“O Lord that lends me life, lend me a heart replete with thankfulness.” — The Great Bard, William Shakespeare.

Happy November!  November is my favorite month.  The weather here in my Sunshine State has begun to cool so my AC is not coming on as much, which is of course very helpful for the electric bill.  Many homes have fun inflatable turkeys in their yards for the dogs and I to enjoy as we walk around the neighborhood.  And Thanksgiving is probably my favorite holiday.  It’s such a simple holiday to me.  Food and family and rest.  Though I suppose I can say rest because I have a rather large family and we do a pot luck meal, so it’s not like I’m in the kitchen days beforehand.  I make cookies or a sweet potato casserole and call it a morning!

Oh, and my birthday is also in November.  Though I’m not huge into birthdays, my husband always thinks of a fun adventure for us.  Usually, it’s a surprise and the dogs and I hop into the car for a fun little day trip.  Plus, I’m extra blessed that the vast majority of years, my birthday falls over Thanksgiving Break!

November is just so chockablock with fun little adventures that the only thing that could make it better is if my anniversary were in it.  I really wanted to get married on my grandparent’s anniversary of November 4, but the timing didn’t work.

Anyway, November is also chockablock in the classroom too.  Well, as are the vast majority of our 180 days, but because November is shortened, it seems to go by that much faster.  

Since I’m ELA, I have a fun little narrative writing activity with cultural legends that I like to do in the week or so leading up to Thanksgiving Break.  It includes three legends, a pre and post reading activity, and of course a rubric for clear expectations and concise grading.  It’s linked below.

Another way to get students into the thankful and gratitude-filled spirit is to have them respond to a variety of bell starters throughout the month of November, up until Thanksgiving Break.  This is something that I tend to incorporate a little differently each year, so I don’t have a specific PowerPoint or anything on it (though I will add one to my Free Little Resource Library in the next week or two), but here are some prompts to get your students thinking.

1. Reflect over your childhood/elementary years.  Identify something that you are very thankful for that changed your life for the better.
2. Think about this past school year.  What is something positive that has stood out to you in the past few months?  Explain why this something stood out to you.
3. Summarize your relationship with your best friend.  What traits make this person your best friend?  How do you help each other and encourage each other?
4. Identify something that you have learned throughout your schooling that you know will help you build a better future for yourself as an adult.  What do you hope to do as an adult that makes what you learned so valuable?
5. There is always something to be grateful and thankful for.  We don’t always readily see these things, but they are always there.  Think about your day thus far today and identify something that you are thankful and grateful for from today.  Explain why this, perhaps small thing, matters and is something to be thankful for.
6. Turn the word November, Thanksgiving or Grateful into an acrostic poem and use each letter to list something that you are thankful for.
7. Identify something you especially like about the fall season.  Explain what you look forward to and why you look forward to it/are thankful for it.
8. In our modern society of hustle and bustle, it’s very easy to take tiny things for granted.  Yet when we really stop to think about these tiny things, we realize that they really aren’t that tiny.  Think of something that is easy for you to take for granted, but that you are extremely thankful for.  E.g.  Being healthy is easy to take for granted.
9. As you get older and into the working world you will have to learn to balance your time.  Time is often money, however more money can be made, but more time cannot.  How do you spend your time in ways that are relaxing to you and also beneficial to others?  Do you volunteer anywhere?  Read to a smaller sibling?  How are acts of service something to be thankful for, even though you are the one performing the service?
10. Think of three ways you can show your family or friends that you are thankful for them and/or the things they have done.

I like for students to craft a 6-8 complete sentence short response for each.  Then, with the high truancy rate of the eve of break, I ask those who are present to share some of their responses.  I throw a bonus point or two their way for volunteering and dialoguing with their classmates.

Now, I do have whiners in the classroom who gripe about not know what to write, they don’t have this or that, woe is me, etc.  They are forced to come to school, egads life is hard.  Insert my dramatic eye roll here.  The ultimate goal of this simple daily exercise is to get students thinking about the small things that are easy to overlook—the small things in life that people truly should be grateful for.  There is a quote from Anne Frank that goes, “I lie in bed at night, after ending my prayers with the words ‘Ich danke dir für all das Gute und Liebe und Schöne.’ (Thank you, God, for all that is good and dear and beautiful.)”  If Anne Frank were able to observe all the horrors of the holocaust around her and find beauty, then surely even an angsty modern teenager can find something dear and beautiful for which to be grateful.  

It’s all about perspective.  

Happy Teaching!

PS:  Keep an eye out for a birthday sale later this month! Also, I’ve written a couple short stories that I will create standards-based assessments for to gauge student progress, and that too will be available soon for subscribers in the Free Little Resource Library (though for sale on my TpT store).

M.D. Saints
Reading the Rapids
Liberty Dog Writing Co.