Valentine’s Day is usually only celebrated in the elementary years. In middle school, you may use the holiday as a reason to have a dance as a fundraiser, but that is usually the extent of the “fun” around Valentine’s Day.
I have fond memories of making my Valentine’s Day card holder in school and wanted to bring some of that magic into the school grades. I created a mini unit to help middle school teachers bring back that Valentine’s Day magic into their classroom, but with a focus on curriculum and rigour.
This engaging Valentine’s Day Unit for middle school contains 5 different activities that will help reinforce your students’ reading, writing, speaking, listening and creativity skills. Lessons are scaffolded to help all learners achieve success. Students will learn about the historical background of Valentine’s Day traditions, prepare for a Valentine’s Day discussion about current customs and create 1 of 2 final creative projects.
Valentine’s Day Lessons Unit Overview
Lesson 1: History of Valentine’s Day Video & Reading
Students watch a brief video about the history of Valentine’s Day then read a non-fiction article to help solidify this new learning. Comprehension questions for the article are included.
Lesson 2: Valentine’s Day Opinion Writing
Students are given several Valentine’s Day related opinion questions to answer. They will use their opinions and ideas in this lesson to assist with their fishbowl discussion and paragraph writing assignment.
Lesson 3: Valentine’s Day Opinion Fishbowl Discussion & Paragraph Assignment
Students use their prepared opinion ideas from Lesson 2 to participate in a class discussion and then a paragraph writing activity.
Lesson 4: Valentine’s Day Creative Choice Board Assignment
Lesson 5: Valentine’s Day Creative Writing Assignment
Both Lessons 4 and 5 are creative assignments. Select which lesson you would like your students to complete. This is great for split grade/multi-age classrooms where you can assignment Lesson 4 and 5 to different grades.
Unit Contains
- Individual PDFs of student pages for uploading to Google Classroom™ or other online learning portals
- Google Slides™ graphic organizers for 1:1 classrooms
- Detailed unit plan and teacher instructions
- Lessons divided up with title pages for easy access
- Assessment choice
- Marking choices (points or standards-based)
You can find this unit in my Teachers Pay Teachers store.
Happy Valentine’s Day!
