Printable Holiday Mini-Books in French, Spanish, and ESL
I love making mini-books with my students. Today, my high schoolers were completely engaged as they wrote original mini-books about “A Letter to Santa.” It’s really a bit deceiving. To an outside observer, my teenagers were having way too much fun playing with construction paper and markers. But they were actually using higher-order thinking skills to meet all of the requirements of the task: Create an original 7-page story about a character writing a letter to Santa. Use the verbs write, read, and say at least one time each in the past tense. In the book, include the actual Santa letter written in the present tense, and including the verbs want and need. Be creative.
And creative they were! I was so pleased with their focus and ability to pull it all together. Gosh, it beats drill and practice worksheets any day.
Want to know how to make a simple mini-book? Click this link:
How to Make a Mini-Book with One Sheet of Paper
I’ve also been busy creating a few simple printable mini-books for younger students. Kids just color, cut, sequence, and staple. Once they have finished their creations, they are motivated to do a little reading.
These Foreign Language House printable mini-books are super cheap for the holidays (just 35-50 cents!) Follow the links to download yours today from TeachersPayTeachers.com.
Winter Holiday Mini-Book (English vocabulary)
French Christmas Vocabulary Mini-Book
Photo Credit: by jdurham at http://morguefile.com/archive/?display=234006&
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Comments
Don’t be too impressed . . . we’re talking 7 pages of a PICTURE book. Just a couple of sentences with an illustration per page. Still, it’s interesting to see what chunks of language my students naturally retained from hearing MY stories in class. And passe compose turned out to be a bit of a challenge for them. Even though the class aced the quiz the other week, applying what they know is a whole ‘nother story!
Once the stories were polished into a final draft they were absolutely ADORABLE! I actually look forward to reading creative little stories (unlike excruciating, mind-numbing grammatical exercises. ugh.)
Although I still have my students learn conjugations as a TOOL, I assure them they will never be called on to recite a chart when traveling abroad 
Storytelling and language in context is the way to go!!
OMG Diane!
A 7 page story? Wow… and I thought I was tough when asking my adult students to right a couple of paragraphs (except that I force them to use the conditional and the subjunctive!)!
But,like you, I’m a true believer in creativity and it’s incredible to see how much faster people learn when we bring them out of the box! Sitting at a table, memorizing and reciting verb conjugation leads next to NADA! They have to use their knowledge in real timeline…
Bravo!
À plus tard!