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Thanksgiving might be one of my favorite holidays, and it’s definitely not for the food. It’s very possible that I actually hate Thanksgiving food and I am forever trying to convince my family that we should have a non-traditional menu. I haven’t won out… yet.
Why do I still love T-gives in spite of my disdain for its food? Well I am just wildly convinced that gratitude is the solution to most of life’s problems. In my 11 years of teaching, I have found that incorporating moments of gratitude throughout the school year, but especially in November, have had a positive impact on my students – both in the community of our classroom and (therefore!) in their learning and growth.
I also just think it’s fun to incorporate a holiday that isn’t quite as festive (ahem commercialized) in terms of decor as Halloween and Christmas. Here are 4 ways you can bring Turkey day into your classroom.
#1 Gratitude List:This is FREE and simple. Have your students take out a piece of notebook paper and start listing things they are thankful for. In my family, we talk about 3 things we’re thankful for every Monday morning at breakfast. Some Mondays, I get to school and it just feels extra Monday-y and so I have my students do this. I usually have them turn and talk with a partner about one thing they wrote down. It’s a great way to start the day! Be prepared for some potentially silly responses, sometimes even mature students get goofy and I just roll with it.
#2 Thank You Note/Shoutout Writing: This one can genuinely change the tone and flavor of your class. For real, my teacher hack for hard days (and can we talk about how there are somehow more of those during October/November?!) is to bust out this activity around gratitude.
Here’s how it goes
- Do you want to do thank you notes? Or a shoutout style note?
- Decide your parameters: do you want students to extend gratitude to literally anyone? Or keep it in the school? When I do this at the end of the school year, I make it a requirement that students write one to a peer and one to an adult on our campus mostly because this allows me to guarantee delivery
- Keep it simple: have students take out a piece of notebook paper and go to town! Depending on their age, you can even have them pull out markers/crayons and decorate (I’ve been impressed and surprised at the eagerness with which my high schoolers have gone to down with decorating these notes)
- Shoutout Wall: Shifting from thankfulness to calling out awesome things other people are doing is one way to create a more supportive classroom or school. Making this a “shoutout” activity is a fun way to call out people & qualities that may sometimes go unnoticed. I worked at a school that made this a required part of every staff meeting, with the expectation that you wrote one per kid throughout the course of the year, and each one would be added to the “shoutout” board in the main school hallway
I’ve created a pack of thank you note and shout out templates that are ready to print, no prep needed other than cutting and passing out! You can purchase it here.
#2 Pumpkin Pie Argument: This is really similar to my candy corn writing activity.I definitely recommend having some pumpkin pie on hand for students to snack on while they write. I know that can get a little pricey, but the ones at Costco are usually a good deal! It helps them engage their full senses and makes it a little more exciting. I recommend prepping cups ahead of time if you go that route. If you really want to get into it, you can “plant” the topic a few days ahead of time by having students discuss their favorite/least favorite Thanksgiving-related food or pie. After that, I usually do a quick poll to see what they think about Pumpkin Pie.
Here’s how it goes
- Students take out a piece of paper and they have to write an argument for why pumpkin pie is the greatest dessert of all time. Depending on the age/what you’ve taught, you could have them use imagery (5 senses) and/or rhetorical appeals and devices.
- After a set time, you have them flip to the other side and write an argument for why it is the worst dessert.
- There’s a few directions you can go from here: mini debates, whole class debates, 4 corners, speed d(eb)ates or even having them practice writing a counter argument since they have demonstrated arguments from both sides
This one is so fun! It’s a great activity to practice argument and allows you to encourage students to take multiple perspectives and develop strong arguments for a position they don’t passionately believe in.
I’ve created a full lesson plan for this, with a slide deck and rubric. You can purchase it here.
#4 Thanksgiving Writing Prompts: I developed this pack of writing prompts so that I would always be ready with options to assign. It includes 9 total prompts, 3 each in the argumentative, narrative and explanatory/informative genres. Some years, I’ve only had time for them to do a quick extended paragraph instead of a full-blown written piece. Other times, we’ve worked through the whole writing process with one of the prompts, using the graphic organizers and rubric to guide students. If you have a little extra time and you don’t have any one specific genre of writing you need to work on, you could give students all the options and let them pick which genre & prompt they want to write about.
