Here is our gift to you…
We’re almost upon the dreaded doldrums of fall semester: those three weeks between Thanksgiving and winter break. It’s dark in the morning, and students aren’t fully awake until lunchtime. You’ve got a growing pile of grading, and between everything you have to do, lesson planning doesn’t hold the joy it normally might.
That’s why we’ve done the planning for you and created these fun winter-themed activities for the world language classroom. These low-to-no-prep activities will keep your students engaged in the target language and buy you time to check off your to-do list (those writing activities from last month won’t grade themselves!)
Here are activities to choose from, in Spanish, French, and English. They're all editable, so feel free to modify the resources, either to another language or to your students' needs.
Winter vocabulary flashcards
Use these pre-made flashcard sets as a warmup to introduce new winter-themed vocabulary to your students. Host a few rounds of Quizlet Live or mix it up and import these into a Gimkit, Blooket, or Kahoot game. Once your students are more familiar with the vocabulary, they’ll be ready to recycle it in the rest of our activities!
Winter-themed chat mats
Language teachers at this year’s Language Is Limitless: The National Institute conference raved about chat mats, and we can see why! Print and distribute these winter-themed chat mats to give your students all the pertinent vocabulary they’ll need to flex their interpersonal communication muscles.
Consider modeling a conversation with a volunteer student before giving your class time to ask and answer questions in small groups using the prompts and suggested answers on each chat mat.
These chat mats come with two versions: one in the present tense for novice learners and one in the future for intermediate learners.
Pixel art reveal
Pixel art reveals are fun because students get immediate visual feedback during the task. Each correct answer unveils a piece of the pixelated image, and students love to race each other to reveal the entire image first!
Remove the answer key sheet from these Google Spreadsheets and then share forced copies with your students. They’ll need to enter the correct word or phrase (with or without accents) into the answer column to complete the fill-in-the-blank questions in each row. For every correct answer they enter, colored pixels will appear until a mystery winter-themed design is revealed!
If you teach a language other than Spanish or French, you’ll need to be comfortable with conditional formatting rules in order to tailor this to your language of instruction. You can also ask your favorite AI assistant to walk you through the process to customize this activity.
The Unfair Game
Even the coolest of my “too cool for school” high schoolers loved playing this game. The Unfair Game starts like Family Feud: you split the class in half and have one teammate from each side come to the front of the room at a time. One side will pick a numbered question and be given the chance to answer it without interference from the other team.
If they get the question correct, they can decide what is done with the points assigned to it. The aim of the game is to have your team finish with as close to zero points as possible, so teams have to strategize to decide which points they’ll keep and which ones they’ll offload—very unfairly!—to set the other team back.
Winter-themed films
Hey, I get it. Sometimes you just need to put on a movie, and fortunately, there are plenty of quality Spanish and French films to choose from—including a Christmas movie that made one of my high school juniors cry! Turn your winter-themed film festival into a meaningful learning opportunity by creating an IPA, webquest, or mini-project inspired by the film’s storyline.
Crowd-source more winter activities
Sometimes, bouncing ideas off of other language teachers is the only solution when you’re feeling like winter break should’ve started, well, yesterday. That’s why you should join our Language Is Limitless Facebook community, where you can interact with language teachers from across the country to share ideas and resources. You’ll also be registered for our newsletter that offers teaching resources, digital workshop announcements, and the chance to win a Starbucks gift card!
Let us know which activity your students loved the most, and post more ideas for winter-themed activities in Language Is Limitless!
Kelly joined Carnegie Learning in 2023, bringing a decade of diverse educational experience. Her career includes one year as a high school Dean of Students and nine years teaching French at secondary and post-secondary levels. An AP French exam reader in 2017 and 2020, Kelly holds ACTFL OPI certification and is versed in various world language pedagogies, including TPRS and Organic World Language (OWL). She taught using Carnegie Learning's T'es Branché? curriculum for six years. As a content writer, Kelly is dedicated to highlighting educator experiences and empowering teachers to enhance student outcomes nationwide.
Explore more related to this authorWe've done the planning for you and created these fun winter-themed activities for the world language classroom.
Kelly Denzler
