Keeping Students Focused During the Holiday Season
There are easy ways to make the day before a school break fun, exciting, and productive.
By Elisa Jackson
While the day before a holiday break can be fun and exciting, it can also be nerve wracking for teachers. On these days students are often focused on the upcoming vacation, not on school. Here are some ways to make the day before a break fun and structured at the same time.
There are easy ways to make the days before short breaks, like Thanksgiving and spring break, enjoyable and productive. You can incorporate language arts activities by using themed worksheets, like a Thanksgiving word search, or by having students do creative activities, like writing spring break sentences on colored strips of paper and making a spring collage. Students love being able to express themselves through art.
While word searches and other worksheets can fill in part of the day, there are a variety of other ways to motivate your students. Three fun activities you can do with your students is play a themed game, watch a movie about the break, and/or have a party. A game that I like to play is holiday bingo. Whatever holiday break is coming up, I make bingo cards for students to glue holiday pictures on, and then we play bingo with prizes. Students can also watch a movie that they pick that goes with the theme of the break. There are a ton of Christmas movies appropriate for all ages, and students like voting on which movie to watch. This can create some nice lights off quiet time for the teacher as well! And having a party doesn’t have to be crazy, it can be structured. Students can get their treats in an organized fashion, use designated trash cans, and engage in specific activities when they are done.
There are two major breaks, however, when it might not be so easy to keep students focused on classroom activities. At my school, the day before the winter holiday break, the staff puts on little skits in the cafeteria for all the children to watch. Most of the staff participates and there are usually about twelve. These are singing skits, silly skits, dancing exhibitions, food eating contests, musical concerts and more. We try to make it really funny and enjoyable for children to watch. Between skits, the music teacher leads the whole school in singing holiday songs. The other big break is summer vacation. Before this break, my school plans a variety of events, including the staff vs. sixth grade softball game. The students get to play on the playground as they watch the game and root for their teachers and friends. It’s a lot of fun. Here are some more activities to do with your class the day before a break.
Keeping Students Focused During the Holidays:
This is a blank bingo worksheet that you can adapt to fit whichever bingo concept you want to incorporate.
Students color fifteen small pictures that represent Christmas according to the directions on the sheet.
In this Thanksgiving lesson plan, students review the history of Thanksgiving and create a mural on large paper about it.
Students read the book "The Snowy Day" by Ezra Jack Keats and discuss various winter themes. This could be a nice quiet activity right before winter break.