Tag: holiday

The Gift of the Magi Packet

This 100+ page “Gift of the Magi” lesson and activity plan packet has taken me years to compile! I’m pretty proud of it!

“The Gift of the Magi” by O. Henry is without a doubt one of my favorite short stories, especially for the Christmas season. I’ve been teaching it to my students for years, and now I’ve compiled 15 different “The Gift of the Magi” lesson plans, activities, and resources for you. It’s 108 pages of activities, handouts and worksheets that cover vocabulary, irony, the moral of the story, character analysis, close reading, critical reading skills, and a lot more. Many activities are differentiated so you can use them with different classes or multi-level classes!

The packet even includes assessment materials. Each resource comes with comprehensive teacher notes and answer keys.

Isn’t “The Gift of the Magi” Too Difficult for ESL Students?

Now when I tell teachers I love to teach “The Gift of the Magi” to my ESL students, I hear one thing over and over. Isn’t that story really hard?

No, actually! The story itself is pretty simple:

A husband and wife are very much in love with each other. The wife has very beautiful hair that she loves very much. The husband has a pocket watch that he loves very much. They want to buy very nice Christmas presents for each other, but they don’t have much money. So, the wife sells her hair to get money. and buys a chain for the watch. Unfortunately, the husband sells his watch to buy the woman beautiful combs for her hair. Each one gives up the thing they love for the other one. While tragic, the story proves that the couple love each more than anything.

It’s a beautiful and touching story, a perfect example of how situational irony can work. But we don’t often do it in class, because it’s a difficult story. But it’s difficult for only two reasons, both of which I’ve addressed in my packet.:

1. The references: There are references to things that may be unfamiliar to a modern-day student, especially one from another country. There are also allusions to the Bible and other sources in the story that students may not be familiar with. That’s why I’ve provided a lightly graded text with footnotes to explain the more obscure references and early 20th century items. This lesson pack also includes warm-up activities to get at the main theme and explain the references to the magi.
2. The vocabulary: Let’s face it. O. Henry was a wordsmith and this story has a lot of words that are off the 200 most frequently used lists and the AWL. That’s why I’ve included:

What Does This Packet Include?

1. The original version of the story, untouched and unabridged. (From the Gutenberg Project-text in the public domain)
2. The graded version, with some of the tougher vocabulary and turns of phrase simplified as well as explanatory footnotes for the more antiquated or obscure references.
3. A brief one-paragraph summary and a scene-by-scene guide to the text that students could read as a simplified easy-to-read version.
4. A word association warm-up where students brainstorm on the word “Gift”
5. A quick vocab pre-teach activity to teach gift, pocket watch, watch chain, and hair comb. If students don’t picture the right kind of comb, the story can fall flat.
6. Predicting vocabulary words meaning from context lesson plan.
7. An extensive set of vocabulary activities to pre-teach 24 key words from the text.
8. A thematic warm up on the moral of the story and the meaning of the magi. Students read the last paragraph closely and discuss the moral of the story. I love to start the lesson this way so that students can see the broader picture as they read.
9. An alternate warm-up where students discuss what a wise gift is and compare wise things to valuable things. This gets at the heart of the theme of the story.
10. A lesson on modelling critical reading skills, including ways of getting the gist of a story without knowing every word, lessons on forming questions and predicting as you read, and an unknown vocabulary prediction worksheet.
11. Extensive comprehension questions to guide reading. There’s also a “Find the Phrase” activity to help students find examples of common themes in the story.
12. Worksheet on the Scene to highlight the way the author sets the scene and establishes that Jim and Della are poor, but love each other very much.
13. Character Study Sheets for Jim and Della, plus a fun creative activity to retell the story through another character’s eyes.
14.  A complete lesson on situational irony including what it is, how it works, and how it differs from coincidence or bad luck.
15. Discussion Questions for students to dig deeper into the meaning of the text.
16. Practice doing exegesis or deep passage analysis on selected quotations from the story.
17. A set of essay and Creative Writing Topics
18. Assessment tools in the form of various quizzes and tests, all in open-answer and multiple choice form.

This packet is designed for maximum flexibility and adaptability. Go through the whole packet and spend a week on this text alone. Or pick and choose the activities you like best. Follow the order of the packet for a great unit on this classic story. Or put together your own The Gift of the Magi lesson plan from the variety of activities included.

For a long preview, go to the Teachers Pay Teachers page and check it out for yourself.

Thanksgiving Activities for ESL students

Thanksgiving Activities for ESL students are always a fun way to teach American culture. But Thanksgiving lessons also raise timeless themes such as gratitude, types of food, and how we celebrate holidays in general. Plus, it’s nice to pop in A Charlie Brown Thanksgiving sometimes and have some fun! So here’s some links to some of my most popular Thanksgiving activities and lesson plans.

Activities for ESL students about Thanksgiving

•  A Charlie Brown Thanksgiving lesson plan is my best-selling lesson plan and my go-to thanksgiving activity for ESL students in my own classes. I’ve tried to include everything you can get out of the video to teach about Thanksgiving including the first thanksgiving, the meaning of thanksgiving, the religious side of this holiday, and the turkey and mashed potatoes! Even the football game is mentioned!
  You can also have fun introducing the Peanuts characters and running gags. Linus’ blanket, Sally’s crush on Linus, and Lucy always pulling away that football all are here.  There are a number of comprehension questions for students to answer as they watch.
  There’s also a guide for teachers that breaks the movie into scenes. For each scene, there’s some key vocabulary, major themes, and a summary of the action. You can use it to break the viewing into parts. Or to pre-teach some vocab you think students might need to know. Or ask students to make their own outline of the video and then compare it to your outline.
• The Missing Mashed Potatoes. This is a clue by clue critical thinking mystery puzzle with a Thanksgiving theme. Maybe you had a favorite dish that you only ate on holidays. And everybody fought to get more than anyone else. In my family, it was the mashed potatoes. That’s what led me to write this mystery where students have to follow the clues to figure out who ate all the mashed potatoes!
• Looking for a quick warm-up for your Thanksgiving Lesson Plans and Activities? The Thanksgiving Word Association Brainstorm is exactly what it sounds like: A worksheet that asks students to name 5 things they associate with Thanksgiving. It’s a simple activity, but powerful. You can elicit vocabulary, use their answers as discussion prompts, discover misunderstandings your students have, create a word cloud, or ask students to share the reasons for their associations!
• Word Processing Skills Thanksgiving Day Edition is a fun activity that teaches students basic word processing skills. Students are given a text and rules on how to manipulate that text. In the process, they uncover a mystery message. This one is all about thankfulness! Tired of students that don’t know how to copy-and-paste? Want to make sure they know how to format in 12-point Times New Roman? Try this fun activity out.

Activities Gratitude and Giving

• Gratitude Bundle is a collection of 8 discussion or writing prompts on the topic of thankfulness. Each printable worksheet contains a prompt and illustration about people in their lives they are thankful for, remembering a good deed, and remembering the good things in their lives. Students can respond in writing, discussion, or sketches!
• What Would You Do: Feed the Homeless is a critical thinking activity that asks about giving money to the homeless. How to help the needy is always a controversial debate. Is it better to give direct help or support a charity? How do we decide how much to give? This What Would You Do hypothetical situation lets students discuss these critical issues with a seemingly simple question-would you give money to a homeless person? What circumstances would affect your decision?

Activities about Food

• The Food and Holidays Lesson Plan gives students a chance to talk about their national food, then gives you a chance to discuss Thanksgiving and the traditional foods we eat on that holiday. Finally students get talk about their special holiday meals.
  It’s a great Thanksgiving Activities for ESL students, and really helps introduce thanksgiving to international students. They may not know a lot about this primarily American holiday, but they do know how to talk about food. It’s also a topic that is accessible to advanced, intermediate and beginner students. And it also works for Christmas or any holiday where there’s lots of food!
• One part of the Food and Holidays Lesson Plan is the food and adjectives worksheet. In fact, I’ve designed it in two different ways:  a Food and Adjectives Chart where students fill in words to describe tastes, ways of cooking, ways to describe food.
• For less advanced students, there’s also a Food Adjectives Cloze Worksheet that gives some more support in the form of sample vocabulary and sentence frames. Students can also graduate from this scaffolded version to the more open Food and Adjectives Chart.

Halloween Activities for English Class

Halloween is one of my favorite holidays. And it’s a great holiday to share with students. Some say it’s too scary or macabre to do Halloween activities in English class. But you can always find an aspect of the holiday that isn’t too gruesome. You can talk about trick-or-treating, costumes, or creepy animals such as spiders, bats, or owls. You can tell or write silly ghost stories, instead of scary ones. Of course, you can also go for the scary—I miss my 6th and 7th graders who were all about the gore!).

So here are some of our best-selling Halloween activities for English class, whether it be ESL or EFL. These resources are all available on Teachers Pay Teachers where you can download and print them for your whole class. However, you’ll also find links to the books the activities come from, so you can check out the whole collection!

Printable Halloween Resources

What-Would-You-Dos are a great critical thinking activity that get students talking about hypothetical situations. Kill a Spider is a nice simple one that appeals to all ages and isn’t overly scary. But it’s still got a Halloween feel because it’s about creepy-crawlies!

Get students talking about whether it’s ok to kill spiders or other annoying animals. Find the whole activity, including background story, supporting questions, and extension ideas on TpT or check out our whole collection of hypothetical situations, What Would You Do by Taylor Sapp.

What would you do if you were bitten by a zombie? Would you kill yourself before you could turn? Try to find an antidote? Maybe the zombie is really just a weird guy. This one really sets the Halloween mood, but also brings pop culture into the classroom, and even gives some insight into student character. What kind of person you are could really change what you do in a life-or-death situation, even one as fantastical as this!

Find the whole Zombie Bite activity on TpT including background story, supporting questions, and extension ideas or check out our whole collection of hypothetical situations, What Would You Do by Taylor Sapp.

Maybe your students don’t want to celebrate Halloween, or they have their own ideas for a scary holiday (or a new autumn celebration). This page from Teresa X. Nguyen‘s wonderful book gets students thinking about a new holiday of their own design.

This hand-drawn illustrated prompt has students thinking of their holiday name, purpose, activities, food and more. Then they can share it in writing, discussion, or art. So many ways to use Teresa’s amazing prompt!

Find Create a New Holiday on TpT or check out the whole collection of prompts, 60 Positive Activities for Kids

Another What Would You Do, hypothetical situation for critical thinking, Haunted Bedroom. What would your students do if there were a ghost in their house? This is one that can be as scary or as mild as you like. Perhaps the ghost is friendly, or needs your help.

Find the whole activity including background story, supporting questions, and extension ideas on Teachers Pay Teachers or check out our whole collection of hypothetical situations, What Would You Do by Taylor Sapp.

What would Halloween be without scary stories? This one from Stories Without End by Taylor Sapp is a classic. One kid is dared to go into a (supposedly) haunted house. The twist is that your students get to write the twist.

This haunted house Halloween story ends at the moment the boy decides to enter the house. What happens next? Is the house really haunted? Or is it all a hoax? Your students get to decide!

Find the whole story and activities on TpT or check out our whole collection of unfinished stories, Stories Without End by Taylor Sapp.

Tell a Scary Story or Act One Out

You can also check out some of our teacher activity books for some ideas for Halloween Activities for EFL students. Instant EFL Lesson Plans by Cristian Spiteri has a number of storytelling and roleplay activities, that you could adapt by allowing only scary stories! For example, you could do this improv storytelling activity but tell students the story is a scary Halloween tale!

Another of Cristian’s activities involves exploring a literary genre and then creating a scene in that genre. While the activity in the book focuses on fantasy and sci-fi, it could just as easily be adapted to be about horror or Halloween stories.

And while you’re at it, why not have students improvise a scene from a horror movie? Or write a Halloween script? The Drama Book is full of activities, lesson plans, and guidance to get students using theater, drama, and acting skills to practice natural communication.

What’s your go-to Halloween activity for English class? Share in the comments!

Resources for Distance Learning

We know we aren’t the first and we probably won’t be the last people you hear from to talk about our resources for distance learning (or that work well teaching online). But we assume if you’re reading this blog, or getting this email that means you like what we do. And we certainly like what we do and think they’re pretty useful.

Now when I say resources for distance learning, I mean a few different things. First, it could mean resources that are well-suited for online learning platforms like Zoom or Google Classrooms. Some of our resources are on PowerPoint or Google Slides, or single PDF pages so you can share them with your class easily.

Other resources are good for distance learning because students can do them independently. Then they can share their results with you via email or through your learning platform.

Also note that a lot of our books are available as ebooks. So you can have your students buy them, or get them instantly-no waiting to prep your lessons!

Now, we’ll be updating this list as we work to make more and more of our resources distance learning-friendly. We’d also love to hear from you if you’re using any of our Teacher Resource Books and adapting the activities for online use.

Always Look on the Bright Side of Life

If you’re looking for simple and flexible prompts that focus on fun memories, kindness, and setting and achieving goals, then 60 Positive Activities for Kids is the book for you.

Each slide features a prompt that students can respond to in writing, in conversation, or by drawing. Or let students start with a drawing, add labels, share with a partner, and then start constructing sentences, paragraphs and longer writings.

Best of all and much-needed these days, each prompt focuses on the positive side of life. Students will be sharing a joke, talking about a happy memory, inventing their dream home, and discussing their achievements and hopes for the future.

So check out the PowerPoint or Google Slide editions on Teachers Pay Teachers. You can also get individual worksheets as PDFs.

What if . . .

What Would You Do? is a great activity that requires no prep and that students can do independently. But they generate a ton of great discussion and/or writing. Give students a hypothetical situation and let them discuss what they would do. It’s an easy way to bring up social and emotional issues, ethical dilemmas, and address every day conflicts.

We’ve formatted the book, What Would You Do? by Taylor Sapp as Google Slides and as PowerPoint slides to make them easy to share over Zoom or Google Classrooms, or whatever you’re using for remote teaching!

Each dilemma features one slide that lays out the situation, giving some context to the problem. Then there’s a concise statement of the issue. Finally there are some suggested solutions to help students start thinking of solutions.

The second slide gives some variations because we know our actions often depend on the context. This is a great time to talk about Social-Emotional Learning.

Story Prompts That Inspire

We still have print and ebooks for sale too, including Stories Without End. 24 open-ended stories that students can supply their own endings too. There are a lot of other creative projects related to each story, as well, including rewriting stories, adding characters, doing summaries, or even turning the story into a play or movie (or online animation, I guess).

For our remote teaching world, I’d suggest having students read a story on their own, then discuss the comprehension questions via email or your class page/wall/blog. Then they can start writing. This can be done independently or they can brainstorm in groups online!

Finally, have them share their stories on their class blog or classroom or through email. Everyone can share then leave a comment, reflection, or question for each classmate!

The whole book is available in ebook, paperback, or in PDF at Teachers Pay Teachers. We also have individual stories at TpT.

Writing Journals for Every Occasion

We also have a set of writing journals out in ebook form and soon coming out in print! You can find them wherever you buy your books or click the links below. Each one contains 52 prompts, one for each week of the year, making them perfect as a periodic journal or writing prompt!

Inspirations Weekly Writing Journal: 52 Writing Prompts for Short Stories is a collection of fictional prompts and guiding questions to help you come up with an amazing story idea. There’s also a guide to the story arc. And tips for going through the writing process from idea to revision!
https://books2read.com/b/mBgwnR

Agree or Disagree: 52 Writing Prompts for Opinion Essays is a collection of 52 statements for academic essays, debates, or argument essays. There’s also some sample outlines, including the rebuttal form, and tips for going through the whole writing process.

https://books2read.com/b/4Az5zA

Reflections Weekly Writing Journal: 52 Writing Prompts About You includes one prompt per week about you. It’s a nice way to get into journalling or do a little free-writing as a transition in your day!

Share a trip you want to take or a nice memory or something you really hate!

https://books2read.com/b/4Az5JN

New Mindsets and Habits for a New Routine

Of course, with everything going on, it’s easy to forget to take care of ourselves. Patrice Palmer’s book on Teacher Self Care is more relevant than ever, and it even applies to parents or anyone feeling stressed out about our new lives!

The heart of Patrice’s approach is to look at the mindsets that cause you to get stressed out. I know for many there’s a lot of pressure to be creative or productive since we all supposedly have so much free time. But that mindset, “This is my best/only chance to do something great” is pretty stress-inducing. It’s also not particularly conducive to actually being productive, meaning many of us are probably being LESS creative or productive now. And then beating ourselves up for it.

If we give up that mindset, ….. Now if we want to be creative maybe we can set some realistic expectations like, “I’m gong to use the 20 minutes I used to commute to work just doodling/freewriting” or “I’m going to do my son’s schoolwork with him (I’m stuck watching him anyway) and try to learn something new”

Let us know if you use any of these resources, and above all be healthy and keep safe!

And do get in touch if there’s anything we can do to help make teaching and learning easier in these times.

Activities for Thanksgiving

There are a lot of reasons to teach about Thanksgiving and do some activities for Thanksgiving in the classroom. First, Thanksgiving is a major American holiday* and students living in the US should know about it. Second, it’s a great excuse to talk about important themes such as gratitude and family. For lower level students, you can always talk about food! Third, even EFL students with little exposure to American culture have probably heard of Thanksgiving. So it’s never a bad idea to share about the holiday.

So we’ve collected some activities on Teachers Pay Teachers that are perfect for celebrating Thanksgiving in the classroom. Click on the links for more information and to see a preview. These downloadable, printable, Thanksgiving activities come from two books: 60 Positive Activities for the Classroom and What Would You Do?. There’s also an activity from the author of Classroom Community Builders.

This beautiful, hand-illustrated drawing, writing, or discussion prompt asks kids to design a new holiday! There’s a place to name it, and mark the calendar, draw or jot down some traditions, food, and activities for this amazing new day! They can be as creative and imaginative or realistic as they like.

Then, they can compare their holiday to a real celebration or to each other’s. To make it a Thanksgiving activity, have students come up with a holiday centered around gratitude, or food, or the harvest. How will their holiday differ from American Thanksgiving? How will it be the same?

Check out the New Holiday worksheet here.

Who are students grateful for and why? With some directed prompts, and some open ones, the students have to think about what that person adds to their life. This is a great way to find out what students really value in their friends and family, and it puts the emphasis on the reasons we are thankful, rather than the individuals themselves. It’s a perfect way to engender some Thanksgiving Day gratitude!

Check out the writing or discussion prompt here.

Ask students to think about someone who helped them and write a thank you note! This is a straightforward, but flexible activity that also builds positivity in the classroom and promotes Social-Emotional Learning (SEL).

Check out this letter-writing prompt here.

You see a homeless person asking for money. They appear to be in good health and able to work. Do you give them money? This hypothetical prompt gets students thinking about some of the themes of Thanksgiving, including being grateful for what we do have, and the best way to help others.

In addition to the prompt, this critical thinking activity includes suggestions for variables or contexts that might change student answers, follow-up discussion questions, and extension ideas including a writing prompt.

Check out this innovative Thanksgiving discussion activity.

A Charlie Brown Thanksgiving is a great introduction to Thanksgiving, particularly for EFL students who don’t know a lot about the holiday. It covers the Thanksgiving football game, the turkey dinner, the theme of gratitude and friendship, even a name-drop of the Mayflower and Miles Standish!

This lesson plan can be used to introduce the film, guide students through the film with comprehension questions, and then let them check their comprehension with a summary to fill out. Finally there are some discussion questions and ideas for extension.

Check out A Charlie Brown Thanksgiving Lesson Plan.

Got any other go-to Thanksgiving Activities? Share in the comments!

* I know Canada has a Thanksgiving holiday too. However, it’s not celebrated in the same way. In fact, as best I can tell, it’s not as major a holiday as the American Thanksgiving.

New Holiday Activity

I am having way too much fun uploading worksheets out of 60 Positive Activities for Kids on to our Teachers Pay Teachers Store (Click on Build Positivity to find all the worksheets!)

One of the things I’m really enjoying is that it gives me a chance to think deeply about how to use the resources in the classroom. As I was uploading this awesome New Holiday Activity I realized that this could be a one-off creative worksheet as the authors intended.

But it could also spark a discussion comparing holiday traditions. You could even use it as the beginning of a project to design a fully-fleshed out celebration. And then use some of the ideas from everyone’s holiday for your end-of-class or end-of-year party!

Expanding the Project

In the activity as written, students pick a name of a holiday, the date, the reason for it, the activities, any traditions, and the food. However, you can follow-up this up by having students draw costumes or decorations on the back. They might even want to draw out parade routes or traditional dance steps.

Now you can have students share their holidays with each other in pairs or small groups. Be sure that the partners are asking each other questions about their holidays. Students can be asking questions in order to improve their partners’ clarity or to help them include more detail.

Questions that help improve clarity might be, “When do the fireworks happen? Why do people put lights on their houses?”

Questions that help the writer add detail include, “Do the dancers wear special costumes? What kind of food do people have? Can the parade happen any time?”

After talking to a partner, students can revise their holiday ideas. Then they can redo the worksheet or even turn their work into a short essay. If possible, you can even have them do presentations on their holidays. Encourage them to include some “traditions” and activities, within reasonable limits.

Comparing Traditions

Another variation is to use this activity to discuss different ways of celebrating an existing holiday. This works well with one students love to celebrate. Thanksgiving, Christmas, Eid al-Fitr , Hanukkah, Easter, and Sukkot, and New Years, Spring Festival come to mind when I think of my students!

In this case, students would write the name of the real holiday, but then think about how their family celebrates it. They may be surprised to discover the many different ways people celebrate the same holiday. It’s also worth having students compare what they think the meaning of the holiday is. Again, there may be more diversity there than you’d think.

The above activity assumes students are all from the same culture or are in homogeneous groups. Alternatively, you can put students in mixed groups and have them compare events that are usually celebrated, such as weddings, birthdays, or retirements. Or they can talk about a type of holiday such as new years or one where we give thanks. What’s the big holiday where kids get presents? Which holiday involves family sharing a big meal? What similarities and differences exist? I’m always amazed when I do things like this with my students how every culture has special rules for the elderly, for example. Grandpa’s chair or the good chair seems to have a parallel worldwide!

If you use the New Holiday Activity from 60 Positive Activities for Kids, be sure to let us know how it goes. What did you do? Did the students like it? You can leave a comment here or email us.