The weeks after Thanksgiving that lead up to Christmas are always the hardest for teachers. Students are out of the normal routine after the extended fall break and are now excited and eager for Christmas to follow in the weeks to come. It can be hard to keep students focused and get all the planned curriculum and lessons in efficiently.
In our own classrooms we do not overtly promote Christmas, although it is the holiday we personally celebrate in our own homes. We do not have elves that visit, or trees lit up all month long. There is not enough time in the month to adequately cover all the different holidays equitably, and it can be dicey trying to determine the personal beliefs and religions of each and every individual student. But nevertheless, Christmas is always the predominant holiday students anticipate, and that excitement spills over with each new day that nears.
As educators we know that student excitement is the key to engagement, and that when students are engaged they are more likely to try new things or stick with hard tasks. Using this excitement and incorporating it into the normal and routine academic activities is an easy way to keep learning alive throughout the holiday season. Thus the 12 Days of Reading was created with one simple goal in mind—keep reading lessons exciting while balancing all that comes along with the holiday sprit. The name is a spin off of the well-known song “12 Days of Christmas” and it is meant to compliment the reading already being done each day. Whether this is reading that must be done from a textbook, or independent reading that students have free choice over.
Day 1- Graffiti Wall
For this activity, students create a word splash to illustrate the book or selection of text they are reading. The words can summarize an event, convey an emotion, describe a character or person, etc. Students can either doodle, draw or sketch these words and phrases on paper or create their painted wall digitally on Flipgrid. If working to create on Flipgrid, you can grab the digital activity and brick wall images right from the Discovery library.
Day 2- Social Media Post
Taking on the persona of someone else and creating a social media page is a fun way for students to summarize, story tell, and take on a different perspective. Teachers can be creative with what students create profiles for—famous historical people, book characters, an inanimate object or even something outside of the box like an element from the periodic table!
The following templates are some of our favorites that we have found over time created by fellow designers, educators and colleagues.
Pinterest Template Created by TEachingTechnix
YouTube Template created by Paula Martinez
Netflix Created by Nick LaFave
Facebook by Ryan O’Donnell
Instagram by TechingTechNix
Twitter by TeachingTechNix
Day 3- Comic Cartoon
Creating Comics are a fun way to review plot, practice summarization and practice matching visuals with text in a story. If working in person, have students draw out a specific part or memorable event in the story, or have students work digitally through Book Creator. Students can either collaborate together in one book, or each create their own comic independently.
Day 4- Lego Character
Some of the most engaging lessons for students aren’t because they are elaborate or even because they use technology, but often because they are targeted around the students’ interests. Legos are a classic toy that students often related to so why not incorporate them into a reading lesson? Have students take the basic blank lego character outline and then design an outfit fitting for the person they are describing. This again could be a person from a book, a famous historical person or maybe to represent the main idea of a selection of text read. Students can decorate on paper with basic art supplies, or you can take the image and embed it into other programs like PowerPoint, Adobe Post and many other to design digitally. When finished, regardless of how they design, students can always share their work on Flipgrid.
Day 5- Draw a Scene
Illustrating a scene is a simple, yet powerful way for students to show what they comprehend while reading. By giving them the freedom to draw, they can then structure their drawing into what they envision. A great platform to take this idea and turn it digital is Buncee. Students can create slides representing different scenes in their books, add in characters, background settings, live animations and more!
The garden from the well known novel The Secret Garden brought to life in Buncee!
Day 7- Alpha Boxes
This activity is a great way to get students talking about text while brainstorming words associated with a story or article. Each box is filled with a word, emoji or picture that starts with the letter and explains some part, feeling, characteristic, etc. of the story. Level up this activity by creating a book on Book Creator for students to collaborate on. They could all share their various words and images together in the same place and create one giant, collaged page for each letter.
Grab the template to use today!
Day 8- Character Award
This activity is fun and lets students be creative with how they would describe the main person or character from their reading. After brainstorming a list of character traits, they then can infer what type of award their main character would most likely received. These awards can be realistic—for example, one might be awarded “most courageous” for fighting peer pressure, another awarded “wisest” for the guidance given to another character—or they can be silly, creative and made up.
Grab the template to use!
Day 9- Dream Vacation
It’s five o’clock somewhere, right? Everyone can relate to the idea of getting away and going on vacation, but the destination is where opinions may vary. With this activity, students take on the persona of a person in their reading and plan a dream vacation based on the interests, likes and personality of that person. They pick a spot, describe it, and explain why he or she would want to go there. Depending on the amount of time you have and the age of the learners, you could even take it a step further and have them make up an itinerary of what they would do and when based on the length of the vacation.
Level Up: This would be fun to use Buncee to create. Students would not only create their itinerary of where to go while on vacation, but also illustrate it using animations, photographs sticker and much more!
Day 10- Letter to Santa
Write a letter from the point of view of one character explaining what they want for Christmas. This is a great review for our digital learners and gives them a chance to practice formal writing other than a text, tweet or tok.
Level Up: Infuse some math into this lesson by giving students time to browse through store circular ads and calculate the total amount it would cost to buy all the items on their list.
Day 11- Character Scrapbook
Image your character were to journal or keep track of important events and memories from their life in a scrapbook. Have students create and design the scrapbook using programs like Buncee and have them share their project link with classmates using Flipgrid, Wakelet or Seesaw.
Download this template to get students started!
Level Up: Instead of creating a scrapbook, have students use Adobe Spark Video to create a video or “home movie” of the character’s memories.
Day 12- Adobe Creative Bundle!
Adobe has curated the most amazing activities for teachers to use over the holiday season and we were honored to help create some of the templates for teachers! Check out the many awesome ideas here!
Check back in tomorrow for the last new reading activity!