Sandwiched between Halloween and the winter holidays, Thanksgiving sometimes misses its moment to shine in media, marketing, and the classroom. Even if you want to do Thanksgiving-themed activities with your students, finding quality, engaging materials for this holiday can be more difficult than others.

We’re sharing Thanksgiving activities for students that you can use in ELA, social studies, and science to help you inform, celebrate, and reflect in your classroom in the weeks ahead:

• Discover Thanksgiving literature and poetry in ELA
• Learn more about Thanksgiving traditions in social studies
• Try food experiments in science

[Discover Thanksgiving literature and poetry in ELA](id-ela)

Make reading and research timely and relevant by creating Thanksgiving-themed ELA lessons for your students:

Explore the history and cultural impacts of Thanksgiving

How much do your students really know about this history of Thanksgiving? Do they know how often the holiday appears in literature and poetry? Help them dive into these questions with activities for:

Thanksgiving background knowledge

Prepare your students to understand the context of Thanksgiving using nonfiction content with resources that build their background knowledge.

• Discover which common Thanksgiving dinner foods originated in North America before the Pilgrims.
• Test students’ knowledge about Thanksgiving myths and facts, such as the date of the first feast and the original destination of The Mayflower.
• Go back in time to see how New Yorkers in the late 1800s celebrated Thanksgiving. Hint: It wasn’t with a parade!

Thanksgiving fiction and poetry

Help students explore the themes of Thanksgiving and the attitude of gratitude with fiction and poetry selections like:

• “The World’s Biggest Thanksgiving Disaster” by Erin Guendelsberger
• “Thanksgiving Day” by Lydia Maria Child
• “A Song of Thanksgiving” by E. Barrie Kavasch
• “Thankfulness” by Dale Cross Purvis
• “America, I Sing Back” by Allison Adelle Hedge Coke
• “One day is there of the series” by Emily Dickinson

Bring food and family into your research projects

Need a November research project? Try one that pairs with what we all have on the brain this time of year: Food, family, and culture! Students can answer questions like “Why is food important to different cultures?” or “What foods are connected to holidays?” by researching articles on topics like:

• How supper clubs help people of different cultures connect through food.
• How soul food and southern food are related.
• What people eat during cultural and religious holidays like Christmas and Hanukkah.

Make past-to-present connections with Thanksgiving celebrations

Most people have learned that the first Thanksgiving was a peaceful meal between the Indigenous people and English settlers. But the story is more complicated than that. Help students explore different perspectives and make past-to-present connections using resources like:

• An article explaining how few colonists actually participated in the first Thanksgiving.
• An explainer article about the Mayflower voyage and life at the Plymouth colony.
• An opinion piece that suggests how to approach history from a more accurate and inclusive lens.

[Learn more about Thanksgiving traditions in social studies](id-ss)

Discover how Thanksgiving evolved into the holiday we celebrate today with engaging, timely social studies lessons:

Break the history of Thanksgiving down into digestible elementary lessons

Give your youngest students a primer on the history of Thanksgiving using the following lesson:

• Start with a 3-2-1 activity where students record three words, two questions, and one drawing or symbol that reflects what they already know about Thanksgiving.
• Assign an article on the first Thanksgiving, and while students read, ask them to annotate details about why the first Thanksgiving happened.
• Extend the lesson by creating a class recipe book, where students each contribute one recipe they would bring to their “Class-giving” if they could all celebrate the holiday together.

Learn more about Thanksgiving’s origins and past celebrations

For older students, dive into the background of everyone’s favorite food- and gratitude-filled holiday by learning the origins of the first feast and some of our most common traditions.

• Watch a video to learn more about the surprising origins of the most popular Thanksgiving foods.
• Read President Lincoln’s 1863 proclamation that declared Thanksgiving a national holiday.
• Discover where the Wampanoag people—the Native group that helped the Pilgrims survive their first winter—are today and how they feel about Indigenous representation in the historical Thanksgiving story.

Encourage students to think critically about Thanksgiving celebrations

Dig deeper into the ethical position of celebrating holidays like Thanksgiving and Columbus Day, which can be controversial due to discrimination and racism associated with the people and historical events attached to them. Explore the topic by diving into sources like:

• An image bank of illustrations and other art that depicts Indigenous and Pilgrim relations.
• An article about how students felt about history classes after they learned a more inclusive version of some historical events.
• An explainer article looking at the Indigenous groups of the Caribbean and how their stories and histories have been altered or erased in the mainstream historical accounts of Columbus’ discovery.

[Try food experiments in science](id-sci)

Take a hands-on approach to Thanksgiving instruction with food-themed projects in your science classes:

Learn how to make your own Thanksgiving treats

Encourage students to experiment with unconventional ways to make homemade Thanksgiving staples like:

• Butter
• Honey graham crackers
• Microwave cake

Discover how to compost to clean up after the Thanksgiving meal

See how to combat food waste from all your leftovers with a make-your-own compost activity:

• Discover how things in nature decompose, like leaves and food waste.
• Learn what you can do to improve soils to help plants grow better.
• Try a make-your-own compost activity that students can replicate at home after Thanksgiving dinner!

Newsela’s subject products go beyond the big Thanksgiving meal

We hope these Thanksgiving activities will help you tap into your students’ excitement for the holiday and keep them engaged as you work through the last few weeks before a well-deserved break.

You can capture this engagement and excitement for learning all year long with Newsela’s suite of subject products. The variety of content and resources—like news articles, primary sources, literature selections, and interactive videos—-helps you teach about any holiday, current event, or historical date throughout the year.

Not a Newsela customer yet? Sign up for Newsela Lite for free and start your 45-day trial. You’ll get access to our premium content and activities for everything you need to teach about Thanksgiving and beyond.