Materials to Make Us Merry and Bright

‘Tis the season to be jolly, right? Maybe not. Here in the U.S., stores really jump the gun and start putting up holiday decorations immediately after Halloween. The corresponding merchandise also hits the shelves well before we’ve even celebrated Thanksgiving on the fourth Sunday of November. Moreover, a quick check of the news headlines is often very sobering, so feeling merry and bright may not be easy.

However, it’s now officially December, so it’s appropriate to bring some holiday-related materials into our lessons. Perhaps we won’t necessarily have everyone ringing sleigh bells, but there’s a way to gently work our way toward the brightness of the winter holidays. I’ve shared quite a lot of teaching ideas in the past, but I’ve never directly addressed the challenge of getting in the holiday spirit. Let me do that now and perhaps in the course of a week or two we can turn the desire to say, “Bah! Humbug!” into “Ho! Ho! Ho!”

#1 – A Winter Poem
In a recent live lesson with my Patreon members, I read Robert Frost’s “Dust of Snow.” The vocabulary isn’t overly challenging, and the short length makes it perfect for both pronunciation practice and interpretation. There are a limited number of images to ponder: a crow and a hemlock tree contrasting with a fresh, sobering dust of snow. You can ask students before you read if they have positive or negative associations with crows, hemlock, and a dust of snow.

Here is my reading on Vocaroo (available for a limited time).

It’s easy for students to relate to the experience of finding some moment of lightness in an otherwise bad day. Ask them how a bad day sometimes turns into a good one. What can serve as the trigger to change our mood?

I invited my students to record their oral reading with Vocaroo, encouraging their own style while they observe rhythm and linking.

#2 – A short story
The same group of learners has been invited to read “Uncle Richard’s New Year’s Dinner” by Lucy Maud Montgomery. Though over a century old, the themes of the story are still very much relevant: family, forgiveness, and loneliness. I’ve prepared a pre-lesson comprehension check and vocabulary tasks. Words I highlighted include: ruddy, unrelenting, crimson, do justice to, let bygones be bygones, mockery, and giddy. You’re welcome to include this short collocations task if you share the story with your own students:

1. [make/keep] house for someone
2. an idea can [swirl/pop] into your head
3. [put/set] the table for dinner
4. have [solid/hard] feelings against someone

In a recent livestream, I emphasized the value of learning collocations, and so I’ll continue to offer my students short sets of collocations from week to week, pulling from the materials we’re focusing on.

Right now I’ll share my discussion questions for this story with the advice to push students to find evidence in the text to support their answers.
1. How can we describe Prissy’s relationship with Uncle Richard over the years?
2. What can we conclude about Uncle Richard’s lifestyle and how he has celebrated most holidays?
3. What prompts Prissy to carry out her plan for dinner? What does this decision indicate about her personality?
4. What do we know about Prissy’s homelife? How does her day-to-day life enable her to carry out her plan?
5. How do you explain both Prissy’s reaction and Uncle Richard’s initial comments when they face each other in his kitchen?
6. If you had to give this story a new title, what would it be?

Creative writing tasks that could easily turn into speaking practice include writing out imagined scenes from the past and the future. As a class, you can brainstorm and write the dialogs for:
a. The initial quarrel between the two brothers.
b. The conversation Prissy has with her father as soon as she returns home.
c. The face-to-face reconciliation between the two brothers.

#3 A TED Talk about positivity
Back in 2011, Shawn Achor spoke at TEDxBloomington. He talked about “The Happiness Advantage: Linking Positive Brains to Performance.” I had one private student watch this talk, knowing he could likely keep up with the very fast speaking rate. If students need some support with fast speech, remember that transcripts are available on YouTube.

The theme of positivity is perfect for the holiday season: there’s pressure to be happy, look happy, and act happy. When are we truly happy? How can finding a happy outlook position us for a fruitful New Year? To answer these questions, students must first understand Shawn Achor’s views. I’ll offer my set of comprehension and discussion questions.

Comprehension Questions:
1. How does Shawn’s story about his sister’s fall demonstrate positive psychology?
2. Jokes poke fun at the truth or at assumptions. What was funny about Shawn’s assessment of psychologists and how they see “normal”?
3. Shawn warns that there is a danger of focusing one’s studies on the average. What is that danger?
4. What is the “medical school syndrome” and how does it reflect the way the human mind works in terms of perception?
5. According to Shawn, what is true about many first-year students at Harvard?
6. What predicts job success?
7. What do you think he’s implying by saying we need to “reverse the formula for happiness and success”? Explain the “happiness advantage” and its benefits.

Discussion Questions:
8. How easy it for you to remain positive?
9. What conditions do you need to perform at your best?
10. Do you think successful and competitive people, like those who get accepted to and graduate from Harvard, are more or less likely to be happy? Why?

Related posts:
Full of Holiday Cheer Handout (2015) – Different cultural traditions are addressed.
Creating an Inclusive Celebration of Christmas (2019)
Getting Serious about Your New Year’s Resolution: What is your life purpose? (2013)

Image by Jill Wellington from Pixabay