In the district I taught in, we had the day before Thanksgiving off for a compensation day for conferences, which were usually the week before. It was a rough time of the year. It was the longest period of time during the school year that we had to go without a break or even a long weekend. Coming off of report card and conference week, we were normally exhausted from the late nights and the students were thrown off from the half days. Because we only taught Monday and Tuesday, it was hard to start any new topics. We would usually spend those few days doing Thanksgiving related activities. We still kept it academic but we tried to bring a little more fun to the activities they were doing.
Here are a few activities to get your students through the next few weeks leading up to Thanksgiving.
Thanksgiving Math Task Cards
Task cards! There are so many possibilities for these. Try using task cards for:
-math workshop - use as a center
-fast finishers
-small group work
-guided instruction
-review
-whole class games like scoot (put one card at each desk, after students solve the card on their desk, everyone moves to the next desk, continue moving until all cards are complete)
-math journals
-homework
-interactive bulletin board
-problem of the day
I've created a
Thanksgiving Math set and a
Thanksgiving Literacy set. Both sets include 32 cards in color and in black and white. There is a student recording sheet and an answer key.
Skills covered include:
Expanded form, word form, place
value, skip counting, addition and subtraction story problems, even & odd
numbers, mental math with addition and subtraction up to 20
Thanksgiving ELA Task Cards
Skills covered include:
Synonyms,
antonyms, prepositions, nouns, verbs, pronouns, adverbs, adjectives,
punctuation, contractions, vowels, consonants, syllables
Thanksgiving Bingo
Thanksgiving Bingo is a great way to have some fun and do some learning too. Since this game has lots of Thanksgiving foods it is a great time to talk about traditions and work on vocabulary. There are 30 different boards in color and black and white so you can truly just print and play.
Have a great rest of November. Hang in there...a break is coming soon!
