Do you want cute ideas for February to use in your literacy centers? Although I have all of these items in my store, I am going to explain how to do each of them without a purchase! If you would rather have the work done for you, there will be links below, but you are welcome to use these ideas in your classroom free of charge!
1. Groundhog's Day- Create Your Own Animal Legend Writing- After talking to your class about groundhog's day, tell them they are now going to create their own legend about another animal! Use a thinking graphic organizer similar to the one below to help them gather thoughts!
2. Valentine's Persuasion Writing: Give the students several prompts to choose from and let them start persuading! Provide the friendly letter format to guide them in their writing! Here are some ideas:
a. Convince your teacher or parent to choose you for special Valentine.
b. Persuade your teacher or parent to allow you to eat candy any time of the day.
c. Convince your friends to exercise or eat healthy for strong hearts.
d. Persuade your parents to open a candy store.
3. Chocolate Opinion Writing: Send them to this site to read an article about chocolate- Is Chocolate Healthy? Then have your students decide whether or not it is a healthy choice and write an opinion paper.
4. A Healthy Heart- Informative Writing: Go the Heart Association's web page and have students read about what type of food and how much exercise children their age should be getting each day. Have students create a newspaper article highlighting the information.
5. Chocolate Web Quest: Create some questions about the history of chocolate and how chocolate is made. Give students links to answer the questions. Here are some of the questions I used:
What are the main ingredients in chocolate? What is a nib? What happens while beans are roasted? How many beans in a pod? Name the 2 tribes that used chocolate as a drink. Who first made chocolate into a solid form? Who was the first European to come in contact with the cacao bean? Who tried to keep chocolate to themselves? How did chocolate help win the war? Give them a treat afterwards!
6. February Quatrain: Use examples from the anchor chart to teach quatrains. Then give students a February word bank and have them create quatrains with different rhyming patterns. If you have rhyming dictionaries, place them in the center as well!
7. Black History Biopoem: This is a free item in my store! There is a QR code to get to a Black History website. Students choose someone to read about and then fill in the Biopoem template. Super cute! Grab it below for free!
8. Duke Ellington: This is the perfect time of year to learn about Duke Ellington. You can read his picture book and read a biography on PBSKids.org/jazz and compare texts! I like to play his music in the center too!
9. Sweet Parts of Speech: Make cards with Valentine's words. Have students sort them into the different parts of speech and then write them out in their category. Some examples:
10. The Day I Was President- Narrative Writing: Students write about a day they were president. Start with walking into the Oval Office! This great to have a craft to go along with it!
11. Chocolate Grouping: This is a freebie in my store! See below.
12. Cereal Box Biography- Book Report: Students choose a person to read about. I like them to read books for this one! Then they decorate a cereal box.
Front: Name and illustrate the cereal and person
Back: Advertise their combination of cereal and person
Side: Nutritional Facts: Use bullets and list important dates and events in that person's life
Side: Ingredients: What are your similarities and differences to this person. What would you change if you were in their shoes?
I hope you got some great ideas for February! Here are some links if you are interested.
The writing activities are sold separately AND as a bundle.
