If you’ve seen my recent post about Thanksgiving Reading Activities, here is your follow-up for Writing! These Thanksgiving-themed activities will be great add-ons or replacements for your standard writing activities!
Try Story Building with a Cooperative Learning Structure
Firstly, try an All-Write Round Robin! Do you use Kagan Strategies in your classroom? This is one of my favorites! An All-Write Round Robin will allow your students to build upon one another’s writing to create a story! Grab a few different color pens and some paper. The first person will write 2 or 3 sentences for the story prompt, in one color. Then, the story will move to the next person, with them adding 2-3 sentences to the story in a different color. This can be done in a small group or even as partners!
Typically, I like to give time limits so that students have equal opportunities to write, but this is up to you! Another tip is to mark halfway and endpoints. Give students a warning when they should be about halfway through and when time is almost up. This will help them include a beginning, middle, and end of their story!
Lastly, have your students swap and read or share their stories with the class! They will love hearing how everyone’s stories turned out!
Prompts to give your students:
- Turkey Going On Vacation
- Thanksgiving at Grandma’s
- The Pie Eating Contest
- Football in the Backyard
- Scarecrow Comes to Dinner
- Leaf Pile Playground
Practicing Supporting Details and Reasoning with a Whole-Group Craft
Meanwhile, if you’re looking for an informational or response writing activity, try one like this! Draw a turkey on an anchor chart and give students slips of paper to decorate the “wings.” On each slip of paper, students can write something they are thankful for and why. This will help your student practice supporting details and reasons. This activity can be repeated with any sort of written response that requires evidence or reasons. You can even reuse the turkey poster all month, practicing a short response each day or week!
Practice Strong Introductions
Similarly, if you need to work on writing introductions, use a Strong Introductions Matching Activity. Students can match Thanksgiving-themed pictures to two different strong introductions. Then, they can write their own strong introduction for each topic! *For learners that may need more help with this, you can match the cards as a small group, whole group, or even partners! Save the strong introductions that the students wrote to use as examples for future writing, starters for their own writing pieces, or extra matching pieces for the original activity!
Shown is the 1st & 2nd-grade set but you can recreate this activity for 3rd & 4th graders, too!
Link: Thanksgiving 1st and 2nd Grade ELA
Get Into Thanksgiving Themes with a Daily Writing Prompt
Daily writing prompts are a great way to build young writers’ skills. You can add a Thanksgiving-themed daily writing prompt to be completed as a bell ringer or early finisher! Students will be excited to write about topics that are currently relevant and fit the theme you’ve carried across your ELA blocks! Not only will this help them stay on topic, but it will also provide them with creative ideas. If your reading activities, mentor texts, language lessons, etc., are on theme, they will be full of examples and details to improve their Thanksgiving-themed writing!
The writing prompts from the resource in the photo come in both printable and digital formats. So, students can write in their journals or type their responses on their devices. This will make trading, sharing, revising, and editing a breeze!
Link: November Writing Prompts
Practice Editing and Publishing
On the other hand, their writing isn’t the only skill that will benefit from practice. Editing and revising are writing tools that your little learners need constant practice in, too. Add a Thanksgiving-themed editing and revision activity to your plans. Partners can find and edit mistakes in pre-written sentences. They can trade and revise one another’s Thanksgiving-themed writing pieces. *If you use the November Writing prompts, have your students “share” the digital versions or trade their writing notebooks to practice revising and editing!
Shown is the 1st & 2nd-grade set but you can recreate this activity for 3rd & 4th graders, too!
Link: Thanksgiving ELA 1st & 2nd Grade
Add a Few On-the-Go Pages to Early Finisher Folders or Use as Morning Work
Lastly, add Thanksgiving Writing activities to your morning work or early finisher folders. There are lots of applicable writing pages in the November On-the-Go set. Students will be able to practice writing letters, creating lists, making words, and more. They will love these fun, on-topic activities that allow them to practice a variety of writing skills without them even realizing it!
Link: November On-the-Go
Here are a few Thanksgiving Writing Activities you may find useful:
- Kindergarten Thanksgiving ELA Activities
- 1st & 2nd Thanksgiving ELA Activities
- 3rd & 4th Thanksgiving ELA Activities
- November Writing Prompts
- November On-the-Go Worksheets
Thanks for reading this week’s blog post!
