Valentine's Day Lesson Plan for ESL/ELD Students

Help your ESL/ELD students get the most out of their first local Valentine's Day with these language building activities. An introduction to basic Valentine's Day vocabulary is a prerequisite for all of these language building activities.

Some vocabulary words you may want to introduce include: valentine, Cupid, heart, card, doily, arrow, sweetheart, friendship, love, admire, celebrate, give, candy, chocolate, flowers, roses, bouquet, kiss, poem, romance, romantic, date, saint, and ring.

Vocabulary Boosting Games

BogglesWorld.com has a series of worksheets about Valentine's Day designed to boost the vocabulary of ESL students through fun and games. Teachers will find Valentine's themed crosswords, word searches, vocabulary riddles, card making activities, and word scrambles at this site. Each worksheet will appeal to students from middle school through high school.

Valentine's Day Reading Comprehension

ABCTeach.com has a reading comprehension activity that discusses the history, symbols, and traditions of Valentine's Day. The eight paragraph reading is followed by several multiple choice questions that test comprehension of the passage.

Valentine's Day Journal Questions and Conversation Starters

ITESLJ.org (I-TESL Journal) has an entire page of Valentine's Day related questions that can be used in a variety of ways. The most common uses are as journal prompts or conversation starters.

Valentine's Day Compare and Contrast Essay

After learning about the Valentine's Day traditions of your culture, give students an opportunity to discuss what they have learned and compare it to their own culture in a short compare and contrast essay.

For the first paragraph, students can write a few sentences about the history of Valentine's Day. In the second paragraph, they should discuss Valentine's Day traditions in their culture. (If their culture doesn't celebrate Valentine's Day, they can discuss a similar holiday.) In the third paragraph, they can discuss Valentine's Day traditions in America and compare or contrast them to their own culture's traditions with phrases like: "The United State's traditions of ____ are the same as ____'s culture" and, "Unlike like in ____, people in the United States celebrate Valentine's day by ____." In the concluding paragraph, students can discuss their feelings about Valentine's Day.

Valentine's Card Exchange

No Valentine's Day lesson would be complete without the making of Valentine's Day Cards. Provide beginning students with a list of common Valentine's Day phrases to include in their cards, such as be mine and will you be my Valentine. More advanced students can write poems for their cards. Students can make friendship Valentines to exchange with their classmates or they can make a sample of a Valentine that they would give to someone they are in a relationship with, someone they wanted to be in a relationship with, and a friendship Valentine.

Other ESL Holiday Lesson Guides by This Author
Thanksgiving Lesson Plan
Christmas Lesson Plan
Thanksgiving Vocabulary
Christmas Vocabulary