With Christmas almost here, we’ve had a dig through the Webanywhere archives and come up with some great resources we published a few years ago. These files are free to download and use, and we recommend taking a look at the teachers notes on this page. Simply click on the titles to download the files and save them to your computer
Christmas Postcards
Cut out and create these cards, then share them with your class – they’re suitable for all ages.
Use them in your continuous provision to help foundation stage children with mark-making, or perhaps promote group-work and have pupils write a card as a whole-class activity. Place more confident writers with less able children to promote contribution and ensure that everyone can contribute. It’s a good idea to first demonstrate model-writing in front of the class, and draw attention to the unique aspects of a postcard.
Christmas Slideshow
Introduce your children to different cultural representations of Christmas with this festive slideshow. It includes interesting facts about each featured country as well as a set of questions. Use it to promote discussion of how other country’s traditions might differ from your own, and see what you have in common too!
Christmas Wordsearch
This word search features various different names for the “gift giver” who appears at Christmas around the world. Some may seem familiar, while others not so much! Encourage your children to research some of the lesser known characters, or perhaps use this in conjunction with the slideshow above showcasing different traditions.
Christmas Poems
Introduce your children to the idea of acrostic poetry with this set of templates. Ensure that you model the principles first – perhaps create a mind map of descriptive words before discussing as a class the ideas for each line before writing suggestions on the board.
One the children understand the concept, let them try a poem on their own – for lower ability students use the shorter templates, while the more able will be at home with the long ones. As with the postcards above, this could also be done as a mixed-group activity, with the more and less able collaborating on A3 sheets.
