're like oh look there's this there's this there's this and it's just really fun so super cute and just an easy way to spice spice things up immediately again another thing you can add holiday themed stickers or emojis to your chat so this is on zoom for example where you have these emoji reactions for example and you can just make them a holiday theme for your holiday theme classes so that's also really cute i've also done that with my students like daniel right now here great example then it says that would be super funny elf students helping santa teachers with the classroom decorations perfect and then you can see the santa emoji right it's just something like this simple but it's festive it's holiday themed great um then obviously you could play holiday themed music or even podcasts during class so i used to do this when we did these crafts for example like the hands any crafts you do you can just play holiday themed music in the background and then a lot of students they will just start singing to it so they do the crafts and then they also sing in english they practice their vocabulary they practice their pronunciation it's a win-win it's a two-in-one there you go um then this is also something that i'm using at the moment you can use a holiday themed reward system um and i maybe should have put up a sticker a sticker i should have put up a picture um so what i use the reward system that i like to use is stickers for my students for my online students as well so every time i i have my virtual i have my virtual um board and i have all my exercises and then i hide like little stickers not too many but here and there i would hide like little emojis and they're my stickers and then they put these on their virtual sticker board when the sticker board is full we play a game basically the whole lesson is a game or whatever you want it to be but that's how i do it and so now i have a cute sticker that is like a stocking and it says fill your stocking with stickers or something like that um and my students love it it's cute um and i also hide little emojis christmasy holiday themed emojis as my stickers on my virtual board so super easy but it's just festive and it looks already much better for the holiday season um and then again also for virtual classes you can encourage your students to dress up like this dress up wear like a christmasy sweater or whatever you could you could also have them change their backgrounds you know whatever it is you can encourage that and um already makes it a lot more christmasy i think this is my favorite part of today's presentation as you can see i love the whole decorating thing and yeah especially for christmas it's just really nice so i hope there's some ideas of course again this is endless endless endless opportunities here to do this to make your classroom whether it is a physical classroom or a virtual classroom more festive and um like i said a great resource for this is Pinterest go to Pinterest and type in christmas classroom decorations and you'll see so much stuff and you'll be instantly inspired anything anybody else wants to add here that they love to use as decoration for the holiday season in their classroom let me know or in your online classroom do you have another tip how you can spice things up and make them more christmasy let me know in the comments and then what do we have next let's have a look okay this is also very important a very important topic that we of course need to talk about and that is navigating cultural differences navigating cultural differences all right okay if you guys uh leave a comment about the decoration i will of course talk about it but i'm just going to move on here so first a good idea would be how to kind of introduce this and how to go about to um create these uh or to get cultural differences out of the way um okay let me uh put this comment up first before i get into that so daniel says what if someone gets dressed as the Grinch what would teachers do what should teachers do why not it is cute i i why not i think that's really cute if they dress up as the Grinch why not that's funny um yeah then maybe you could do a debate the Grinch would be anti-christmas right would hate christmas and the other people would like christmas so you could have a debate why is christmas good why is christmas not good yeah but you could have a debate about that that's funny okay so a good thing to start off with this is to kind of look at christmas around the world and you can introduce this to your students too how do people different people around the world celebrate christmas and if you are teaching english you're most likely going to teach this lesson holiday from a uh western perspective right if you're a western teacher because that's where christmas is the biggest so that's usually how it goes and here you could say if they are not from this culture from the western culture and they do not celebrate christmas the same way you could um introduce that by saying that in western countries christmas is traditionally celebrated on december 25th and it is it is about gift giving or gift giving is important a big part of it um tree decorating people go out and decorate trees um there's festive dinner it's a lot of different christmasy food and there are other festive activities right um and this is great you know you you can really easily introduce this by showing lots of pictures right pictures pictures pictures and then you just talk about it even if you if you are from this culture you could have your own pictures up there right from your own christmas at home or something that'd be really cute but also obviously google pictures will do and then you could talk about if you are teaching for example in a eastern orthodox christian country you could bring that in they also celebrate christmas that but they celebrate christmas differently um they celebrated on january 7th and there are also a lot of different traditional foods there's traditional music and different religious services so you could again show pictures of that if that is relevant to your classroom and then we can also talk about christmas in non-christian countries so in those countries christmas might not be a major holiday and it is not widely celebrated but some people in these countries they may still observe the holiday in their own way for example in other cultural traditions or for example celebrating with friends some might also celebrate with family and this is kind of how it is in korea so christmas exists in korea but it is different so usually it is kind of a couple holiday so couples they would go out on cute dinners and couples would give each other gifts but it's not so much about the family so that's kind of a different aspect to it um yeah maybe something like that so if you if you want to start your christmas lesson kind of about that give an overview about christmas around the world especially if you teach in a country that doesn't have the same christmas culture as your background or if it's a multicultural class then i think that is very important okay and then we have some stra- oh and i hope this is not too small this font is really small but i'm gonna read it for you anyway so let's talk about some strategies for addressing cultural differences and promoting understanding in the classroom so number one you should always encourage open and respectful dialogue between or about cultural differences and how can you do this you can easily do this through activities such as group discussions or even presentations by students about their own cultural traditions so basically what i just did with you here an open discussion obviously it's not a discussion because i'm the only one talking but an overview hey how do people celebrate this particular holiday around the world and then let's talk about it how do you celebrate oh cool how do you celebrate oh nice how do you celebrate let's compare let's have an open group discussion let's have a look so that's a good way to go about this and to promote understanding then another thing would be to provide opportunities for students to learn and celebrate each other's cultures so how can i do this you can incorporate cultural traditions into the lesson plans and for example allow your students to share their own cultural customs with the class or you could also host cultural events or festivals if your school is bigger you have more time but usually if you have that if you are in a multicultural classroom for example you could have your students share their cultural customs with the class right that'd be another good thing so one student might talk about oh we don't celebrate Christmas but we celebrate Hanukkah or we don't celebrate Christmas but Lunar New Year is kind of similar we also that that's where family is very important and give in your classroom a brief overview of all of these different cultures and traditions and then this is kind of what you can do in your teaching materials and in your preparation here the left under the red one so use inclusive language and materials that reflect the diversity of your students cultures and experiences and i think that is very important to do so how can you do this you should use non-denominational or secular secular language when discussing holiday traditions and include materials that reflect the traditions and customs of a variety of cultures so that's what we did the variety of cultures by introducing this how is Christmas celebrated around the world right if you don't want to just focus on western countries right you want to focus on other countries and cultures how do they celebrate it this is not the only way to celebrate this is also how other countries celebrate so that's one way and then the other thing about non-denominational or secular language so instead of for example saying Christmas which has the word Christ in it which is very Christian obviously and not all your students might be Christian you could just call it holiday season right holidays the holidays instead of Christmas so things like that to be more inclusive and respect other people's backgrounds things like that and this is different for every holiday obviously the terms that you can use but especially for Christmas it would be holidays the holidays that's why nowadays people instead of saying Merry Christmas a lot of people just say happy holidays things like that and you could also teach that to your students right because they might be familiar with hey Merry Christmas Merry Christmas and you can say yeah there's another way to say Merry Christmas and that is happy holidays and happy holidays you know is for everybody but Christmas might only be for one group that celebrates this holiday but if you want to wish everybody a happy holiday you can say happy holidays something like that and then they can understand that easily and then yeah the other thing the last point would be to encourage empathy and understanding by helping students see things from others perspectives so if you follow all of these tips that's eventually the goal to get them to see things from other perspectives other people's perspectives so this could involve role play activities where you could compare like two different customs from two different cultures for example and you can have the students switch right so if one person is from a western culture and the other one is from a different culture you could have them switch and talk about the other custom holiday and simply just have activities that allow your students to kind of step into someone else's shoes is really good and that really helps them understand how others might experience the world differently so I hope this makes sense I think this is what holiday themed lessons is all about you know to be inclusive and to show hey there are cultural differences and there is no right and wrong there is no right and wrong way of celebrating something right just because maybe here in Korea people celebrate Christmas you know by having dinners with their boyfriends it's not that that's wrong that's just a different way of celebrating and we should all embrace that and all talk about it and be respectful so if you just incorporate this element also into your lessons I think it would just be a little bit more helpful and you know also valuable for your students to basically make them into great what is the word like international international multicultural competence right set them up for the international world the international work world as well that's very important right all right good uh then oh yeah that's a wrap that was it this was the last point the cultural differences okay today's session that's a wrap perfect so let's do a quick recap what we talked about we talked about so many different things so the first thing we talked about was that the holiday season can be a challenging but also an exciting time to teach English challenging because it might you might not have a lot of time to prepare the students are hyper they might not pay attention but it's an exciting time to show them how different cultures celebrate different holidays and to just do something fun you could sing songs right you can decorate the classroom you can do crafts you can introduce vocabulary that they otherwise would not learn so this is a very exciting time and a good way to bring something new to a classroom um it is important to remember to adapt holiday themed lessons to the age and language level of your students same with any other teaching material and lesson plan always make sure the material that you use is suitable for that age group and that language level right also for holiday themed classes and then just some examples of holiday themed activities we talked about could be for example vocabulary quizzes role plays also card making something I didn't mention earlier but that's what a lot of a lot of schools actually do where I worked they have they have their students make cards so Merry Christmas cards or also we did that a lot from Mother's Day and Father's Day have them make cards so that's a good idea and then again it is important to create a welcoming and inclusive atmosphere so that all of the students feel included and yeah are just welcome in the class and we talked about different strategies for addressing cultural differences and promoting understanding in the classroom just now so yeah and this is how you can incorporate holiday themed lessons into your classroom in the virtual classroom and in the physical classroom and I hope that some of this information will be helpful to you to plan future holiday themed lessons this was something a little different today so I hope that you enjoyed that and like I said you can use this information for any holiday not just Christmas so yeah thank you guys and now we're going into Q&A so if anybody has a question about what I just talked about today or anything else related to Tefl TESOL teaching English abroad or online feel free to ask and again I want to mention we have 30 percent off still right so you can scan this QR code that you see right here or I'm just going to share the link one more time with you so you can have that and this link gets you 30% off any Tefl or TESOL course with ITTT and if you are wanting to be a teacher in 2023 you can use this code and save a lot of money and get your teaching career started you're set up now with all the skills or especially this Tefl course of course if you take it it will set you up with all the skills you need to shine in the classroom and a lot of the things I talked about today are also in the Tefl course especially with the cultural navigating cultural differences in the classroom and how to adapt your material to age groups and different levels that's also in the Tefl course and yeah thank you so much for watching today I know this is a very quiet time of the year so I appreciate everybody who is here today and took some time out of their day to watch this live I know it's quiet but I think it's still a very useful issue to talk about today and so I appreciate you guys for being here as always a lot of familiar faces and I appreciate that and yeah I still have a couple of minutes here so if anybody has a question feel free to ask feel free to ask even if it does not have anything to do with today's topic that's totally okay ask me your questions guys also if there's something that you think I did not mention or you think was not right or didn't make any sense let me know let me know oh we have Virgy here hi Virgy thank you too thank you thanks for watching awesome thank you guys so much I'm just gonna give it a couple more minutes oh Daniel says thank you for making us feel festive as we get into the teaching path it's been educational and fun at the same time oh great that's what I wanted it to be I wanted it to be educational and fun with my reindeer ears that you can't really see or my antlers here are the ears but it has ears too it's really cute anyway thank you guys I appreciate that thank you Daniel yeah I mean if there are no questions we might as well just end it but also know that you can always get in touch with ITTT if you have any questions about our TEFL courses about teaching English professionally abroad or online feel free to reach out and a great way to reach out is via email here at courses at tesal-tefel.com send us an email with your questions even if you're not quite sure which course to take you know there are a lot of different options if you're not quite sure email us let us know where do you want to teach or if you don't know where you want to teach ask us hey where's a good place to teach for me give us a little bit of information about your background your you know do you have a degree which country are you from do you have teaching experience all of that and then we'll be able to kind of help you out and give you some recommendations so yeah also if you want to reach out to me directly you can also do that of course and a great way to reach out to me here is at lindegos east on instagram you can DM me and i'll get back to you you can also go to my blog lindegoseast.com and there will be a contact form you can fill that out and reach me via email if you want so yeah i would love to hear from you okay then i think there are no more questions today then we might as well just end it it is still snowing outside it's really cool that we get white christmas this year i'm very excited about that um so yeah i hope you also oh there's almost like i hope you have happy holidays guys however you celebrate if you celebrate christmas if you don't whatever it is i wish you a happy happy holiday time wherever you are and i will see you again actually next week i will be here again next week where we also talk about something fun so i hope to see you there um and then yeah amitava says here's wishing you your family and all the members of the ittt community a very happy and merry christmas and a nice weekend too thank you so much amitava all the same back to you all the best and thank you so much for always being here and watching every week i really appreciate that because without you i would just be sitting here and talking to myself which would not be fun so thank you so much for being here and for always leaving cute comments and funny comments and jokes and also good questions and for you know appreciating the effort that we here put into these live sessions because it takes a lot of time to prepare um so i appreciate you guys amitava said oh sorry it should be happy holidays no it's okay it's fine merry christmas happy holidays everything is fine for me thank you i appreciate that all right guys and then yeah i wish you all the best and i hope to see you again next week where we have another very interesting topic and i would hate for you to miss it it's very important if you want to start teaching next year so please tune in same place same time i'll be here daniel says happy holidays linda and everyone who's watching thank you daniel all right guys i hope to see you again next week thank you so much happy holidays and see you again soon thank you bye