A New Improved Santa is a story about staying true to yourself and makes a great read aloud near Christmas. Today I’m here to share some ideas for using this book in your classroom!
If you aren’t familiar, here’s a blurb about A New Improved Santa:
This story goes into detail about the changes Santa makes each month of the year. I thought it would be fun to capitalize on this with a sequencing cut and paste activity.
I have also included a variety of comprehension activities to choose from. There are comprehension question cards and matching written response pages. There are graphic organizers for both a retell and summary. My students always love to spin and retell the story elements because it feels more like a game!
Since my students are very familiar with writing friendly letters at this point of the year, I thought it would be fun to keep things fresh and exciting. We pretend we are the reindeer and elves and brainstorm all of the things we love about Santa. Then we compare how Santa was acting in the story. After writing a letter, students can add either an elf craft or reindeer craft to their letters.
For vocabulary practice, I like to print up the cards and put them in a jar. We play a game called Santa Charades. After we’ve studied and practiced the words, I let students come to the front of the room. They can either act out the word or give clues and the other students have to guess the word.
You can find all of these activities here:
Happy Teaching!
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