Here are five different ideas for easy and fun language arts activities to do on Valentines Day!
Write Valentines with Figurative Language
Have students compose valentines or messages for conversation hearts with messages featuring different types of figurative language. They can be serious or silly. Let them decorate their valentines — just for fun — if time allows. Then have students exchange and identify the type of figurative language used.
Write a Description of Someone You Love
Descriptive writing is a key writing skill that takes plenty of guidance and practice. Students are most interested in this type of writing when they are assigned to describe something they have a personal interest in. For a fun valentines day twist, have students write a vivid description of someone they love (maybe a relative, best friend, or even a pet; it doesn’t have to be romantic), or something they love like their favorite food or the instrument they play).
This no-prep Valentines Day Descriptive Writing Activity guides your students through brainstorming, drafting, editing, and writing their description, with a subtle-not-obnoxious Valentine theme.
Write a Love Poem to Your Favorite Food
Middle (and some high school) students might not be ready to take love poems seriously. And that’s okay. So to lighten up a study of classic romantic poetry, consider having students choose an iconic poem to model and then compose their own, but directed at their favorite food or activity. For more academic rigor, choose a form poem for students to mimic, teach the form, and require that they follow it when writing their own silly version.
Matchmaker Game
For a Valentine-themed review game, give each student half of a paper heart with either a term or definition written on it. Have them move around the room and locate the correct other half of their heart, so that all terms and definitions are matched up. For a competition, divide students into two teams. The team that matches up all their pairs correctly first wins.
For more review game ideas to use any time, check out this post with instructions for six different review games my students begged to play.
Speed Dating with a Book
You might’ve heard of (or tried) “speed dating” in your ELA classroom. Maybe try it with books or short stories! Set up tables or desks with a different book or short story at each seat. Give students an allotted amount of time at each seat (maybe 5 minutes) to read as much of the book or story as they can. Have them bring with them a pen and paper to write down the titles that interested them most so that they can check them out to read them completely later.
For more speed dating ideas for English class, check out this post from Write on with Miss G.
