Keeping the writing center stocked with fresh ideas and topics can take a lot of time. Not only do you have to consider your students’ different writing levels and abilities, but providing content ideas that keep them engaged is not always easy. The five ideas below will keep students thinking and engaged while they are working on their written assignments.
Thanksgiving Writing Center Ideas
1. Â Turkey Cartoons
What does a turkey think about as Thanksgiving approaches? Have students write and illustrate their own cartoon using this free, downloadable 6-frame cartoon template.
2. Â Missing Poster
The turkey has gone missing and the farmer needs to find him before Thanksgiving. Have students create a “Wanted” poster for the turkey who has run away.
3. Â Thanksgiving Menu
Students can create and illustrate their own Thanksgiving Day menu. Add descriptions for each dish using plenty of adjectives. You might also suggest an alternate point of view and write the turkey’s revised menu – with the star turkey missing, of course.
4. Â Gobble, Gobble, Cluck
Take a page from the children’s book Click, Clack, Moo by Doreen Cronin and ask students to draft a letter to the farmer from the turkeys and chickens who are worried about Thanksgiving.
5.  Pilgrim’s Point of View
Explore a different point of view and have students write a diary entry as if they were a young Pilgrim child during the first Thanksgiving. What would they be eating? How would they feel? What was life like?  Switch it up and ask students to then write about the first Thanksgiving from a young Native American’s point of view.
What are some of your favorite Thanksgiving-related ideas for the writing center? Share with us below!
Erine says
I love to do the turkey in disguise art and writing activity. The students take a large drawing of a turkey home at the beginning of November to decorate and disguise so he can get through November without being eaten. They can decorate the turkey using anything they want (markers, yarn, glitter, crayons, stickers, doll clothes, etc). A week later when they bring it back(to the oohs and aahhhs of their classmates) they write a story about how the turkey disguise himself and what he got to do instead of being eaten. You can also have them write a story about how the turkey decided on his disguise. If you are working on adjectives or description writing you have the students write a description of the disguise little guy and bring it in to read to the classmates. They are to keep a secret and not tell or show any of the students how they decorated their turkey to see if they can write using enough describing words for the classmates to guess which turkey they decorated. This year I have a snowman, ballerina, soccer player, hula dancer, Rudolf the Red Nosed Reindeer, Army soldier with helmet, a groom at a wedding and a karate kicking Santa Claus. The kids love this activity and even if they have done it in lower grades they have a blast doing it again and incorporating more writing.
Frieda says
My first graders do a “how to” paragraph that outlines step by step how to cook a thanksgiving turkey. I give them things to think about when writing the steps in order, such as where/how they would get the turkey, how much turkey they would need, what do they need to put in or take out of the turkey before cooking it, how long to cook it, what temperature, etc.
They can first write the steps in number order, and then we have a poster of transitional words that they use to replace each number (First, second, next, then, last). What a first grader thinks are the proper steps to cook a turkey….well, let’s just say you might be putting your health at Risk if you eat them!