Valentine’s Day Ideas to Love for Middle and High School

Valentine’s Day is approaching..and it’s a bit polarizing! Some people love it, but others find it cliche and groan worthy. Regardless of the camp you fall into, there are some simple, standards-driven ways to weave some red and pink activities into your lesson for a day…or a week…if you want.

So, let’s engage creative mode and brainstorm some Valentine’s Day activities for older students!

1. Mingle with a Mad Lib

I love to stick grammar into unexpected places. When the holidays roll around, I look for sneaky ways to disguise learning with something that is typically not considered a learning activity. Mad libs, for example, are an excellent way to spiral review grammar concepts. Since students have to fill in the blanks with words of their choice, we can encourage a review of parts of speech, transitions, direct objects, and more.

Consider: My [adjective] Valentine’s Day started when a [adjective] [noun] [adverb] appeared on my [noun].

Students can complete holiday mad libs, reviewing key grammar concepts, as they socialize with classmates. For quick feedback, have students read their mad libs to a small group. Teachers can sit in with groups to listen to common grammar misunderstandings. These mistakes should be simple to identify since the mad lib won’t make sense or sound fluent if the wrong grammar concept is used.

2. Linger over a Love Story

One of the best ways to build in a mid-year boost to your classroom community is to share a good story together. A good story transports us to a different time or place where we can connect emotionally with an event, a person, or a setting. That’s why we get so engrossed we don’t even notice the passage of time!

So, find a good story with a connection to love, read it aloud, and tie that story into a class discussion, like that of forbidden love! Pyramus and Thisbe is one of my favorites. Want something different? CommonLit has a bank of excellent short stories I often explore when I need a new text.

3. Bond over Beloved Books

Valentine’s Day is a wonderful time for students to share the books they have loved the most! I like to do this through discussion, but having a visual to help students brainstorm what they want to share and remember is helpful. Think, books spines or bookshelves.

Of course, this type of discussion can happen any day of the year, but when we project a calming Valentine scene on our television and turn the lights down low, this is the perfect low-prep way to celebrate the holiday with older students. Bonus points if your visual includes coloring! Coloring is therapeutic and a low-stakes way to get students talking.

4. Be Wooed by Words

Vocabulary is honestly something I LOVE. I don’t have to fake it. But, that’s not the case for everyone, which means vocabulary can be something that gets pushed to the back seat…or something that we don’t carve much time out for because it’s not enjoyable. Valentine’s Day activities for older students can include an element of word work.

For instance, give students a list of test preppy style holiday words, and have them complete some creative vocabulary activities for them. Here is a short list to serve as an example: enamored, amorous, maudlin, hiatus, thwart, strife, transpire, and unrequited.

• If enamored were a person, what words would it have on its sound track?
• Under what circumstances might love need a hiatus?
• What are some non-examples of the word strife?

(If you’re looking for best practices for teaching vocabulary all year long, I have lots of those right here!)

5. Swoon over Sentence Structure

It’s challenging to fit an entire writing lesson in a day, but it can be done well with mentor sentences! One-day lessons work well when we select a target concept within writing that we want to highlight. For instance, you can select some high-interest sentences from young adult literature to analyze sentence structure (like this). Or, you could set picture books in learning stations and have students read books together, looking for sentences that stick out. Are they simple, compound, complex, or compound-complex?

Valentine’s Day activities don’t have to be obvious. Smoothly connect these ELA lessons to Valentine’s Day by emphasizing how and why you LOVE the authors’ craft and style!

6. Toy with Texting Couplets

Rhythm and sound devices are romantic…but students don’t need to know that’s why we have chosen them for Valentine’s Day if you want to keep it a secret. Songs use both of these poetic elements, and for a good reason — they tug at our emotions! During my poetry unit, I like to have students create texting couplets. It’s an activity I created to make poetry more relevant for my students who don’t enjoy it yet. In this creative, poetic writing lesson, students use a picture of choice as their topic inspiration.

To put a Valentine’s spin on texting couplets, have students choose a picture of something they love. To complete the assignment, they can text someone they “love” – a friend, family member, etcetera – using rhythm and sound devices.

So, there are SIX fun ideas for celebrating this holiday with older students! I’m sure we could continue this brainstorm to think of many more options. Valentine’s Day activities don’t have to be fluff. We can find meaningful, standards-aligned options for every part of teaching ELA! And don’t forget to make it something YOU will enjoy as well. Teachers deserve to enjoy their jobs, and that starts with designing lessons we can’t wait to share with students!

Related Resource: Valentine’s Day Mad Lib