ceciliafelsenstein Love is in the air! February, time to celebrate Saint Valentine’s Day. But, how can we do it in our classrooms without forgetting our main aim which is to teach?! This post will help you find several Valentine’s Day Activities for your high school ELA students.
WRITING
- Love-inspired Narrative Writing: My students love these Saint Valentine’s Day-themed prompts which are aimed at high school. They are encouraged to write high quality and well-developed stories. And how do they achieve this? By using the comprehensive checklist which helps them work on their first versions in detail and improve them leading to high standard narratives! You can check out the resource by clicking here
- Love-inspired Descriptive Writing: You can also provide your students with descriptive prompts to help them write amazing descriptions! I usually work on vocabulary first so that they can use the words and enrich their writings. The checklists will encourage them to strive for more, they will require your students to think critically and analyze their first versions and work hard to improve them including feelings, emotions, showing rather than telling, and many other useful devices which help convey a real picture of a particular scene. Click here to get the FREE prompts and here to get the checkilst!
- Love-inspired Haiku Poems: If you want to try something different, you can check out this resource… Haiku poems encourage students to write creatively. This resource includes information on haiku poems, a list of vocabulary items for your students to use and 3 Saint Valentine’s Day-themed templates for your students to choose among and write
OTHER ELA ACTIVITIES
- Saint Valentine’s Day Reading Comprehension: What are we celebrating on February 14th? Do your students know? This Passage will help them learn a little bit about the origins of Saint Valentine’s Day. The resource includes high thinking skills questions based on Bloom’s taxonomy to check understanding.
- Project Work: Analysis of “Love Story”, Taylor Swift’s song: If you are looking to motivate teenagers, this is the activity! Your high school students will have to listen to the song and analyze the lyrics to work on figurative language and effect of words. Some investigation is also required to get some general knowledge on the writer of the song and her inspiration.
- Love-themed idioms: I love teaching figurative language! Don’t know why… but I do! Here you’ll find a slides presentations with 20 love idioms with their meanings and examples. Your students will then be assigned two fun activities to complete using the given idioms.
- Love-themed vocabulary and games: What best than teaching vocabulary related to the holiday and in an entertaining way? I usually use this resource to review some vocabulary and learn some new words. Once they have worked on it, we play throughout the week to practise and incorporate the new words! You can check this post for vocabulary games to play in the classroom!
- Love-themed TABOO: Last but not least…Taboo!! What a fun game to play with high school students… they can get so creative when trying to explain a word for the team to guess… This resource might be what you are looking for to enhance communication skills, creativity, and holiday merriment.
