I know that I may be in the minority in this, but Valentine’s Day is my FAVORITE holiday. That’s why it is so important to me to have some creative Valentine’s Day Lesson Plans for High School Students in my classroom. Everyone should feel the love! When I hear my students groaning and complaining about how much they dislike Valentine’s Day, it makes me SO SAD. I think that everyone should use the holiday as a chance to show love toward friends and family – not just a significant other. Also, I AM A FIRM BELIEVER IN CANDY. Any opportunity to pop some bon-bons and kill a bag of pink and red M&Ms is FINE with me.
All students deserve a little love, lightheartedness, and CANDY on this day, so I’ve come up with the perfect solution with the Valentine’s Day activities for the classroom that I’ve tried over the years.
Sometimes it’s difficult to incorporate fun Valentine’s Day lessons into the ELA classroom without sacrificing the ELA standards. Check out my top 3 favorite ways to celebrate the day of love while still covering all of the important English reading and writing staples!
1. Defending an argument: Is it true love or lucrative business?
- My students always have very intense feelings about if Valentine’s Day is a “real” holiday or just a made-up day for retailers to make more money. I like to have my high school students celebrate Valentine’s Day by learning about the real history behind the holiday. Some of my favorite resources to use are:
The History’s Channel’s history of St. Valentine
The Dark Origins of Valentine’s Day from NPR
I take the opportunity to practice ELA skills before, during, and after reading such as:
– Using textual evidence to support an argument
– Identifying text structure + author’s purpose
– Analyzing bias
– Writing about rhetorical strategies
I’ve even put together a resource here to teach my students about the history of the holiday, objections to celebrating it, AND how we can spread love year-round – not just on one day out of the whole year. I’ve also added some fun stories on the history of a popular Valentine’s Day candy. Students will see 10 multiple choice questions and one question. I also added a vocabulary practice and 5 pre-reading questions to get my students thinking about the text as well as their own lives.
2. Creating a Character’s Dating Profile
I absolutely love activities that you can use with any text! Creating a character dating profile is one of my all-time favorite Valentine’s Day lesson plans for high school students! It’s a no-prep activity for English class that keeps students focused on the standards while still having FUN! They’ll simply choose a character from the work that you’re studying and pretend like the character is looking for a mate on a dating website. It’s SO FUNNY to see the things that students come up with. The creative options are endless, and students have to use inferences as well as direct characterization from the text to make their dating profile for a chosen character. I’ve even made a bulletin board out of these once all of my students have finished. I especially love seeing the Snapchat usernames and Instagram handles that they make for their character.
P.S. I send out a free copy of this assignment to all of my email subscribers every February! You can grab the link to get on that list here!
3. Using a Valentine’s Day-themed Station Rotation Activity
I absolutely love using stations in the high school English classroom. It breaks up the monotony and adds some much needed movement – especially if you’re like me and have 90 minute class periods. Whew! I use these stations every year for Valentine’s Day lesson plans for high school students.
Station 1: T Swift + Love Poems
Read “What Love Isn’t” by Yrsa Daley-Ward and “Clean” by Taylor Swift. Then, make a heart foldable which contains analysis questions about both pieces!
Station 2: Punny Valentines
Have your students use their literary element knowledge to create a valentine for a classmate or teacher! Literary valentines are a great way to help students practice what they’ve learned all semester long. I love to have my students use metaphors or personification to write a valentine to someone sweet, but puns have to be my favorite!
Station 3: Creative Writing Prompts
I realized that I spend so much time teaching my students how to write about the text that they are starved for the personal narrative! I use this opportunity to have my students work on creative prompts, personal narrative prompts, and more. I also like to give them famous quotes about love and have them dissect the quote or apply it to their own lives! There are SO many possibilities with Valentine’s Day writing prompts, you’re sure to find something they’ll LOVE.
Some of my other favorite options for Valentine’s Day in the classroom are:
- Reading + responding to the short story, “Love” by William Maxwell – just make sure you have a box of tissues (or six) ready for the tears.
- “Oranges” by Gary Soto is a great poem to use for Valentine’s Day in the classroom. It sparks a lot of conversation about how love is viewed as a child vs. as an adult. It’s also fun to discuss symbolism within the poem.
I’d love to hear what some of your favorite Valentine’s Day activities are to use in your classroom! Drop me a note and let me know how you celebrate my favorite holiday.
P.S. If you’re not already on my email list to get the free character dating profile activity in the month of February, you can sign up here! I send out a weekly newsletter with all sorts of fun lesson ideas, resources, and English teacher tips/tricks!
P.S.S. If you’re interested in more year-around/non-holiday classroom ideas, you can check out my top 5 favorite novels to teach that students actually LOVE reading HERE!
