This time of year teachers reflect on the climate in their classrooms. An engaging Valentine’s Day activity for all grade levels is a way to foster a positive environment in the classroom. You will be meeting your ELA standards and teaching valuable life lessons.
Lesson Plan with Supplemental Resources
1. Define the term, adjectives, to your class. They are describing words. Give examples of adjectives and find them in text.
2. With the class, brainstorm the adjectives that describe a friend. Create a word wall based on their ideas. Read a book from resources below and discuss it with the class. Add any new adjectives to the word wall or writing notebook.
3. Discuss cooperation and why it is an essential skill. Read one or more books from the resources below.
4. Assign a writing activity: What makes a good friend and why?
Resources For The Friendship Unit
Educators and parents can utilize these texts in multiple genres to help students build background knowledge for writing. Online books offer a great opportunity to enrich student’s vocabulary and content knowledge. Big Universe offers hundreds of titles in many different languages on thousands of topics. Find these informational and engaging texts at www.biguniverse.com.
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Friends
by Meg Greve (author) © 2013
ISBN: 9781618103888
From the Publisher: This book teaches students what being a friend means. How it is important to listen, trust, and what it takes to meet and make new friends.
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Can We Be Friends? Buddy Building Strategies
by John Burstein (author) © 2011
ISBN: 9780778797920
From the Publisher: Children who belong to healthy peer groups are generally happier and function at a higher level. Will You Be My Friend? helps young students learn the steps it takes to meet, make, and keep a friend.
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Valentine’s Day
by Reagan Miller (author) © 2010
ISBN: 9780778792215
From the Publisher: Every February 14th, people celebrate love and friendship by exchanging cards, flowers, and gifts, all in the name of Saint Valentine. But who is this mysterious saint and why do we celebrate this holiday? Young readers will discover the meanings behind Valentine’s Day symbols such as hearts, red roses, and cupid. Readers will also learn how people around the world celebrate this holiday.
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The Big Project
by Matthew Hill, Anita Collins, Lisa Workman (authors), Chris Lewis, Shoua Vang (illustrator) © 2012
ISBN: 1933101407
From the Publisher:Alexa Peddlesfoot and her friends have to do a project on bears to present to their class. As they work together, they learn a lot about cooperation and working together to get something done. They also learn a lot about bears—even real bears like Alexa’s friend, Lloyd, who makes a surprise visit to Alexa’s school!
Connection to Common Core State Standards Grade 2
Conventions of Standard English:
Demonstrate command of the conventions of standard English grammar and usage when writing or speaking.
Use collective nouns (e.g., group).
Form and use frequently occurring irregular plural nouns (e.g., feet, children, teeth, mice, fish).
Use reflexive pronouns (e.g., myself, ourselves).
Form and use the past tense of frequently occurring irregular verbs (e.g., sat, hid, told).
Use adjectives and adverbs, and choose between them depending on what is to be modified.
Produce, expand, and rearrange complete simple and compound sentences (e.g., The boy watched the movie; The little boy watched the movie; The action movie was watched by the little boy).
Demonstrate command of the conventions of standard English capitalization, punctuation, and spelling when writing.
Capitalize holidays, product names, and geographic names.
Use commas in greetings and closings of letters.
Use an apostrophe to form contractions and frequently occurring possessives.
Generalize learned spelling patterns when writing words (e.g., cage → badge; boy → boil).
Consult reference materials, including beginning dictionaries, as needed to check and correct spellings.