B1 – Christmas mystery

Description

A B1-level ESL Christmas mystery lesson on modal verbs of speculation, perfect for learners who enjoy festive fun while practicing real-world grammar skills.

Students watch a holiday-themed mystery video, match characters to their alibis, and use modal verbs to speculate about the culprit. The lesson includes a grammar focus on present-tense speculation, guided sentence writing, and a creative speaking game—The Christmas Chameleon—that reinforces the target language. Ideal for learners building fluency through authentic seasonal content and engaging classroom interaction.

Warmer: What might be going on?

Even though the first picture doesn’t really connect to the rest of the lesson, I decided to include it because I want students to use the speculation phrases they already know. They’ll look at a picture of an upset woman in a Christmas outfit and use phrases like I think that…, I believe that…, or It looks like she… to guess what might have happened to her.

Let’s start by chatting about any mysterious stuff that’s happened to students during Christmas. Pair up with someone and swap your best stories. Once everyone’s done, we can share some of the coolest ones from different pairs and see how they compare.

Listening for Gist: Sweet Suspicion – The Waitrose Mystery

Check out the Sweet Suspicion: The Waitrose Mystery video where a family gets together to celebrate Christmas. But things take a turn when something suspicious goes down during the party. This Christmas ESL mystery lesson uses the video to spark discussion and speculation. After watching, let’s chat about what went down. (Spoiler alert: someone steals the Christmas pudding!)🍮

Listening for Detail: Matching Alibis

I’d recommend checking out the video once without any subtitles first. The accent might be a little tricky at times, so it could be helpful to give it another watch, this time paying attention to the vocabulary. Show students a picture of all the family members along with their alibis, like peeling parsnips or making cranberry sauce. Watch the video again and see if they can match the people to what they were doing. To wrap it up, have them say the answers in full sentences, like, The grandmother was making the cranberry sauce.

Grammar Focus: Modal Verbs of Speculation

Let’s talk about modal verbs of speculation for a minute. Since I’m planning this class for B1-level students, I’m keeping it simple and focusing on how to use these verbs in the present tense only. But if you’re working with higher-level students, feel free to throw in some past tense examples! When we’re speculating about the present, we’ve got a few modal verbs to choose from: must tells us there’s a really high chance something is true (like 90-100% certainty), while might, may, or could suggest there’s a possibility (think 30-70%). And if you want to say something definitely isn’t true, you can use can’t, which also gives us that strong negative certainty (90-100%). Just remember, after these modal verbs, you need to follow up with a verb in its infinitive form. To wrap this up, let’s have the students read and fill in three sentences with the right modal verbs of speculation, and place them in the correct parts of the table.

Speaking: Who took the pudding?

Let’s go back to the Christmas video. Use what we just learned to talk about who the pudding thief might be. Students should write six sentences like, It can’t be the grandmother because she was busy making the cranberry sauce. I thought it would be better to use the present tense here to tie in with the modal verbs of speculation we discussed earlier. If you want to switch it up for past tense, just ask, Who stole the Christmas pudding?

Video Reveal: Watch the Mystery Get Solved!

Once you gather all the answers and pick who you think the suspect is, check out the second part of the video, A Waitrose Mystery: Solved, and find out if you were right! It’s a good idea to chat about whether everyone expected that kind of ending and if it surprised them at all. (No spoilers here – just watch it yourself!)

Speaking Game: The Christmas Chameleon

I’ve been thinking about how to wrap up this class in a cool way that brings everything together, and I finally came up with the idea – The Christmas Chameleon! Everyone except one student gets the same prompt to respond to with just one word. The one student is the chameleon, meaning they get a similar question and have to answer it, plus be ready to back it up.