1 Christmas facts

Test your learners knowledge of Christmas with these ten questions.  You can either get them to write down their answer and pass it to the next person to mark (before returning it) and then take a class poll on what they think the right answer is.  I always throw out a few bonus points as they come to me.  After the question on the left I asked them to write down the names of the other reindeers, then looked them up online and gave out bonus points for each – it kept the game a little more exciting.

2 Around the World

If you liked the last Christmas Quiz then give this one a go too.  I think the questions are a little harder but if you think your learners are up for it then why not give it a go.  You can always play this quiz straight on the end of the last one if you are looking for a quiz with more than just 10 questions.  Play these two and you’ve doubled the amount of questions to 20.

3 Q’wick Q’westion Q’west

I don’t know how your multiple computer access situation is but when my learners are on a computer in pairs I’m lucky enough to have a large screen connected to a computer at the front of the class.  Learners told me where to click (moving from the reindeer towards the candy cane) and when they saw the question I gave them until the first pair said “next” to find the answer on the internet.  I then took the direction the pair that said next told me to take in the game.  This continued until we had finished.  If you want to be extra sneaky (and give slower ones a little more of a chance) then get learners to write the answer down.  You can then (sneakily) get them to write out questions to the answers they have written down at the end of the game.

4 CBBC Christmas Quizzes

The CBBC website has a few fun christmas quizzes up.  The nice thing about this page is that there are a few quizzes there for learners to work through autonomously on computers.  You can monitor and help with language (or even set an online dictionary for them to use) while learners take each quiz in turn.  Encourage them to make a note of how many points they score in each so that you can declare a winner at the end of the activity.

5 IWB Christmas Quiz

A downloadable interactive PowerPoint Quiz for Christmas from the people at tes. No searching questions here – just 15 multiple choice questions based around Santa, The Nativity and Traditions. Click on the correct answer and you’ll get a ‘Well Done’, but click on the incorrect answer and you’ll get a ‘Try Again’ for the opportunity to go back and have another go.

6 DIY Quizzes

Well sometimes it’s best just to do your own quiz so you can grade the language, add your own images and effects or simply so that it can be saved on a network computer for other teachers to use.  If this is the case then check out this website for a large list of Christmas questions and answers.  The site invites you to cut and paste but I find it’s a good idea to check their spelling and grade some of the language there for your own purposes.

7 More Merry Christmas Resources

This site has a mix of all the above.  There are interactive quizzes, ideas for questions with answers and explanations as well as video quizzes with audio.  It’s a bit like going to Santa’s grotto and having a lucky dip grab – you might be lucky and find something you really like here.

 8  Christmas Carols

If you are feeling extra adventurous then one idea might be to have a Christmas quiz that goes with Christmas Carols.  This quiz focusses on just that.  What would be great now is if you can find all these carols online on a video sharing site and play them while the question is up there.  Hey Presto!  You have a listening and reading activity.  Would be a great one to do but sadly I have two more ideas to come up with for this post so I’ll leave this one for you.

9 Triviapark Christmas Quiz

If you are not feeling so inspired to make your own Christmas Quizzes and you are simply looking for more to use in the connected classroom then here’s a nice little website.  There’s a novice level quiz as well as a regular level quiz, which is a little trickier, and also a more challenging expert level.  It’s worth making a note of the website too as there are a load of quizzes on all sorts of topics here.

10 PowerPoint Quizzes

There is some demand for downloadable PowerPoint quizzes that have already been made for you.  Here are some more.  A word of warning though – these have not been made with English language learners in mind so a little tweeking here and there may be needed.  Good luck!

Location: Computer room

Topic: Revision & test of course book vocabulary.

Language focus: Reading

Game:  Blockbusters

How to play

Your learner plays the single red team against the computer (the two blue guys).  The aim of the game is to make a white line across the board from top to bottom (or the other way round) by answering questions to which the answers start with the letter in the hexagon.

This game is actually designed to challenge native English speakers so may prove particularly hard to English language learners.  However, playing the game gives them a very quick way to learn how to play the game.  You could get them to play in pairs and predict the instructions.  They then read the instructions (button on the bottom right) to see if the were right.

Now they have a better understanding of what the game blockbusters is they can now have a go at writing their own powerpoint version.

Blockbusters Template

You could ask learners to only use their coursebooks to find vocabulary items.  This makes the activity a fun revision activity while the actual playing of the game becomes a fun test.   Make sure they read the instructions on slide 3 carefully.  I find that it usually takes a little bit of trial and error to figure out what to do but once someone in the class has figured it out they can always explain it to others.

NOTE

There’s no reason why you can’t use the Blockbuster Template with much lower levels.  Unfortunately the online game is too difficult for lower levels.  It would also be good if the game paused for bigger intervals and there wasn’t a time limit between being given the question and having to give the answer.  If there was that would be a great opportunity for a dictionary race.  They could read the question, identify the answer in their own language, look it up in a translation dictionary and give the answer in English.  Oh well!

You can find it here: http://www.sporcle.com/games/calvinbudnick/christmasknowledge

The site has many other timed quizzes. Here are some more Christmas-themed ones:

• Guess this Christmas message
• Reworded Christmas carols
• Christmas A-Z
• Christmas Movie Quotes
• Christmas Triva
• 12 Days of Christmas Price List

You can also get your students to register and create their own quizzes – a fun way to end the year.