Can you imagine what would happen if Santa lost his job? Stephen Krensky has done just that with How Santa Lost His Job. I want to share an opinion writing activity and craft you can use with your students after reading this book.
In the story, there is always a last-minute rush before Christmas. An elf named Muckle takes it upon himself to find a replacement for Santa and creates the Deliverator. The other elves want proof that this machine will make Christmas more efficient, so they create a series of challenges to determine who will deliver the toys on Christmas.
The story lends itself to opinion writing, so I set our reading focus on identifying the reasons why Santa is better than the Deliverator. Before reading, I set up a Cookies for Santa anchor chart.
As we read and identify the reasons Santa is better than the Deliverator, we record the reasons inside the cookies on the plate. I should mention that I also allow students to use their schema and connections with other texts to provide reasons.
After brainstorming as a class, it’s time to put our opinions into writing. Students choose their reasons from our anchor chart and I provide a sheet of sentence starters that help with opinion writing. When the writing is done, students get to add a Santa craft to the finished product.
You can find all of these activities, plus vocabulary and comprehension questions in this book companion:
You might also enjoy How Santa Got His Job. You can find an anchor chart idea for this book here.
Don’t forget….for the month of December, you can buy both book companions and save!
Happy Reading!
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