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Valentine’s Day might be my least favorite holiday. Don’t get me wrong, I LOVE love. It’s just that when it comes to teaching teenagers, there’s nothing like Valentine’s Day (and the day after Halloween) to really kick your butt. It’s already a weird holiday, but when you throw in the hormones, the underdeveloped brains, the sub par communication skills and the LOVE for drama… you’re given a bit of a mess. However, I’ve found that the more I can harness that energy towards (somewhat) productive means, the better it is for everyone.
Here are some of my favorite ways to incorporate a little Valentine’s Day fun.
#1 Thank You Note/Shout-out Writing
It’s like sending Valentines! 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 this time of year?!) 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 town with decorating these notes)
You could also do a 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 Conversation Candy Hearts Argument
This is really similar to ones I have for Thanksgiving and Christmas.I definitely recommend having some of the conversation hearts like these on hand for students to snack on while they write. If you really want to get into it, you can “plant” the topic a few days ahead of time by doing a class poll about the candy.
Here’s how it goes
- Students take out a piece of paper and they have to write an argument for why the conversation hearts candies are a delicious treat. 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 not good (I would go so far as to say “disgusting”).
- There are 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.
#3 Valentine’s Day Writing Prompts
I developed this pack of writing prompts so that I would always be ready with options to assign. 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.
