Celebrating A Thanksgiving Feast

Thanksgiving is around the corner! Let’s celebrate in our classroom with our yearly Thanksgiving feast!

​Every month, I would review the monthly events or holidays. I always loved helping my students learn about what goes on around us. This helped my students gather background knowledge and learn about what happens in these events.

In the month of November, I taught about:

• ​Fall
• Election Day
• Veteran’s Day
• Thanksgiving

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Thanksgiving was one of my favorites. In this blog, I will focus on the Thanksgiving feast meal. Keep in mind, it is not the only topic I taught in my classroom. To prepare for the Thanksgiving feast, I taught vocabulary, read a lot of related content and practiced many other academic related skills. We also learned about being grateful. Each student would learn about gratitude and practice being thankful for all the things in their life. But for this blog I wanted to share the most fun part of this celebration!

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Every year, I would create a Thanksgiving Feast where my students would have “dinner” (fine… lunch!) at school. Let me walk you through the process. I had a series of activities that we would practice and model weekly during my whole group or morning group as we learned about Thanksgiving. 

First, I would teach my students how to do table setting. Each student would get a placemat where they would place their plate, cup, napkin and utensils. Students would get the plastic physical items and would practice the set up at their desk.  We would practice this for the first week of November. (Note: the students who struggled with setting up from a blank template, I would provide the silhouette with images glued on for them to match and/or a teacher model with all of the items glued to the mat). ​

Secondly, I would have play food items to imitate the real food for Thanksgiving and/or I would laminate printed photos of food items like mashed potatoes, mac & cheese in which they would set up on their placemat. I would ask what each student would like and serve them one by one. 

In Week 2, I expected students to step up more proficiently and faster. Each student would sit and prepare their placemat through endless practice from Week 1 & 2. Then I would incorporate behavioral cues such as “Show me you are ready!” Or ``Let's see who is ready!” Students would set up their setting nicely and wait quietly for the next task. Then, I would pick a student who was following directions, listening, and waiting their turn or raising their hand quietly to help with serving. Each student called would serve one food item to the entire class group. I would pick different students or sometimes just one student. They absolutely loved this!! They loved to be the server. I also had a helper to clean up the tables and put everything back in the assigned bin. By the way, although I was working at the Elementary level… I was teaching academic concepts, behavioral skills and life skills!

In Week 2, I would send home a letter for parents/caregivers. It would share the details for the Thanksgiving Feast in my classroom. In this feast, I would have the students eat a meal from Boston Market or KFC. Each parent had to submit a set amount of money and pick the meal options/drink. I would always ask for the room parent or volunteer to be in charge to pick up the meals for our yearly feast. Parents had the opportunity to choose the food based on the student’s likes. Some families would choose to send their home foods for the feast, especially for students that were on a special diet. 

The day we all waited for arrived in Week 3, we would set up our classroom for our feast! I would rearrange my whole group area to create a long rectangle table or sitting area. We would decorate the classroom in Thanksgiving decorations. Students would come in and find the classroom flipped! They would each sit in their assigned spot, and I would pick students to be my assistants in setting up and serving (with gloves). We would serve the food on special plates. ​Then, we would have to wait our turn to eat. We would go around the table to say something we were grateful for (Some students would use their communication devices or communication boards). Then we ate!!! Afterwards we would watch a movie or show related to Thanksgiving... while the staff cleaned up! This activity helped students learn the process of a gathering and having a meal with a group of individuals, and cope with a change in their routine.​

It was a beautiful learning experience for my students. The more I did this every year with co-workers, the more students learned and grew! ​​I hope I have inspired you to have your own Thanksgiving Feast in the classroom. Although it took some work through visual supports, social stories and modeling (plus academic learning) it was an amazing final product! 
I would love to hear your feedback or see your classroom feast! Don’t forget to share some pictures via e-mail ([email protected]), via private messages, or tag us! 

Here are some products that can help you with the academics for November!

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