What type of winter activities will you introduce to your students this school year? I love activities that connect to different seasons. So today on the blog, I’ve pulled together six winter activities that are perfect for your student readers.
To connect your English Language Arts goals to this time of year, you may want to try out one of the activities on this list. Each one is adaptable to different learning environments, and you can tailor them to the needs and interests of your students. As you dive into this list, I’m sure you’ll have cross-curricular connections that address social studies and science goals, too.
Winter Activities for Student Readers
If you’ve heard of Capstone, then you are probably familiar with PebbleGo, PebbleGo Next, and Capstone Interactive. Within this platform, teachers and students can quickly locate a wide variety of articles and ebooks. These resources are designed specifically for elementary students in the English Language Arts classroom and to support content area instruction in social studies and science.
For each of the activities on the list below, I’ve included some excellent short texts you can find in Pebble Go. You can learn more about PebbleGo by visiting this landing page.
Read About the Weather
How much do your students know about the seasons? This article in PebbleGo can help you kick off a conversation about the change of the seasons. It’s called About Cold Weather, and it’s an excellent choice for students who live in chilly climates as well as those who haven’t experienced frigid temperatures before. With this article, you can introduce concepts like wind chill to your students and help them develop questions that can lead to further inquiry and investigation.
Research an Animal
Research an animal that lives in a cold place or that we often associate with wintertime. You might ask students to list places that are cold throughout the year and then think about the animals that live in those places. In PebbleGo, you can find oodles of articles about animals. There are plenty of animals to research, including an article on Polar Bears. You and your students could also explore this article on Animals in Winter, which explores topics like hibernation and migration.
Explore Chilly Habitats
If you want to take students on a virtual field trip to a chilly part of the world, they can read all about life in the tundra. In PebbleGo, there is an article Polar Plants that can help students understand the type of things that grow in colder parts of the world. The places students read about might come from a search for “tundra” or “lichen.” Or these chilly settings might be inspired by where the action takes place in a book you’ve read together as a class.
Draw a Snowflake
Your students can read about snowflakes in Pebble Go and then draw their own. The snowflake article inside Pebble Go includes an overview that answers the question, “What are they?” and another section that tackles the question, “How do they look?” After reading about snowflakes, students can draw their own.
For this activity, you might ask students to draw their snowflakes inside PebbleGo Create or draw their own snowflakes on a piece of paper. If you’d like to explore another digital option, you can ask them to draw their snowflake inside Seesaw or on a page in Book Creator.
Investigate Winter Hobbies
From ice skating to hockey, there are activities that we often associate with wintertime, even if you can participate during different times of the year. You might decide to give students the choice of different winter hobbies to read about by selecting short texts and connecting the link to a QR code. For example, you might choose a few various articles and then spread the QR codes across different parts of your classrooms. Students can then move around the room, select a QR code to scan, and then read the article of their choice.
Note: In PebbleGo Next, there is a category full of athletes that are well-known ice skaters students can read about, too.
Read About Winter Holidays
Many holidays take place during the winter months, and your students can read about them, too. You can read about winter activities together to complement a classroom celebration or to help students learn about different cultures.
What winter activities will you try with student readers over the next few months? Try out one of these six ideas to help you embrace the chilly (or not-so-chilly) time of year with your students as you explore winter topics with PebbleGo. If you have a favorite winter activity to support readers in your English Language Arts, social studies, or science classroom, I’d love to hear all about it!
