6 Delectable Thanksgiving Activities for School
As the end-of-the-year holidays draw near, it’s easier for students to be more excited about what’s happening outside the classroom than inside. Tap into your students’ interest in turkey, mashed potatoes, and apple pie with these engaging Thanksgiving activities for school!
1. Celebrating Thanksgiving
Do your students really know what happened during the first Thanksgiving in 1621? This activity is perfect for ELA and social studies classes, helping students build background knowledge on how and why we still celebrate this holiday today.
Have students read the story of the first Thanksgiving and answer questions to check their understanding. This activity uses various question types so students can show what they know by filling in the blanks, categorizing, and resequencing information. It also includes a “You Do” extension writing activity that students can complete right in Formative.
2. Thanksgiving order of operations
Students learning or reviewing their order of operations will enjoy this Thanksgiving-themed math activity. They’ll simplify and solve expressions using PEMDAS and respond in various ways, including multiple-choice options, showing their work, and typing free-response answers.
3. Elementary Thanksgiving math
Elementary students can get some extra counting practice with this themed Thanksgiving math activity. Students can determine how many Thanksgiving symbols appear in each line and select their answers from a multiple-choice list.
Plus, if you want to take your lessons offline, this activity is perfect for printing and sharing with students. Formative Silver and Gold subscribers can print blank activities or save them as PDFs to upload into a shared drive!
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4. The first Thanksgiving reading comprehension (Grades 2-4)
Elementary students can practice their reading comprehension skills with this holiday-themed reading exercise. Have students read the one-page story about the first Thanksgiving included in the activity. Then, they can check their understanding of what they read and respond through multiple-choice, true or false, and free-response answers.
5. The first Thanksgiving meal reading comprehension (Grades 4-6)
Upper elementary and middle school students can also practice reading comprehension with a more advanced Thanksgiving-themed passage. Have students read or listen to an article about the meal at the first Thanksgiving. Students will check their understanding of what they read by answering multiple-choice and free-response questions and supporting their answers with evidence from the text.
6. The cost of Thanksgiving
AP environmental science students can analyze the environmental impact of a Thanksgiving meal with this holiday activity. Students will dig into how the carbon footprints of creating and delivering different food items change. They’ll also distinguish between carbon-required and carbon-free energy production methods and compare the impact of buying local and non-local produce.
To document their findings, students will use a variety of text and visual sources included in the activity and respond through multiple choice, true or false, free response, drawing, and sorting questions.
What else will you teach and assess with Formative?
The Formative Library isn’t just for holiday content! It has a variety of pre-made activities developed by our curriculum experts and educators like you. You can use these templates as-is or customize them to fit your instructional needs.
Use the library’s sort filters to browse content by subject and grade level to find what you want. If you don’t see a template that matches your instructional needs, create your own!
Log into your Formative account and choose how to customize your lessons or practice sets. You can create new slides with various multimedia, including audio and video. You can also import content from Google, enhance a PDF or existing document, or import any .CSV or .TSV file to create a practice set.
Don’t have a Formative account yet? Sign up for Formative Bronze for free today and start creating activities for Thanksgiving and beyond!