St. Valentine's Day

Greetings to everyone Valentine’s Day is around the corner! As a teacher, you know how great it can be to have a holiday to rely on for themed classes. Valentine’s Day is one of these great options because there are so many colourful activities that you can do without too much prep and that you can be pretty sure most students will enjoy. What to do with ESL/EFL classroom on St.Valentine’s Day Talking about St. Valentine’s day in the ESL classroom can be met with a number of reactions: depending on the age of your students, talk of love and romance may be met with excitement or embarrassment. You probably will not have time to dedicate an entire class to St. Valentine’s Day, but with what time you do have, you can find a way to make it fun for all your students. We have selected some interesting activities you can try with your students to spark up your lesson on February 14. FOR THE YOUNGEST Action Songs Super fun Valentine action songs for kids will have them moving and dancing. They are a fun way for students to remember and practice new words that they learned related to this holiday. Are you ready to jump and dance? I Have a Little Heart Valentines, Valentines, What Colors Do You See? Counting Valentines Song for Kids Skidamarink Friends, Friends 123 The Missing Heart You will need programmed paper hearts with a concept you are working with written on them. For example, if you are working on specific letters, print one letter on each heart. You could also print numbers, the children's names or just have different colour hearts. Place the hearts on the floor making a large circle. Tell the children you are going to remove one and they have to guess which heart is missing. Tell them to close their eyes and NO PEEPING! Remove one heart. Tell them to open their eyes and guess which is missing! TIP: If it becomes very easy for them, remove 2 or more hearts and have them guess which 2 or 3 are missing! Valentine’s Day Counting Hearts in the Dish An old tried-but-true favourite! You will need lots and lots of paper valentines; dish or paper plate (cut into a heart!). Say: Valentine, Valentine in the dish, How many valentines do you wish? Ask each child and have them count that number of valentine hearts into the dish. Printable Valentine's Day stickers Don’t forget to reward your students for their efforts. Printable Valentine's Day stickers with candy hearts, Cupids, fun faces, flowers, butterflies and lots of hearts will make the perfect decals for any February or Valentine project. PRIMARY SCHOOL Heart-Stopping Fun You can play a variation of “Hot Potato” with your students but using heart cut-outs. To prepare for the game, cut out paper hearts in different colours. Begin the game by randomly giving students hearts, then starting the music. Students must pass their heart to the person on their right until the music stops. Once the music stops, the teacher calls a colour. If a student has that colour, he or she must spell one of the words correctly. If they do not, then they are out. If they spell it correctly, they can continue to play. You can also use math facts, vocabulary words, or whatever other concept students need to review. Cupid Says Instead of well-known “Simon Says” with kids, you can play a game called “Cupid Says”. Include some Valentine's Day ideas such as “Give me a kiss” or “Give someone a hug”. Suggestions: give a gift, smell a rose, write a love letter,  give a friend a hug, blow a kiss, throw Cupid’s arrow, make a heart in the air, eat some chocolate. TEENS / ADULTS Speed-dating This activity is great for getting students to use the language in short conversations. They get a ton of practice and feel more comfortable in pairs than speaking in front of big groups. Introduce the idea of speed dating, a video might be good here. Elicit feedback on what they think takes place and if it is a good way to meet people. Elicit what kind of questions they would need to ask people to find out information/compatibility in a short period of time (3 minutes). Present and focus on form here. Then give learners some practice by asking them to create their own questions. As a final production task, have learners do a class speed dating role-play. Alternatively, you can reframe the task as finding a new friend. You can read the whole procedure here. Scatter Sheet Put the heading of Valentine’s day at the top of the board and elicit from the learners any words they can think of associated with Valentine’s Day. Write these randomly on the board. The result might look something like this. Taken from https://eslgames.com/ When you have a nice collection of words, go around the class asking each student to describe one of the words on the board without saying the actual word. The other learners can call out the answer if they think they know what the word is. As each word is correctly defined, cross out or circle each item of vocabulary until all the words have been removed. All about Love This is a great activity by Sharon Maloney for extended speaking practice.  Ask your students to make some discussion questions on love, e.g. Have they ever written a love letter? What was the most romantic thing to happen to you? Would you be willing to move to another country for someone else? Put the questions on cards or on a blank board game template. Have learners play by turning cards over and asking questions to their group, or rolling a dice and moving along the discussion squares. If they land on a question, they nominate someone in their team to answer it. Valentine’s Day is a good day to make our classes just a little bit more special. We hope that you and your students will enjoy the activities we’ve shared today. If you’d like to add more fun on February 14, check out here: Valentine’s Day Songs, Poems & Fingerplays for Kids Activities with songs for St.Valentine’s Day Valentine's Day Lesson Plans 14+ Activities & Resources for Celebrating Valentine’s Day Valentine's Day Resources From Grade Education Center