New Year’s traditions around the world
Lesson plan overview
Explore New Year’s traditions from around the world with this engaging lesson plan designed for intermediate English language learners. Students will learn new vocabulary related to New Year’s celebrations, practice speaking and listening, and reflect on cultural customs and superstitions associated with celebrating the New Year. Other lessons related to the end of the year are “End of the year – executive style“, “End of the year reflection“, “Idioms: New Year“, “Idioms: goals“, and “New Year’s resolutions“
Activities Overview:
Speaking: Students start by discussing New Year’s celebrations in their country.
Vocabulary Practice: Students match words and expressions to definitions, covering terms like custom, superstition, good omen, countdown, and prosperity. This activity builds foundational language knowledge needed for discussing traditions and rituals. As a practice activity, students complete a gap-fill exercise.
Speaking: Students look at New Year’s customs from Spain, Greece, Ecuador, and Latin America and talk about the possible meaning of each tradition.
Listening: Students watch part of a video called“Top 10 Strangest and Most Interesting New Year’s Traditions,” and take notes of the history and meaning of the traditions from the previous activity.
- Speaking and reading: Students discuss the meaning of more traditions (from Denmark, Japan, Brazil, Italy, Scotland, the Philippines, Colombia, and Finland) and then read about them to check their answers.
Discussion: Students discuss questions such as:
Which tradition surprised you the most?
Which would you like to try and why?
Do you have a unique New Year’s tradition in your culture?
Why do many traditions involve food, fire, or numbers?
This encourages fluency, critical thinking, and personal expression.
For more speaking practice, you can use the printable conversation cards.
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Teacher’s lesson plan
Student’s worksheet
Student’s interactive PDF
Conversation cards PDF
Pre-class activities
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In-class activities
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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.
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Teacher’s lesson plan
Student’s worksheet
Student’s interactive PDF
Conversation cards PDF
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