We are almost at the end of the year, and December always brings a special kind of magic into the classroom. It’s the month when routines soften, smiles come more easily, and we all hope for the better.
Every year, ELT blogs, Instagram pages start filling up with Christmas lessons, crafts, songs, and surprises. I love reading and trying them! This year, I’m adding one of my favourite activities: a classroom Advent Calendar you can easily adapt for teenagers and young adults.
It’s simple, flexible, and adds a moment of joy to each lesson.
Here is the idea:
Prepare an Advent Calendar. Instead of chocolates, hide tiny learning tasks behind each box: short writing prompts, lessons with short films or animation-based lessons, micro-challenges, or songs.
Based on your weekly schedule, open one box per lesson.
How to Make Your Advent Calendar
- Prepare your Advent Calendar on construction paper. You can use tiny envelopes or print one of the Canva templates.
- Add numbers according to your lesson schedule.
- Behind each number, hide a prompt, a game or a challenge.
What to Hide Behind Each Box
Below are ready-to-use ideas you can copy directly into your Advent Calendar:
Creative Writing Ideas
- The Snow Globe Challenge: Distribute paper templates for snow globes. Ask students to design their own snow globe scenes. Then collect the globes and redistribute them randomly. and ask students to describe the globe they recieve.
- Christmas Through an Object’s Eyes: Write from the perspective of a tree ornament, Christmas tree, or wrapped gift under the tree.
- If Santa Texted Me…: Students create a WhatsApp-style chat with Santa. You can use Canva to create a chat template with several speech bubbles.
- The Day Christmas Disappeared: Divide students into teams and ask them to write a story in 5–7 sentences.
- A Christmas Haiku: Choose a Christmas song. Ask students to turn it into a Haiku.
- 6-Word Stories: Choose several winter themed photos. Pair your students, ask them to write 6-word stories.
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My December Playlist: Students choose three songs that represent their December mood (they don’t need to be Christmas songs). They write a short explanation for each choice: You can guide them with a few questions, if you like:
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Why did you choose this song?
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What memory or feeling does it bring?
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A Letter to My Future December Self: A reflective activity where students write a short letter to themselves for next December.
You can give prompts like:-
Something I learned this year…
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Something I hope for next year…
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Something I want to remember…
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Christmas Songs
- Song Puzzle: Choose 2 Christmas songs, cut up the lyrics, shuffle the strips, and ask students to reorder them.
- Merry Xmas (War is Over): The song allows the teacher to create beautiful lessons. Here are a few suggestions:
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Spot the Opposites: Students underline pairs of opposites in the lyrics (e.g., near–far, old–young, rich–poor, weak–strong).
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Christmas Wishes Post-it: After listening to the song, ask students to write a 6-word Christmas/New Year wish (inspired by the chorus) on post-it notes or Padlet. Example: “A peaceful year for everyone.”
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Who is mentioned? Students sort groups from the song into categories: Age: old / young; Strength: weak / strong; Wealth: rich / poor, etc
- Comprehension questions: For example:
True or False
1.___ The song mentions both young and old people.
2___ The singer hopes the new year will be peaceful.
3___ The phrase “war is over” appears only once.
Give Short Answers
4What does the singer hope the new year will be like?
5What repeated message shows the song promotes peace?
6Why do you think the singer keeps repeating “now”?
Meaning & Message
7In your own words, what do you think the main idea of the song is?
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Video & Animation Prompts
- Choose a short winter or Christmas themed movie or an animation to watch together and prepare a short comprehension task on them
- No-Sound Commercial: There are beautiful Christmas commercials, choose one and play it on mute. Students write the dialogue or the story.
Visual Tasks
- Emoji Story: Give students 6–8 emojis and ask them to write a story using all of them.
- Design a Christmas Mug: Ask students to design a Christmas or winter-themed mug and add a slogan.
Games, Vocabulary & Fun
- Christmas Word Chains
- Christmas Taboo
- Create a Christmas Meme
- Chinese Whisper Dictation:
Steps
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Prepare the sentences
Keep them short, clear, and festive. For example:
“This is Santa’s home.”
“Santa forgot his red gloves.”
“Santa drank the milk.” -
Arrange students in teams
Each team stands in a line facing the board. -
Show the sentence only to the student at the back
They do not write anything. They memorise it. -
Whisper chain
The sentence is whispered down the line from student to student. -
Final student writes it on the board
They compare with the original. -
Award points: 1 point for each correct word
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Also visit these two previous activities
These two activities can also be hidden in the advent calendar envelopes:
