Have a sustainable Christmas! FREE

Lesson plan overview

This FREE intermediate English lesson plan aims to raise awareness about the environmental impact of Christmas and the ways each of us can contribute to making Christmas more sustainable. Students will learn useful vocabulary, some environmental facts about Christmas and speak about their own habits. You can combine this lesson with other sustainability- related topics such as “What happens to our returns?“, “Stop food waste“, “Corporate social responsibility” and “Heatwaves“. You can also check other Christmas-related topics: “Christmas markets and holiday travel“, “Idioms: Christmas” and “Phrasal verbs: parties and celebrations“.
The lesson starts with a general discussion about Christmas and its environmental impact. Then students complete a quiz to learn more facts about Christmas and sustainability.
Following this task, students are given some of the most common sources that contribute to environmental issues around Christmas (wrapping paper, gifts, food waste, etc). They discuss what the current situation is and brainstorm more sustainable options.

Vocabulary: Next, students work on vocabulary. They are given a few sentences talking about Christmas gifts. They work out the meaning of the target vocabulary (long-lasting, thoughtful, meaningful, swap) and match the words to their definitions. Then they complete a practice gap-fill activity and discuss a few questions given,

Video: students watch a video “14 tips on how to have a sustainable Christmas“. and take notes about each tip (here you can separate the class into two groups or pause the video so that students have time to write the tips down). In a post-listening discussion, students discuss the tips from the video.

Word formation: Students work on a word formation task to revise the target vocabulary from this lesson.Lastly, students are given 2 statements about Christmas to discuss.
You can develop this topic further using the printable conversation cards, encouraging students to work on the reserch homewrok tasks and the additional resources provided on www.theenglishflows.com

Teacher’s lesson plan

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Student’s worksheet

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Student’s interactive PDF

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Conversation cards PDF

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Pre-class activities

To send the pre-class activities to your students, copy the link below.

https://theenglishflows.com/lesson-plans/have-a-sustainable-christmas/pre-class-activities/

Vocabulary matching

Pronunciation

The first time you watch the video, pay special attention to the correct pronunciation of the following words:

And of course we need to think about a productive second life for the tree.
Now we’ve put Christmas into context, all of these ideas and actions are examples of are examples of what we can call sustainability literacy.