Easter Activities for the EFL Classroom

New for this year, we have added some Spring and Easter flashcards alongside our chocolate-based activities to do with your students this Easter that are particularly useful for a Chocolate Taste Challenge. Make sure to download yours!

In many European languages, the word for Easter is derived from the Jewish festival of Passover – the celebration of the exodus of the Israelites from enslavement in Egypt. It later became linked, in Christian theology, and to the death and resurrection of Jesus. The English word is derived from the name of an Anglo-Saxon goddess, named Eostre, who was closely associated with spring and rebirth. In fact, a similar word, Eastre, is believed to be an ancient word for 'Spring'. Unsurprising, perhaps, that it has become linked to the Christian story of resurrection.

If you work in a Christian faith school, you will undoubtedly want to take time to celebrate Easter with your students since, for most Christian communities, it represents the most important festival of the year. If your student cohort is of a different faith or is multi-faith, it may form part of a wider calendar of important religious celebrations from different religions. As Easter often coincides with Passover and Ramadan, it can be a good opportunity to share and compare the meanings and traditions of the festivals or the three main Abrahamic religions. For reference, this year, the dates are:

This year, Good Friday is on March 29th and Easter Sunday is on March 31st. Passover begins on April 22nd and ends on Tuesday, April 30th. Ramadan begins on Sunday 10th March and ends on Tuesday 9th April.

Easter is a time when teachers can take time to explore the story of Jesus, and get younger students involved in traditional easter craft activities, like painting eggs, making Easter cards or organising Easter egg hunts. Alternatively, it can be a time to get students interested in nature and to get involved in practical projects on the life cycles of plants and animals. You might also think about organising an Easter parade. The tradition of parades at Easter goes back many hundreds of years and is still popular today, particularly in the US, where it has become a secular event with widespread participation.

Whether they are religious or secular, it is sometimes difficult to tie Easter-themed activities directly to language learning. Making Easter cards, organising an Easter egg hunt or organising a class dress-up and parade can all be good fun, and that might be a good enough reason for doing them. However, if you want more of a focus on language, or if you want something more secular, there is an easy way in – by unlocking the power of chocolate! Why chocolate, you might ask? Bear with me, while I pitch this to you as a gateway to a range of activities and tasks – from the frivolous to the academic and from the light-hearted to the darkest depths.

Here is a list of some of our top chocolate-themed tasks and activities:

This is something I’ve done with both adults and children and always goes down well. It can be done as a stand-alone activity or used as a lead-in to some of the other activities. There are different ways of arranging the tasting, so organise it according to what will work best for you and your class. I usually get the students to do the tastings ‘blind’ – they seem to enjoy the matching challenge and the reveal at the end brings the lesson to a natural climax.

• You’ll need to buy 6 chocolate bars and some paper plates. If it’s a small class, you could increase it to 8 bars. Try to buy bars that are quite different: I usually try to include two popular mainstream brands, a bar with high cocoa-solids content (70% +), maybe a handmade or artisan chocolate bar and a couple of non-dairy, vegan brands (one basic and one high-end). However, it depends on what is easily available in your local supermarkets and delicatessens.  
• Allow time to set up the challenge before the lesson starts and check for potential food allergies.
• Label the bottom of each paper plate with the name of one of the brands you have chosen.
• Cut or break each bar into very small pieces and place them on its plate.
• Line the plates up along the side of the class and label each with a letter.
• Stick or pin the wrappers to a display board so the students know which brands they are tasting.
• At the start of the lesson, have each student write the letters down the side of a sheet of paper. Tell them you want them to make some notes on the taste of each bar and for them to try to guess the brand of each.
• Before they start, teach the students some tasting vocabulary. Depending on the level of your students, you can make this as simple or as complex as you wish. For higher-level students, our chocolate flavour wheel, where students can make notes and record their guesses. For lower-level students, you could just pre-teach a few vocabulary items, such as: sweet, bitter, bland, strong, powdery, creamy, inedible, and delicious (maybe supplemented with a few modifying phrases: not very, quite, very, extremely).
• Have the students make notes about each chocolate bar and ask them to try to match each bar with its brand. With advanced students, in groups, have them describe to each other the taste of each chocolate bar, in as much detail as possible, comparing their notes with others. With the lower-level students, have them rank each bar out of ten based on the pre-taught language, for example, sweetness: bitter (1) to sweet (10); strength of flavour: bland (1) to strong (10); creaminess: powdery (1) to creamy (10); deliciousness: inedible (1) to delicious (10).
• Vote on which bars they like the most and least and then, have them try to match each to its brand. Reveal which brand relates to which letter.