Last Minute Ideas for St. Patrick’s Day

Tomorrow is St. Paddy’s Day, the day when pretty much everyone tries to be Irish! I remember planning to spend the last year’s celebration in Dublin, as I left Ireland in 2010 and that seemed like a good idea to celebrate the anniversary – but COVID obviously ruined all the plans. This year, again, there is no parade, no celebration… but we can still bring some cheer to our classrooms, wear something green and enjoy the moment!

I found some interesting and easy-to-use resources you can share with your students without previous planning – just to have fun and inspire a short discussion, play some games or think about better times, when going out with friends to have a pint or five was – and will be, of course! – a common way of spending the day.

One of my favourite materials is the one offered by TED-Ed – you can actually run the whole lesson based on the material. It explains the origin of St. Patrick and the idea behind today’s celebrations, but also suggests interesting topics to discuss with older and more advanced students:

If you want to share some interesting facts about St. Patrick’s Day, History Channel has a nice video. I would recommend it for more advanced students, who are already familiar with the general idea of the celebration:

Games are great energizers, and you will find many interesting activities by PrimaryGames – and the best thing is you can use them in your online classes, and I’m sure your students will love the ideas regardless of their age! Just make sure to disable AdBlock to play the game!

And, of course, you can use the inspirations from my video on last-minute ideas to celebrate St. Patrick’s Day during lockdown (I recorded this video last year, and I remember how annoyed I was. Little did we know this crazy situation would last so long):

May we meet soon for a pint outdoors!