Chinese New Year 2024
Lesson plan overview
This FREE pre-intermediate lesson plan is about Chinese New Year. Students will learn about customs and traditions related to Chinese New Year or Lunar New Year, Chinese Zodiac, how to say dates, years and centuries in English as well as a lot of personality adjectives. You can also take a look at the lesson “Why do we need leap years?“.
After an initial discussion about Chinese New Year, students learn key vocabulary by matching 6 words to the photos given (envelope, firecrackers, dumplings, New Moon, Full Moon).
Grammar: Students learn how to say years, dates and centuries in English. There are 2 speaking activities so that students can practise: First, they are asked to write down dates and years that are important to them and have their partner guess what each one means and then they answer a few questions given.
Video: Students watch a video “How we got our Holidays: Lunar New Year 2024”, which is divided into 4 parts, and complete 4 different tasks. They also watch a second video about The Year of the Dragon: “2024: The Year of the Dragon“. After that they discuss what they have learned from the video and a few other questions related to Chinese New Year.
Vocabulary: Students learn about the Chinese Zodiac, the animals included in the zodiac and many personality adjectives. First they match the animals to the correct picture, then they look at a word cloud containing a few personality adjectives and say which adjectives they associate with each animal. After that they are given a more detailed description about the personality traits related to each year of the Chinese Zodiac. Students look at the adjectives and divide them into strengths and weaknesses. After that they complete a gap-fill practice exercise. Lastly, they complete 4 sentences with their own ideas and share them with a àrtner.
The conversation cards provide further speaking opportunities.
Pre-class activities
All video-based ESL lesson plans include online pre-class activities, which are FREE and can be completed without registration. Perfect for teachers who wish to embrace the blended learning approach. By providing students with resources and engagement opportunities before the actual class session, educators can foster active participation, enhance comprehension, and optimise in-class discussions.
The pre-class activities are optional: if you choose not to assign them, or your students don’t complete them, it will not disturb the flow of the class. You can find and review the pre-class activities for this lesson plan here:
To send the pre-class activities to your students, copy the link below.
In-class activities
Conversation cards PDF
Additional resources
Each video-based lesson plan includes links to additional resources (videos and articles), which are FREE can be found online (in the pre-class activities page. These links aim to extend the learning experience, enabling students to connect classroom knowledge with real-world applications.
Teacher’s lesson plan
Student’s worksheet
Student’s interactive PDF
Conversation cards PDF
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