Frosty Fun: Listen, Speak, Read and Write in the Language of Winter

Frosty Fun: Language Learning Activities Focused on Winter and Fun
By Kia DeCou

The great thing about teaching a language is that language is connected to everything. Why not make winter a little more fun in your classroom by using the weather to inspire engaging activities and projects. Who knows, by the end you might just have your students begging for more winter!

LISTENING

Winter Music Videos
Songs about winter with great videos

• Fox in the Snow by Belle and Sebastian (lyrics)
• Winter Song One by Chris Garneau (lyrics)
• Misty by Kate Bush (lyrics) This song includes a women in bed with a snowman.  Nothing graphic, but watch it to see if it is appropriate for your students

Frosty Fun listening activity.

• Divide the class into teams
• Choose vocabulary from each song for students focus on.

• Have them watch each video without the sound and have them try to divide what vocabulary goes with what video. After each video students should discuss what they saw and why they think certain words would go better with that song.
• Then let them listen to the songs without the videos. When they hear a word from the vocabulary list, have them highlight it in a color that goes with that song.
• Give each team envelopes with the lyrics of each song cut apart and have them put them in order to the best of their recollection. Then recheck the vocabulary to see if they can find it in the lyrics.
• Now have them try to guess which video goes with which lyrics. Play the songs and the videos together this time. Teams get one point for each correct word and 5 points for each correct song/video match.
• The winning team gets snowflake awards.

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Reading

Nothing beats curling up with a good story when the weather turns bitter. Give your students a choice of stories to read and then assign them to groups according to their preference. You can find a list of possible books here or here
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• Choose about 4 books of varying length, level, and genre.
• Make sure the students know how challenging each story is so they can choose something appropriate for their level.
• Give Students enough time to read the book partly in class and partly at home. Usually a few weeks will do it.
• Each group must look at how many pages they have to read and how many days they have to do it. They are responsible for doing the math to determine how many pages they must read each day.
• Give students choices on what role they want to take each day. EXAMPLE ROLE WORKSHEETS
• Allow students to decide how they would like to read; alone, with a friend or with their whole group.
• The first part of each class is devoted to discussing each person’s work on their role sheet. Make sure students have enough time to fully examine what each group member has done. Then discuss how they want to read that day’s pages. Whatever they don’t get done in class becomes homework.
• After the books have been read have each group choose a final project to present to the class. Make sure that you have copies of the books available to students who may become curious to read another book.    

Writing 

 Create winter haikus, short stories and love letters.


Haikus
For instuctions on how to write a haiku, click here

• Have students draw 2 words out of a bag of winter words.
• They must keep one and trade one with the person next to them.
• Then they must make a haiku using both of those words.

Short stories:

• have each student choose a setting picture that is winter related.
• Each student should then pick 2 character names out of a bag and use at least one of them to create a dialogue in their story.
• Have the students pick a conflict card from another bag. They must create a short story, no more than 1 page that describes the setting, has at least one dialogue and is centered around the chosen conflict.
  
  
  

Love Letters:

• Give students a list of winter related things and people. Ask them to choose one.
• Then show them several examples of famous love letters. How do the authors describe their feelings? How do they describe the objects of their affection?
• Have the students write love letters to the wintery object/person they chose.

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Speaking 

Bundle the class up and take them outside to make a Frosty video.

• Have teams throw snowballs as far as they can, whoever throws the farthest gets to pick their teams topic.
• Topics: People’s reaction to cold weather, winter fashion, favorite ways to keep warm, is snow crazy cool or crazy cold?
• Choose a snowy day and have students interview passersby about their topics. In teams of three, there could be one camera person and two interviewers. Ask interviewees for thier names and permission to air thier interviews.
• Come back inside, select the best parts of the interviews to create news reports to show in class or better yet, take them to the local news station and ask if they need any fun footage for their nightly news.

Do you have any fun winter activities you enjoy doing with your classes? Please share in the comments box.

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