Happy Valentine’s Day!

I have many memories of Valentine’s Days in my classroom. I Loved how the room became one giant Valentine littered with glitter, glue, doilies, and construction paper. I loved reading favorite books, some that I couldn’t get through without a sniffle or two. There was Somebody Loves You, Mr. Hatch by Eileen Spinelli, Koala Lou by Mem Fox, What Do You Love? by Jonathan London, Guess How Much I Love You by Sam McBratney, Be My Valentine, Amelia Bedelia by Herman Parish, The Night Before Valentine’s Day by Natasha Wing, and many more. And then there was the candy and oh yes, we must count, sort, graph, and weigh it to get a math lesson in. The sanity-saving trick was to balance the celebration with learning!

After I left the classroom, I was lucky enough to work with teachers at all levels as a literacy coach. This sometimes required me to teach a model lesson to students that I didn’t know on a day like Valentine’s day. I quickly learned that using a book to kick off a lesson was the key to a successful lesson. This led me to a lesson on informational writing that started with Pink Is for Blobfish by Jess Keating. After reading the book, we talked about other misunderstood animals. Then we listed reasons why they were important or misunderstood. The students then choose one of the animals and wrote a Valentine to it.

When I work with older students, I encourage them to use Grammar Girl as a resource. For Valentine’s Day, she has a few posts that you could use as lesson starters in your classes. One of my favorites is I Love You: A Subject-Object Valentine.

Wishing you a Happy and not too crazy Valentine’s Day!