5 ways you can use your students’ holiday experiences in class
After a long school break, students often come back to class with plenty of stories to tell. They may have traveled to another country, visited family, spent time at home, started a new hobby or simply enjoyed time with friends.
These experiences can be a great resource for language learning. They give students something real to talk about and help connect classroom activities to their lives outside school.
Here are some ways you can use your students’ holiday experiences to create engaging language activities.
1. Create a holiday show and tell
Show and tell is a simple activity, but it can give students lots of opportunities to practice speaking. Ask students to bring in an object, photo or drawing connected to their holiday. It could be a souvenir, a photograph of a place they visited, a book they read or even something they used during their break.
Give students a few questions to help them prepare:
- What is it?
- Where did you get it?
- Who were you with?
- Why is it special?
- How did you feel?
Students can then present their item to a partner, small group or the whole class.
For younger learners, you can provide sentence starters such as “I went to…”, “I saw…” and “My favorite part was…”. More advanced students can give a longer description or answer questions from their classmates.
2. Turn holiday memories into a class map
If your students traveled during the holidays, use their journeys to create a class map. Put a large map on the wall or display one on the board. Ask students to mark places they visited. They can then talk about their destination and how they traveled there.
For example:
“I went to Spain by plane. I stayed in Barcelona for five days.”
Students can work in pairs to ask and answer questions about different destinations:
- Where did you go?
- How did you get there?
- What did you do?
- What was the weather like?
You can also use the map to introduce or review geographical vocabulary, such as country, city, coast, island, north, south, near and far.
If some students did not travel, make sure the activity includes other types of holidays and experiences. They could mark where they visited family, went on a day trip or spent time doing something interesting.
3. Make a holiday class survey
A class survey is a good way to get everyone speaking, even students who do not want to talk in front of the whole class.
Give students five or six questions about their holidays. For example:
- Did you travel?
- Did you visit family?
- Did you try a new food?
- Did you watch a film or series?
- Did you learn something new?
- Did you play a new game or sport?
Students move around the classroom and ask their classmates the questions. They record their answers and then use the results to create a simple class report.
For example:
“Ten students visited family. Six students traveled. Four students tried a new food.”
This activity gives students a reason to repeat useful language several times. It also helps them discover what they have in common with their classmates.
For younger learners, you could turn the survey into a simple “Find someone who…” activity. For example: Find someone who visited another country or Find someone who learned a new skill.
4. Build a holiday story together
Use students’ holiday experiences to practice storytelling. Start by putting a few prompts on the board:
- Where?
- Who?
- What happened?
- Problem.
- Ending.
Students choose a real holiday experience and use the prompts to tell their story to a partner.
For example:
“Last summer, I went to the beach with my family. We wanted to swim, but it started raining. We waited in a café and then the sun came out.”
You can use the activity to practice past-tense verbs, time expressions and sequencing words such as first, then, after that, later and finally.
You can also make it more creative. Students can take a real experience and change one detail. Perhaps their bus got lost, they met a famous person or they discovered a hidden treasure.
This gives students a chance to use language creatively without needing to invent an entire story from nothing.
5. Create a “holiday highlights” class display
End your holiday activities with a class display. Ask students to choose one favorite memory from their break and write a short description. They could also add a drawing, photograph or small piece of artwork.
Give students a simple structure:
- My holiday highlight
- Where
- Who I was with
- What happened
- Why I liked it
Put the finished work around the classroom. Students can then walk around, read each other's work and leave a positive comment or question.
This activity can also become a useful reading task. Ask students to find someone who did something similar to them, find the most unusual activity or choose a memory they would like to experience themselves.
Make the most of what students bring to class
The first lessons after a holiday do not have to be about immediately returning to the textbook. Students' experiences can provide useful material for speaking, listening, reading and writing activities.
Most importantly, remember that not every student will have had an exciting holiday or traveled somewhere. Some may have stayed at home, looked after family members or simply enjoyed having time to relax. Avoid making travel the only focus.
Instead, give students different ways to talk about their break. A favorite meal, a new hobby, a film they watched or a day spent with friends can be just as useful for language learning.
