What can you do in December that is fun, engaging, and aligns to standards?
You could fill December with cute crafts and fun movies, but we wouldn’t recommend it! You can really dig into the excitement of the season and still teach important skills and standards. One of our very favorite projects happens to fall during the Christmas season. Most students are familiar with the poem, “A Visit from St. Nicholas.” You may also know it as “The Night Before Christmas.” We used this well loved poem as an opportunity to work on listening, speaking, memorizing, performaning, art, fluency, and prosody. Who knew you could do so much with a mere 14 stanzas?! As with most things this year, this project needs to be done a little differently due to COVID. The directions below are written without COVID in mind, and our COVID friendly suggestions are at the bottom of the page.
How do you organize the project?
First, divide your students into groups of 2-3. If you combine your class with another class, you can have groups of 3-4. Next, assign a stanza to each group. You’ll want to keep in mind that some stanzas are more difficult than others.
To begin, read the poem aloud to your class on the first day. Since the poem was published in 1823, students may have difficulty understanding parts of the poem due to the vocabulary. Today’s freebie includes a planning sheet for your students. After distributing the planning sheets, have your students circle any words they don’t know the meaning of or aren’t sure how to pronounce. We also included Frayer models for most of the words that fall into this category.
You will want to let groups work at their own pace. We reccommend following the steps below to complete the project. Each group has to complete one task (to your liking) before being allowed to go to the next. I like to do this for any large project. It’s better help students make corrections/improvements along the way than redo the whole thing at the end! Trust me!
Student Check Points:
Check Point 1: The group has their lines memorized.
Check Point 2: The group can say their lines chorally.
Check Point 3: The group has mastered prosody. They are able to present their lines with expression. In our experience, students tend to read this type of poetry in a very sign-song manner. Believe me, you do not want to listen to 14 sing songy stanzas! This can only be broken by listening to you do it correctly and then mimicking your speech patterns.
Check Point 4: The group has mastered their motions. We require groups to complete their motions in the exact same way. For example, all students must move the same hand in the same direction at the same time. If you don’t require your students to do this, you may feel a little sea sick by the end of the 14th stanza. You may need to help your students pair down their motions. They can really get carried away here! Less is more!!
Check Point 5: Students complete a plan for their mural. This just needs to be a pencil sketch on their planning sheet. Their mural must reflect their assigned stanza!
Check Point 6: Students complete their mural on white butcher paper. Make sure you have the students draw in pencil first! Otherwise, you will be going through a ton of excess paper. We suggest having several books on hand with pictures or illustrations of sleighs, reindeer, Santa, etc. This will allow students to see several different examples for their mural.
Check Point 7: Once you have approved the pencil sketch, students can begin coloring the mural. The murals will be displayed around the room during the performance!
Let the show begin!
The performance can be done in various ways. Here are a few suggestions.
- Your students can perform for the whole school on the last day before break.
- Other classes can sign-up for a time slot throughout the day to come to your room and view the performance.
- Invite parents, grandparents, friends to a nighttime performance.
As guests arrive for the performance, have students greet them and escort them to their seats. Before beginning the performance have someone welcome the guests and introduce the poem. “Welcome to our performance of “A Visit from St. Nicholas. Each group memorized a stanza and created a mural for your enjoyment.”
You will want to designate a student to indicate when to begin. We always had the student in the middle bend their arm to raise their hand to shoulder level. When they dropped their hand back to their side the class would say, “A Visit from St. Nicholas, by Clement Clark Moore.” Then the first group begins.
COVID Friendly Modifications:
- Groups should be made with contact tracing in mind.
- Each group needs to have plenty of room to work.
- Ask your principal for ideas for the performance. I know at our school, we are not having assemblies or evening performances this year. I do believe we would be able to travel to other rooms as long as masks are worn, we’re not in the room for more than 15 minutes and stand at least 6 feet from the class.
- You could video the class and share the video with other classes at the shcool to view in their own rooms.
