61. Getting Through the Holiday Season

Brittany 0:06

Teachers can find the holiday season challenging. They must manage fluctuating student attendance, lousy weather shutdowns, classroom interruptions for performances, and then the general hustle and bustle of the season. This is The Teaching Toolbox, and I am Brittany and I'm here with Ellie,

Ellie 0:46

hello,

Brittany 0:47

And we have a bunch of strategies and ideas you can use to manage this holiday season effectively.

Ellie 0:56

I think most of us would agree that the holiday season at school can just be a bit crazy. We would often have students missing school for early family vacations or missing class for different music group commitments, like concert practices and that kind of thing. And then our schedule would often be changed for various reasons. So it could be hard to keep getting some academic things done during the time between Thanksgiving and the winter holidays, and if there are some snow days or late starts thrown in there, things can get really out of whack. So what's the best way to deal with these types of changes, interruptions and more?

Brittany 1:35

First of all, I think you want to have flexible lesson plans - lesson plans that can accommodate varying attendance, prioritize your key concepts, and develop modular activities that can be easily picked up by students who happen to miss some days here or there. You could also definitely take advantage of online resources, utilize digital platforms to share resources, assignments and updates. This helps ensure students who are away can stay on track and not fall behind, whether it's from snow days or sickness or vacation or whatever.

Ellie 2:14

right

Brittany 2:15

Not snow days, you're not going to do any homework on snow day that was -

Ellie 2:20

you never know.

Brittany 2:22

You could also take advantage of everything learned and mastered during COVID and provide pre-recorded lessons. Consider recording some lessons or providing some video summaries of key points, and then this allows students to catch up on missed material at their own pace. So you learned all that technical material, like how to do all that techy stuff during COVID, so put it to use now and pre record some lessons so that kids can catch up if they miss. Or you could lean into project based learning and implement long term projects that students can work on, both in class and at home. This type of learning is flexible and encourages independent study, making it easier for students who may be absent intermittently. Did you do a lot of project based learning?

Ellie 3:17

Here and there. I didn't do a lot of long term projects, but we did some project based learning.

Brittany 3:23

I hated projects as a kid because I always felt like I was the one who was stuck with all the work.

Ellie 3:30

Yeah, that is one of the -

Brittany 3:31

especially if you were like, in a group,

Ellie 3:33

right

Brittany 3:34

I don't care if it's like an individual project, but if it's a group project, I hated those as a kid, and so I never did them as a teacher, because I felt like they were totally unfair to people.

Ellie 3:46

Something else that's important to get you through the holidays is your communication with parents through that holiday season. Maintaining open lines of communication with parents can help to inform them of important dates, assignments, and how they can support their child's learning during any absences. You could also implement a peer support system. If you establish a buddy system where students can pair up to help each other, then they can help each other catch up on missed work. This fosters collaboration and ensures that absent students have a reliable source of information. It's also a great idea to incorporate some mindfulness exercises and stress reduction techniques into your routine at this time of year. This not only helps manage your well being, but it also creates a calmer classroom environment. And take some time to recognize and celebrate small achievements and progress, both your own and your students. This positive reinforcement can boost morale and maintain motivation during a busy and sometimes very stressful season.

Brittany 4:50

And we have talked about mindfulness before, so we'll link that episode in the show notes. So once we've got these changes handled and we've put strategies into place, there are a few ways in which we can enjoy the holidays with our students, but still keep things academic so we don't lose days or weeks of instructional time. First of all, you can incorporate holiday themed lessons and design lessons that incorporate the holiday into relevant curriculum. For example, math problems could involve calculating holiday expenses, while history lessons could explore the origins of different cultural celebrations. This not only keeps students interested, but it also provides a broader understanding of global traditions.

Ellie 5:41

You can also create a festive atmosphere. You can transform your classroom with holiday decorations that can boost a festive spirit. I have to say, I was not always the best at this, but you can involve your students in decorating the classroom with artwork like snowflakes, holiday cards or a multicultural holiday display. I did really like making snowflakes though I have to say, for years and years and years, and sometimes you can make some of those really nice and intricate. It's a fun thing to see what comes out when you unfold the whole snowflake thing.

Brittany 6:14

One year we did Star Wars snowflakes,

Ellie 6:17

oh yeah,

Brittany 6:18

so they look like little Darth Vaders.

Ellie 6:20

That's fun, and doing things like this, decorating the classroom kind of as a as a class, helps to foster a sense of community and allows students to express their creativity, as well as a part of themselves. You could also have holiday themed activities. You can engage students with holiday themed activities to make learning more fun, like holiday themed reading challenges, writing letters to fictional characters from holiday stories, or even science experiments involving holiday related phenomena like the chemistry of making candy canes. These types of activities can be both educational and enjoyable.

Brittany 6:58

That would be cool.

Ellie 6:59

Have to sample the candy canes. If we're talking about candy canes.

Brittany 7:03

You could also host a cultural exchange. The winter holidays are celebrated differently around the world. So you could encourage students to share their own holiday traditions and learn about others through presentations or cultural exchange days. This promotes inclusivity, respect for diversity, and broadens students cultural awareness. You could also do a community service project. The holiday season is a perfect time to teach students about the importance of giving back as teachers, you can organize a community service project such as a food drive, making holiday cards for local nursing homes, collecting winter clothing for those in need. These projects all help build empathy and social responsibility among students.

Ellie 7:54

Those are some great ideas. Let's think about a couple more ideas that we can use in the classroom, maybe some things that we did in our own classrooms.

Brittany 8:02

So I believe it was my second year of teaching, and we had kindergarten buddies that year. So for the winter holidays, we invited our buddies down to our three classrooms, and we led the kids through different holiday stations. We had the kids build simple popsicle stick ornaments together, then they read a story. They made paper snowflakes. They stopped at a snack table. The big hit.

Ellie 8:27

Oh, nice.

Brittany 8:28

They listened to and learned a Mexican holiday song played by one of our students.

Ellie 8:35

Oh, nice.

Brittany 8:36

Nice for him. We made a Christmas card for their parent or guardian as well.

Ellie 8:42

That's awesome. When we had kindergarten buddies in middle school, they weren't in the same building, they were in a building kind of next door. So we'd take a walk over in the chilliness. But we would read holiday stories. So, you know, we might find picture books that were related to the holidays. Read holiday stories. We might do a craft or, you know, again, create cards for someone special. And while I didn't necessarily do a whole lot of other holiday activities, I would incorporate things like winter themed logic puzzles or word challenges, things like that. I do have a couple of those in a blog post that are free, if anybody wants to check those out. I also think doing the 12 days of Christmas math activity is a blast adding up the prices of all the items in the 12 days of Christmas song. No idea what it is at this point in time. What would that total be? I'd love to know.

Brittany 9:33

I like doing it where you could just do different things. You could say, like, do trivia questions with it, and be like, how many different birds. Did they get or, you know, things like that too?

Ellie 9:43

Yeah.

Brittany 9:44

When I led National Junior Honor Society, we had donated blankets come in from the school community. And then we also made these really simple flannel blankets together as a group, and then we gathered them all up and drove car loads down to the homeless shelter as a community activity for the holidays.

Oh, wow, that's awesome. Our school did do different coat drives and things like that as well, but it was, you know, more on the school level than the classroom level or club level.

We did also as NJHS make cards for a local nursing homes.

Oh, nice.

And we delivered those. And then my I had a few boys who were not interested in visiting with the elderly, so they went out in the courtyard and picked weeds in the cold. They didn't like the smell.

Well, they did their good deeds,

yes, yeah. And then my favorite activity when I taught elementary school at sixth grade was to run a Secret Santa and/or white elephant gift exchange. I would always start it the first day after Thanksgiving break, passing out the instructions, the questionnaires, matching up kids, and then I kept detailed records of who received gifts and who were the Scrooges. Did some shopping myself to make up for those who couldn't afford or refuse to participate, but I rarely spent more than $10 or $15 myself. It was always a crowd pleaser the day before break, as matches were revealed and we had a little class party together. So

Nice. And like thinking about that, we never, I never did this, but even if it was like a a note, kind of secret Santa thing where, you know, somebody just leaves notes for somebody else, or if they, you know, if they can't get the gifts, and that kind of thing, like you said, you know, you did buy things,

yeah,

you could even do something like that, where it's just a special note for that person a couple days of the week, or something like that.

Yeah, that's what I tried to tell them. I'm like, just give them some classroom dollars, yeah, give them a cute note, give them a homework pass that you earned. You know, it doesn't have to be something that cost you any money.

Right. Right. Something our schools did most years, both at the elementary and middle level, was to have like a holiday shopping event. So teachers, parents, the school would either donate or purchase inexpensive items that students could then purchase for their parents. So it'd be like all set up in the all purpose room or in the auditorium. And then in elementary school, we would take our entire class, sign up for a time, and take the entire class, and the kids would shop for, you know, whoever in their family they wanted to shop for. And then at the middle level, I don't, I don't remember exactly how we did it. I think kids went down by themselves. I don't think we took everybody, but that was great. And then the gifts would be wrapped by parent volunteers, and then the kids would get all of the gifts in a bag, and they'd have them all all wrapped and ready to go to take home for their family members. So that was always really nice. Because, you know, sometimes kids don't get to go shopping, they don't have time, or nobody has time to take them, or whatever it happens to be. So

yeah,

that's always really nice.

So whether you go all out with activities during the holiday season or add just a few activities, we hope you heard some ideas you can add to your teaching toolbox. And remember the key is to stay as flexible as you can during this time.

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