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As a teacher, do you look forward to or do you dread when a holiday comes around? Personally, I could go either way. I love the energy, the fun, and the excitement a holiday brings but I also always disliked the potential to derail my academic momentum. If we were in the middle of a unit, cruising along and I needed my students to focus, a holiday was always...cringe. However, with experience, I learned to embrace holidays and build them into my classroom in a way that still sparked joy for my students (and me!) while keeping the learning train full steam ahead.
When done thoughtfully, themed holiday work can harness the spirit of the season while enhancing the concepts that you are already working on. By planning meaningful themed work, you may see
- an increase in student interest & motivation
- an increase in student participation & attitude
- students applying skills you have already taught them
- students making connections
Consider skipping the busy work/time fillers and think about planning meaningful lessons that your students will enjoy. The key is to make your holiday activities more than a "one and done" just for fun lesson. Build it inot something that aligns with your course's learning objectives and has a beginning/middle/end. You want your students to have fun but also be clear about what they are doing, why they are doing it, and what they should be learning. Get started with these 3 steps-
- Brainstorm: what skill or concepts do you want to review or introduce in an engaging way? What's coming up on the timeline or what are you currently working on?
- Attach: Attach the skill or concept to something holiday related and run with it! This is a great opportunity to collaborate with co-teachers to share the process or to try something cross curricular.
- Plan: Holiday themed lessons do not have to take over an entire class period. Here are some ways to teach what you need to, while throwing in something "extra":
- You can split your class time and have a new lesson (based on holiday ideas as it relates to your current curriculum content) running parallel to your regularly scheduled programming. It might take a few extra days to get through your usual plans, but your kids will get double exposure to the core content or maybe it's an opportunity to review past concepts in an engaging way.
- Dedicate the last section of your class to your holiday themed lesson. Day 1 you can introduce the skill/concept, Day 2 you can introduce the project, Day 3 they can start to work on it. Decide how much time you want to allot and how many days it will take to complete and work backwards from there to get started.
- Create your holiday themed lesson as an extension of your current skill/concept and run it during centers or independent work time. It could be differentiated, self directed option. Maybe you offer a few different variations of the activity and students have choice work time, choose your own adventure style.
- Piggyback it off of your current project if you're right in that zone when some students are going to be finishing and others need to work all the way up through a break...this can be your sanity saver to make sure everyone has something productive to do right up through the last day. You can introduce the holiday lesson as a whole group, before students start finishing up their current work, to ensure everyone has a basic understanding. Then, as students begin wrapping up, they can seamlessly move into the special holiday work.
- If you're really organized and the timelines match up, you can repurpose any project to fit a holiday. You can attach the objectives/skills/concepts to a version that relates back to the major holiday and it could be your primary focus for the unit. You can theme all day every day!